12:22:08 Thanks, Ellie, for coming, today for your lunch and learn session called the, building and broadening resiliency, integrating mindfulness into education, an introduction.
12:22:22 Ellie is a Toronto based mindfulness practitioner and teacher who has worked internationally, facilitating mindfulness, workshops and retreats within the sectors of education, healthcare and business.
12:22:32 She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Toronto in the Buddhism psychology and mental health program with a cross employment to the Dalai Lama of public health in their Institute of Health Policy Management and evaluation.
12:22:45 She's also. Okay.
12:22:46 She's also the program director with a joint appointment to the faculty of Medicine. So welcome, Ellie, and I'll let you start.
12:22:55 Great. Well, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to pop back over to Oz each year.
12:23:01 And today we're going to take a look at some of the evidence base and some hands-on practices when we look at the modality of mindfulness and I'm going to talk more about that in a moment.
12:23:12 As a starting point, you heard I wear a few different hats at the university. I like to nerd out on the etymology, the roots of the practice of mindfulness as you've heard a teacher and acting program director in the Buddhism psychology and mental health program.
12:23:24 So looking at where this was and comes from, how we can honor that and also love turn it out on the neuroscience side, did my PhD, to medical science in the factory medicine.
12:23:34 So bringing different knowledge streams together and seeing how they can inform our practices, how they can inform the spaces we create, the environments are part of its really of interest and curiosity to me.
12:23:45 You can see this calligraphy. Happy teachers will change the world. This is written by Sedmaster Scholar and Peace Activist T not Han.
12:23:56 And so just to share that I have my academic training rooted in, you know, the faculty medicine here at the University of Toronto, my master's is an environmental masters looking at the environment of classrooms.
12:24:06 And so that is my academic background and I do research in that area, a lot of collaboration with the Ontario Hospital Association and so in kind of clinical health care and education spaces lots of research practice of teaching.
12:24:17 And then on a you know what informs my practice my interested mindfulness are many schools of thought. TICK NOTHON, as I mentioned, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, long-term training with his community or does their international wake up schools coordinator and so from a mindfulness lens that is what I'm rooted in and that's why
12:24:35 I want to share this calligraphy from Thai. We call to Mahan Thai for short and it's a proposal in academia.
12:24:43 I say bring your skeptical mind. Don't take anything I say for granted. So here is a proposal on the table from a Zedmaster.
12:24:55 Happy teachers will change the world. We'll come back to this but I I leave that with you as something to think about and I want to be clear in the session.
12:24:58 Sometimes when we hear mindfulness, we think there's some pressure on the teacher, on the administrator, on the student to be happy, magically, to always be okay.
12:25:06 And really what we're interested in in this field and we're going to talk a bit about this from a neuroscience perspective to me mindfulness.
12:25:12 Which is rooted in the term sati which means a poly word to remember it's about how we remember who we are, how we give ourselves permission to be human, and how that changes our learning environments, our societal environments.
12:25:26 And so this idea of happy in this calligraphy is not necessarily happy, happy joy joy, but what does it mean to be a human who feels well?
12:25:34 Perhaps who is not functioning from a place of survival and burnout and how might that change the world?
12:25:39 How might being that person change the environments of the spaces we're in. So. Just a proposal from a Zen Master.
12:25:48 We're gonna unpack it from a scientific perspective in a moment. Here's my little slide.
12:25:52 Just sharing some of my different hats and buckets that we've already talked about. I want to go through some working definitions of mindfulness today.
12:25:58 Talk a bit about what well-being is and why we care, get into some neuroscience.
12:26:03 And this is some neuroscience that I love because I teach it through like grade one classes all the way up through my PD courses.
12:26:11 And then we're going to talk about some activities that you can actually do at some practical applications. So hopefully in this short bit of time we have together you will get a good sense of What exactly is mindfulness?
12:26:22 What is some of the neuroscience informing why we're interested in bringing it in specifically to educational spaces and then to actual practical activities that you can try out.
12:26:32 And, so what exactly is mindfulness? This is a trick question I have given myself. This is a trick question I have given myself like any behavioral science phenomenon.
12:26:42 Like any behavioral science phenomenon, there is no one answer. Like any behavioral science phenomenon, there is no one answer.
12:26:45 The research ethics boards would love me to have one answer. The research ethics boards would love me to have one when I put in my ethics reviews.
12:26:49 I just wanted to put up the slide because I want to hold an honor that mindfulness the act of being aware to oneself.
12:26:55 The act perhaps of developing understanding for oneself and others, perspective taking compassion. This is not a commodity owned by anyone discipline or anyone culture.
12:27:06 This is rooted in so much around the world. And so there are a lot of different global traditions and disciplines that explore this.
12:27:12 So to honor the many wisdom fields. I that have contributed to this. And to say I from an academic lens as a researcher we can then hone in what is our scope here so as I share it I'm going to talk about mindfulness from this perspective of where I teach the Buddhism psychology mental health program.
12:27:29 And so this is rooted in some of those teachings and trainings, but it is not to say that they are the only discipline or social cultural space that owns them.
12:27:37 So, what is mindfulness? It's also a word that's used a lot in the media.
12:27:42 It's very popular right now. It's great. I get invited to give presentations, but then it can be confused because everyone has a different idea.
12:27:47 So just in a simple way, I like to use this cartoon. Mindfulness is something to do with what?
12:27:52 Going on our mic and so we might consider do we relate you know we have this one mind that is very full a very busy mind and one mind that is seeing clearly what is in front of it.
12:28:04 It was very interesting to me. When we think about learning. We are teaching or if our students are in the classroom and we have the busy mind, we're thinking about our projects, our worries, our fears, that email, that text.
12:28:17 Our ability to Right memory, right? And that is essentially what learning is, right? We want executive function to take it information and store it.
12:28:26 Is effective. And so there is something interesting. Mindfulness. Has to do with what our mind is doing and what our mind is doing.
12:28:33 That is the main tool that is the main instrument we use. As educators and as learners. And so a phenomenon that is interested in perhaps giving us some agency and some direction over our attentional flow.
12:28:46 Is really important for education. Just on a basic way. There's more to it than that. This is a this is a discipline.
12:28:53 This is a field that's interested in wellness and we're going to talk about that so I I do not want to limit mindfulness to attention focus and I want to say in education we're very interested in what the mind is attending to.
12:29:03 Both educators and as learners. I'm going to give us 3 definitions of mindfulness to work with.
12:29:09 I call these working definitions mindfulness is a behavioral field so it is an ever-evolving thing and we're humans we like some language we like some definitions so I'm gonna give you 3 one comes from the Plum village community.
12:29:22 This is the community of Zedmaster Chickenhaw and who I've trained with so this more traditional wisdom stream.
12:29:27 Then I'm gonna give one from John Kevin Zin, the founder of mindfulness based stress reduction, MBSR.
12:29:33 You may have heard of it, the most clinically, the the most clinically studied and research mindfulness based intervention, MBSR.
12:29:40 So a clinical definition. And then I'm going to give you a definition from the UK All-parliamentary Report on Mindfulness.
12:29:47 This is a policy document that came out of the UK government in 2,015 that formally recommended mindfulness be integrated into the sector, the public sectors of education, health care, business, and the criminal justice system.
12:29:59 A Zen Master, Clinical Setting. Government Report for Interesting Definitions to triangulate together.
12:30:07 So from Plum Village, mindfulness is the awareness of what is happening inside and around us in the present moment.
12:30:14 John Keats in mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way on purpose in the present moment and not judgmentally.
12:30:22 And from this report, mindfulness means paying attention to what's happening in the present moment in the mind body and external environment with an attitude of kindness and curiosity.
12:30:32 And what I'm interested in doing is just to kind of pull out. Triangulate between? What are all of them saying?
12:30:39 How can we see some conciliency here? So if I pull it, there's a lot of words here to unpack, but if I just look at what overlaps.
12:30:46 3 things that I think are key to point out as we try and understand what is this phenomenon of mindfulness so that we can understand maybe some of its benefits and what's coming out of science.
12:30:55 So all of them are talking about awareness and attention. And so quick scientific proof. Please direct your attention up towards the ceiling or sky.
12:31:04 Now send your attentional flow down to the floor of your feet. And now redirect it back to me.
12:31:10 Quick proof, you are in fact in charge of where your attention is slowing. Doesn't mean it's easy to send it where we want as long as we want.
12:31:18 But okay, there's some control, some inner regulation that we have over our attentional flow. That's part of this phenomena, intentional flow where it's going, where it's directed.
12:31:30 Then this word present moment. Some of the researches I work with say present moment makes me sound hippy-dippy and Why is the present moment important?
12:31:38 The exchange of information, what we do as teachers learners only happens at the present moment. I want to be very careful.
12:31:45 In mindfulness, we're not saying never think of the future and past. We're not saying to ignore them.
12:31:49 In fact, we are very emphatic. Our past really matters. It informs what is here right now in terms of some of the systemic issues we see around climate around racism or on systems of oppression.
12:32:00 That is informed. By what had happened before this present moment. And so we really care about. And look into the past?
12:32:10 But with the intention to understand the present.
12:32:14 5 in a classroom and a teacher is having a challenge with cluster management because a student is kicking another student.
12:32:21 In the present moment there are some safety concerns that we want to take care of. And we also want to understand perhaps something about those 2 students.
12:32:30 Lived experience from the paths. How is it informing what is happening in this present moment? And what we do in this present moment.
12:32:38 How we interact with each of those students. Will paint the future. It will paint. How they interact in the future.
12:32:43 It will paint who they become as human being. So the future and past, we call this the 3 times.
12:32:50 Past present and future, they're all here. But were interested. In mindfulness training. How do we have some agency over where our directional flow is when?
12:32:59 And the present moment is really important. If I want to be present for my students, if I want to do that learning exchange, I need to have some.
12:33:07 Regulation over my attentional flow. So again, we want to be careful. We're trying not to do extremes in mindfulness.
12:33:12 So we're not saying never think of the future of pass. And we're saying we want to train you to have some agency for when your mind is focused on what's happening in the here and now.
12:33:20 And when it goes to the future and pass. If we only, if we have no agency over that, no self regularly.
12:33:26 We can't participate well learning. We can't participate well in communication. If we are blown by all our storms, I have some some storms going on.
12:33:34 I'm one of my parents is having some health issues and that's up in my heart. And if I don't have a practice to help me have some agency over what I'm thinking about that versus when I'm thinking about my students, it can be very dizzying.
12:33:45 So we're just we're interested. In not suppressing or running away from our challenges. And difficulties for our paths or our future.
12:33:54 But we're interested in some regulation over our attentional flow. Towards the present moment. As a way to enhance.
12:34:03 Excuse me.
12:34:06 As a way to enhance our capacity for learning. And our capacity for wellness. I'm gonna get into some science around this.
12:34:14 Why does it make us well for us in the present moment? Well, you might be able to answer this for yourselves if you spend your whole day running to where is that the future replaying that thing that happened in the past over and over and over and over without any agency to stop, to be present, to take in what is here and now.
12:34:29 This is your default mode network overactive. This can lead to a sense of ill-being or distress.
12:34:36 If you or your students are noticing feelings of well. Of confusion, of challenge. These are natural.
12:34:44 We're not pushing them away. We have a lot of evidence showing that this capacity. To attend to the present moment can really help to support us.
12:34:51 And this brings us to some of our last words, non-judgmentally in curiosity and kindness.
12:34:56 So we're looking in mindfulness. At our regulation of attentional flow. We're interested in how we flow it to what is happening in the here and now.
12:35:04 And we're interested in doing that in this very novel way. With kindness and curiosity.
12:35:12 This to me is the juicy part. As a researcher, if I could put like bright lights around something like, this is, this is the horrible thing here because we do a lot of training.
12:35:20 It's actually in academic settings on paying attention to the present moment. They already for your exam. You know what you're doing in any exam?
12:35:26 You're paying attention to something right now. Right? But are you doing it with kindness and curiosity?
12:35:30 What is the narrative you are playing in your mind? I'm gonna fail, I'm not good enough, I need to work faster.
12:35:38 Why did I say it that way? So there's some really interesting evidence how we pay attention. How we direct our attentional flow.
12:35:45 How we narrate our lives to ourselves. Impacts both the quality of the work we do? And the quality of how well we feel.
12:35:56 I can tell you that my husband can tell you when I walk in my front door. If I spent my day working thinking you're doing your best, this is so interesting, I'm feeling engaged, or Ellie work faster, why haven't you got your whole to do list?
12:36:08 The human I am when I walk in my door is different. And this matters in an educational setting. Because the hidden curriculum is who we are.
12:36:16 Again, not to put any pressure on you. But we're curious, what are some ways to train ourselves to not put more pressure to be that like perfect person because we're not being human is messy.
12:36:27 But let's remember the proposal from TICK. On that we started with. Happy teachers will change the world.
12:36:33 Who is the person in the classroom speaking? And how do we support that person? So bring me to just 3 quick proposals around wellness.
12:36:42 Let teacher well being is not separate from student wellbeing. Session health care and educational environments. I hear self-care is selfish, so let's problematize that a little bit.
12:36:52 We've also been considering, you know, I'm writing a book chapter right now with Dan Siegel where we're proposing instead of saying self-compassion, maybe we call it inner compassion.
12:37:00 And consider how our inner landscape. Is not separate from our outer landscape. That personal practice undergrads implementation.
12:37:09 So for anyone interested in bringing the modality of mindfulness into spaces, we see a lot of evidence.
12:37:13 Showing that it's really important that you test it out on yourself. That it isn't just the plop art that you're bringing into the classroom, bring that from my art background.
12:37:21 You know, it's not just a random thing that you're going, okay, here's my script and you do it.
12:37:25 How does your own interaction with smodality change your effectiveness of delivering it? And just really audit, there's a lot of ways of bringing this into classrooms, you know, it could just be that you find practices.
12:37:36 It always starts with your personal practice. I know some educators who, you know, you don't have to go into the space.
12:37:43 And say, we're going to mindfully listen to each other for you to have your own internal practice of mindful speaking and listening that changes the flavor of a classroom.
12:37:52 There are mindful space interventions even in one to one student interactions you can bring them to and then again the well-being of the teacher themselves is shown to have a huge impact on the classroom.
12:38:01 So why do we care about well-being from the World Health Organization? This great definition.
12:38:08 Wellness is not just the absence of distress or illness. It's the presence of something, emotional being physical health and social relationships.
12:38:14 So we know if we want to be well, if we want to be engaged in our work in a way that is sustainable, that isn't burning us out.
12:38:20 Taking a look at how is our emotional, physical and social. Going for us could be very important.
12:38:27 And just to say this report on grad students, which applies as we look at the evidence across student populations, when people feel well, they're more productive, more creative, more collaborative, they have better long term goals, pursuit, they're more likely to find employment, they're more resilient, they're able to bounce back from challenges.
12:38:44 So there's all these reasons. That being well is of interest when i think about you know if you thought about it if someone was like okay there's a modality that's gonna make everyone in your classroom more productive creative collaborative.
12:38:57 I'd be like, oh, that sounds pretty good. So I want to talk a little bit about the research tells us about our brains and achievement.
12:39:05 What is the connection between being well between a modality that, let's say, helps us calm our nervous system.
12:39:11 Why are we interested in that? So let's let's talk about the nervous system a little bit.
12:39:15 So some real basics, as I said, I teach this to students in classroom. So this is a great way to talk about the brain.
12:39:22 It's overly simplified and quite useful. If you want you can do it with me, but we do something called the hand model of the brain where we hold up our arm.
12:39:30 And we folded our thumb and this represents our amygdala. That's the part of our brain in Tardor our fight or flight response.
12:39:38 You may have heard of it. Fighter flight, super helpful. I always like to say thank you, Brain.
12:39:43 You're trying to help me survive. And sometimes we can survive on what is not the most helpful.
12:39:46 So amygdala is getting your way to fight or flight your prefrontal cortex if you fold down your hand this completes our oversimplified brain.
12:39:53 Prefrontal cortex, this is the part of your brain in charge of your executive function in charge of retrieving memories.
12:39:59 In charge of creative thought processes. This is what you need online. To take in new learning, to teach effectively, to retrieve information on an exam.
12:40:09 To prove free to paper, you need your PFC online. And so here's what's interesting about the relationship between your amygdala PFC.
12:40:18 When your amygdala senses danger you You flip your lid. It literally takes your PFC offline and it redirects resources.
12:40:25 To your amygdala to get you ready to run her fight. This is very, very helpful.
12:40:30 If you say like meet a tiger in the woods. Right? You ought to be, you don't need your executive function.
12:40:36 You don't need to give a speech at that moment. You don't need to retrieve thoughtful information about a parallelogram.
12:40:43 No. How to run or fight? Thank you. Here's what's interesting.
12:40:47 The science has started this term paper tigers. Which is we can see that our nervous system has the same response to some things that are more like paper than a tiger as it would actually meeting a tiger in the woods.
12:41:01 This includes exams. Presentations, and job interviews. So my system knows that an exam is coming up, it goes, danger!
12:41:09 Takes my PFC upline. So So if you have students who are having trouble focusing, trouble concentrating.
12:41:15 Again, what's going on in their lives inside and outside the classroom that may be activating their nervous systems.
12:41:23 You have students who are facing a sense of danger in their home lives or outside of their school, then their day in your system is maybe on hyper alert and so an exam something that maybe would make another student medium nervous some stress intention is good activates a little bit of the fighter flight so we're hyper focused that's fine.
12:41:41 And It may be over activating it. We may be having a huge actual fight or flight response. To something like Do you want to share about what you did over the weekend and all of a sudden public speaking goes PFC is offline.
12:41:54 And so what we're interested in is the modality of mindfulness has been shown to actually be able to help us.
12:42:00 To calm the nervous system, let ourselves know we're not in danger and bring our PFC back online.
12:42:06 And I had this wonderful experience. If you've seen me in other presentations, I like telling the story a lot.
12:42:12 So apologies if you've heard of before but I was in a degree 2 or 3 classroom and I had students we taught about mindfulness and we did what the activities were going to do today.
12:42:22 They went out to resets came back in one of the suits I said how was recess they said oh my amygdala got activated I was like whoa tell me more and she was like yeah I got kicked and I and I was like oh what happened next I kicked them back I was like okay yeah and then what happened and they were like oh well I did that breathing thing I said, okay, what happened
12:42:39 next? I went and apologized. And so this interesting thing when we receive a challenging input or stimulus.
12:42:47 We can flip our lid. I get kicked. I kick back. And that doing mindfulness modality can potentially bring us back a line enough to notice that we want to apologize to give us that ability to respond rather than react.
12:43:02 And it's the same for us as adults. If you've ever seen the email pop in and you go like, You like feel it?
12:43:09 That's your that's your fighter fight response. That's your body getting you ready.
12:43:13 And if you are to wear, you know, you might send a NASA email back, you might, you know, with a family member here, a nasty thing, say something back.
12:43:18 Or even a small thing like, why don't you do this? Is, well, why did you do the dishes?
12:43:22 You know, and these kinds of things can keep us activated in a way that keep us offline.
12:43:27 So we're really interested from a scientific perspective in understanding. You know mindless is awareness so it can just be already a mindful activity to notice for yourself.
12:43:37 For your students, with your colleagues, your administrators, what are the things that are taking us off offline?
12:43:44 And what are some things we might do to get back online? Because having your PFC online is how you access your executive function.
12:43:52 Is how you are collaborative. How you are listening. How you are speaking, right? All these things that we look at the list of what is classroom management, to me it is.
12:44:01 The skillful and thoughtful use of your prefrontal cortex. So both for the educator and the student.
12:44:08 This is a really interesting thing and we are co-creating learning environments. So we're co-creating a learning environment where everyone's offline.
12:44:14 This can be really challenging and this is why we often we're gonna try 2 practices. We suggest find some micro practices that you can start and end your days with both for yourself and your students.
12:44:25 Find those moments of transition in the day where things can be a bit chaotic or maybe a reset or refocus, are coming together as community can be served.
12:44:33 By a micro practice by something that the science shows is there. To support us in attending to what is here.
12:44:41 And that isn't just for attention. It goes beyond that. The science shows that perspective taking, the infusion of compassion, of curiosity, of kindness that is part of this modality.
12:44:51 Is also infused when we do these practices. So we're going to try some out in a moment. Just a quick summary of the evidence.
12:45:00 Mindfulness has been indicated to positive benefit. A long longer list of things. These include well-being, perceptual sensitivity, self-regulation, empathy, concentration, motor skills, cognitive performance, better focus, working memory, academic performance.
12:45:11 Moral reasoning, ethical decision making, decreases anxiety and stress. It's a long list.
12:45:18 References that you can look into if you want lots of evidence out there. What I wanted to say briefly as a researcher when I present this list, sometimes people are like, well, that's like a super long list of things to say that like you can help with.
12:45:31 And Why do we make this claim? When I look at this, what I'll propose to you just to kind of get our heads around it, it's just like with physical fitness.
12:45:38 You would see if you're physically fit you would see a cascade of benefits. Physiologically to your body.
12:45:45 And so similar thing, if we think of mindfulness, a bit like mind training, keeping our minds fit, right?
12:45:49 The the tool of our academic work, the tool of our work as educators as learners is our mind.
12:45:56 And so here we have a modality that is interested in training the mind. This is our cognition.
12:46:02 And so if you look back at this list, you're just seeing just like physical fitness. You're just seeing the list of like potential a potential cascade of cognitive benefits.
12:46:10 So that's why, you know, if it feels like an over claim or like why all these different things you could just look at it and say right If I have a modelling that helps me to have cognitive Fitness be cognitively well.
12:46:22 Then it potentially affects me across a cascade of cognitive benefits. Similar to fitness. Okay, hopefully this sounds good.
12:46:33 I know I'm talking quickly. It's because I want us to try some things. I come from the Zen tradition and we always say it's about lived experience.
12:46:39 Like I can theorize that you forever, but you know if you want to taste peach if you want to know what peach chase like you have to bite the peach.
12:46:47 This is a traditional telling. So you know you could look at a picture of a peach. I could read you a poem about a peach.
12:46:53 I could rub a peach on your face. You still would not know where the peach tastes like.
12:46:57 You gotta bite it. So we're going to bite the peach. So what I'd like to say, we're going to try 2 micro practices.
12:47:03 Both of these are practices that I have implemented across health care education and business settings. At university with my undergraduate students, my graduate students in my daily life as a human being with families, with teachers, with young students in kindergarten classrooms.
12:47:32 Does it relate to your context? Well, What are different words? That fit you. That's fine.
12:47:38 There's no one way to do this. It is an open source body of knowledge that is inviting you to make it your own.
12:47:44 From 2 leading researchers in the field, Goldman and Davidson. Until fitness. For both sports and meditation, the end results vary on what you actually do.
12:47:54 So I also encourage you, you know, if we went to the gym, there are different ways we'd like to work out.
12:47:57 So I always say when people come through like I tried mindful that didn't work for me. You're confusing because I'm like that's like being like I tried to be active.
12:48:05 It doesn't work for me. I'm always like, I don't understand. So what I put to you is myfulness can be so many things.
12:48:12 Yes, it can be sitting on a cushion. With your eyes closed for 20 min. Amazing body of evidence that will change the structure and function of your brain like absolutely go for it and there are so many other ways to apply these basic practices to your walking, to your eating, to your speaking to your listening to your dancing.
12:48:27 We can talk about that after. So I'm going to share 2 practices. The first one might be what we more traditionally think of as mindfulness.
12:48:34 We're going to do some breath awareness. But why do we do that? And then again, we'll talk about how to expand this to the environments you're in.
12:48:43 This practice is about learning to anchor our attention and so it's very foundational, very useful for calming the nervous system.
12:48:51 And we pick an anchor. Often we select the breath because like it's free and you don't have to remember to pack it.
12:48:56 And if you are alive, you're breathing. There's just any agre. It also is an interesting way of harmonizing mind and body because the breath is physically in the body and it can also become the focus of the mind and they're doing the same thing all of a sudden so that's a whole interesting thing.
12:49:11 So the breath can be a great focus. If that isn't safe or available, I also want to say like a trauma.
12:49:16 Informed approach to this is please always give options. Let folks know if something isn't safe, sometimes someone's body isn't safe to come back to.
12:49:24 I had a, I think it was a grade 4 class, a student who came to me was like focusing on the breath makes me panic because I have ADHD.
12:49:29 I would like my anchor to be thinking of my cat. And I was like, fantastic. So we just, we make it open.
12:49:36 What we're interested in this is choosing and selecting an anchor. And to train ourselves for a few moments to settle the mind by focusing on the anchor.
12:49:45 And I just want to give a few more assists on this. So the outcomes of this can be greater clarity focus.
12:49:50 And sense of instability and wellness. And again, to be very careful from a trauma in for lens.
12:49:56 I can't teach the whole thing right now, but I just want to say Always to give an option.
12:50:01 Closing eyes can help remove extra stimulus, but keeping them open to be safe is fine. If you need to be walking versus not moving your body.
12:50:08 Right, just to check in. And again, why do we do this? Focus attention is a kind of like weightlift to train that muscle of focusing on something.
12:50:17 So I've had several students and I said we're going to focus attention to an ADHD.
12:50:21 Be like that made me really nervous and then turned out that they loved it and that it was something that like when they were in other spaces they could kind of return to.
12:50:28 And so what I want to say is if you go to the gym and you work out your muscles like we're gonna do on purpose, you don't leave the muscles at the gym, they come with you.
12:50:35 So the benefit of doing some ongoing, even for like 2 to 3 min focus attention practices is you're building that muscle to attend to the present.
12:50:44 So then if you're a student or an educator and you feel distracted or dispersed.
12:50:48 You have more strength to be focused. It's very interesting. So. I'm gonna just do like a microprocessor so we can test this out.
12:50:59 And then we'll come back and try another practice. So if you're comfortable. Close your eyes.
12:51:03 This just removes extra stimulus. It's heavy. If not, take a point to focus on your view at any time if you need to lift your gaze, sing your own song.
12:51:12 If the guidance I'm giving does not feel safe in available. Think of me like I'm at the front of an exercise class if I squat too deep.
12:51:18 Go ahead and adjust your squad.
12:51:23 So one invite us to take a moment to practice some focused attention. We are so often rushing and running through our daily lives.
12:51:34 We have so many things that we do back to back all day.
12:51:40 And so just for a moment, I invite you to see what it's like.
12:51:47 To anchor your attention in the sensation of breathing in.
12:51:53 And the sensation of breathing out.
12:51:57 And I want to invite you to do this with an attitude that is kind and curious.
12:52:04 And this might mean our minds are naturally running if it is impossible to anchor in the breath. Can you notice that it'd be kind to it?
12:52:13 I'd really like to just be calm right now. Wow, I'm like, huh, interesting.
12:52:18 And so we're just taking this moment of purposely pausing in our day. To become aware of what is here.
12:52:26 So it is okay if what is here is busy. It is okay if what is here. Is worried?
12:52:36 And what else is here? Just taking that moment. To be with the breath. To whatever degree possible to put down.
12:52:48 The thinking about other things. It'll come back. It likes to do that. But it's like the weightlift, the bicep curl for a moment.
12:52:57 Can you notice? You are breathing. If it helps, you can think the word in as you breathe in.
12:53:05 And the word out as you breathe out. Now this give us a moment of silence.
12:53:14 Try and do the bicep curl of anchoring in the breath. Notice when the mine runs, bring it back.
12:53:20 Notice when the mine runs. And bring it back. Breathing in. I know I am breathing in.
12:53:32 Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
12:53:37 And.
12:53:42 Out.
12:54:14 And on your next outbreak, I'll invite you to gently open your eyes and just Take a moment to collect some data on yourself.
12:54:22 Hi, always like to say this to any age group. A little micro practice of mindfulness is just this opportunity to collect some data.
12:54:31 If the data is, I was so busy and did not focus on the mindfulness activity. Great! What a brilliant moment of mindfulness.
12:54:39 You know that right now you could not focus on that. How does that inform maybe how You might think about the next activity you're going to do today.
12:54:48 Maybe there was one thing that kept pulling your mind now. You know awesome, Karen's new there.
12:54:57 Or like, oh, that might be why I'm less productive answering emails this afternoon. And so that is a kindness already, just to know.
12:54:59 And maybe there was other things. Maybe you felt your nervous system calm a little. Maybe you felt a moment of ease.
12:55:07 Oh, that's really nice too. And so. For yourself right now and for anyone you bring this modality to please always give this assist.
12:55:15 Anywhere we fall in the spectrum of I totally could not do that it was hard and like oh, I levitated and was that peace. No, we don't actually do that.
12:55:25 But it's nice. It's nice to give permission for that. A moment of wellness.
12:55:28 Can just be permission. And so I always like to frame mindfulness as an experiment. That it's invitational.
12:55:36 And that we can guide a practice wherever we are, an example in a kindergarten classroom I have a teacher that likes to put their couch in the middle of the room and everyone stands around the couch.
12:55:45 And the activity is just. To walk around the couch once to get back to where you started and try the whole time to only notice what it feels like to walk.
12:55:54 To not bump into the person in front of behind you and to anchor in your breath. And the first time the teacher did that, they all great activity.
12:56:03 This class had been really busy, really noisy. The students walk slow, slowly, and so quietly it was like this total moment of peace, but it took so long and the teacher was like, oh no, but she's like, I can't stop it now, but it became this thing and they do it every day and when they don't do it the seems like when their couch moment.
12:56:21 Because it's really peaceful like all of us want a moment to breathe and have peace So please play with it.
12:56:26 Make it your own. And again, that it's just about going through the cycle. This anchor of like.
12:56:33 Picking an anchor noticing a distraction reorient the anchor pick an anchor.
12:56:39 That's the kind of thing and we can use different keywords. We can come up with our own keywords.
12:56:43 And we also like to ask these questions so you can kind of take these with you, right?
12:56:47 What's going on in your body in mind? Commer and slower, tight and anxious. So we just make it a data collection moment.
12:56:54 No pressure to do it one way or perfectly. I'm gonna jump. I want to talk about every practice, but I'm just aware of the time.
12:57:01 So I'm gonna give you one more practice because it isn't a nice clothes meditation and it's a top hit in every space I'm in.
12:57:09 So I want to jump into that.
12:57:13 So this is how I like to set it up. We sometimes ask. Have you ever had someone say, how are you?
12:57:21 And he said, I'm great. And secretly maybe you felt something else. It's a nice question to ask if you bring this into a classroom or into a meeting.
12:57:29 Just have everyone raise their hands. Who here can relate to the idea of someone saying, how are you?
12:57:34 And you're saying, I'm good. And then actually though, there's a lot going on.
12:57:39 And so we often see a lot of hands. It's a nice way to all connect and start asking this question.
12:57:44 Right. Why is there not space for the parts of me that are messy that are having a hard day?
12:57:50 And without giving those things space, how can we actually learn together? I was in a classroom of grade sixes.
12:57:55 And we had this conversation. And then we did this activity that I'm about to introduce and it illustrated.
12:58:02 For all the folks who are identifying as female in the classroom that there was a lot of gossip going on.
12:58:08 And people were having a really bad time. And this activity allowed us to see that. And so I want to share this with you.
12:58:15 And I want to say that mindfulness, often we can describe it as making the invisible visible. And there is some real, healing if we talk about creating like safe, inclusive spaces, we are talking about making the invisible visible.
12:58:28 And so the activity that I want to share with you now is focused on this. It's a mindful activity that is interested in how we can safely Make the invisible visible and to start creating those safe and inclusive environments.
12:58:42 It's called the weather check-in. I'm going to explain it to you very briefly.
12:58:45 It's quite simple. Try it today with a loved one with a friend with your class. I have groups of nurses that do this.
12:58:53 I taught this to Ontario Hospital Association for a whole bunch of executives last week. So here it is.
12:58:57 The weather check in. Has to go around and invite everyone to describe their weather pattern for the day. And we use the weather as a metaphor for our emotions.
12:59:06 So bright and sunny, rainy, thunderstorms. And the key is you don't explain why it's your weather.
12:59:13 You just say the weather as it would scroll across the bottom of the new screen. So it could be my day started with thunderstorms and now it's sunny and there's a projected hurricane in the evening.
12:59:26 Right, you never know. And then we set up one more thing with this. So your weather just as the scroll no explanation.
12:59:33 And we asked to keep it confidential in 2 ways. Everyone in the room for a weather check-in will not I identify or say behind anyone's backs what their weather was.
12:59:44 This is really important. And the second is if you know someone in the room and you want to ask them about their weather later, you have to ask their permission.
12:59:49 If they say no. It is kept confidential to the weather jacket. So if I share that I have a thunderstorm.
12:59:55 My friend or my colleague later can say, oh, Ellie, do you want to tell me about your thunderstorm?
13:00:00 And if I say no, they really respect that. This makes it very safe so we don't explain.
13:00:04 We don't identify. And we ask permission to follow up. And this is a wonderful thing. We can go around the classroom, we can go through a meeting and we can just hear like what is the weather and that can really change how we are perceiving other people.
13:00:19 You know, I had one teacher who always thought one student was just being really difficult. And they started doing this.
13:00:24 I actually have teachers that I'm gonna wrap up in a moment. I have teachers often do this as an art activity.
13:00:29 So at a certain time in the day or a certain time of the week we draw what our weather is and then we can visually see it, some students put them up.
13:00:36 We've had people create weather cards where you put on the side of your desk what your weather is and you can change it throughout the day and like wow when you can look around and be like why is that student annoying me oh they're having a thunderstorm Huh.
13:00:48 And it changes it. It changes it to say I can see that there is more here than just the you that is smiling.
13:00:53 And it makes the collective, I had a kindergarten classes kicking each other, going around and talking about weather, really calm that down.
13:01:01 So I will go into all the ways this can be used, but I just want to encourage you again.
13:01:04 Think about the micro practices that you might put in at transitions in the day at moments to pause. Mindfulness doesn't have to take up a huge amount of time.
13:01:14 It can really be integrated. Into everyday settings when you stop the red light, when you're walking, you know, and you're drinking your coffee and I often get asked, you know, is exercise or dance mindfulness and I always just say remember you can level up any activity where you're focusing your attention to the present moment to a mindfulness activity if you just bring that expanded awareness of kindness and curiosity because
13:01:36 I can be dancing and then be thinking like oh my body doesn't look good in my effort or like what am I doing later for dinner and then like I'm actually not having that attitude of kind of and curiosity.
13:01:45 So I just encourage anyone listening to this. I hope that I planted some seeds for it. My fault is what it can be and how we can expand it to meet our context, to play in the spaces we are, pop in weather check-ins, do art activities, take a moment to focus your attention.
13:02:01 And then restart, it can just be a few minutes, but it can really change the environment of the classroom.
13:02:07 It can help calm our nervous systems and that is what burgers us online so we can collaborate in the ways that we want to.
13:02:14 So I will pause there. I can open for a few moments for questions. If anyone has time and thank you for having me.
13:02:25 Thank you. Lally, that was fantastic as always. You, did you have a comment or question or anything?
13:02:33 Just like to say, thank you so much, Ali. Actually, I have done one workshop with you as wake up Toronto but I was not knowing about that because when I joined it was it started already so when I joined today I saw you and I was like okay now I know you from that lens of that but yes I did actually mindfulness in education with Professor Jeti Murphy, so like
13:02:58 from that, well, I build it my emphasis in well being just in my MET. So always any such kind of things comes up.
13:03:03 I want to like like you say, you said one thing over that that it it is actually the way of the neuroscience you build up one over the other layer you start understanding how important it is to go into this field as an educator.
13:03:14 And as then as a person itself. So thank you so much like for making all of this in very short span, but giving in that whole bunch of it that this can happen.
13:03:24 So really, really thank you.
13:03:25 Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you for having me. And that made me think as well, I will reach out to you.
13:03:31 And we have 2 events that I'm part of that would be wonderful to share out on March, the 20 seventh at 7 PM.
13:03:37 We're just getting registration up but I'm doing we're gonna do like a research seminar it's gonna be will have an in person and an online option with one of the Zen Buddhist monks that I work with, Brother Faplin.
13:03:49 And we're going to co present on the vision for bringing science and mindfulness together and then I'm going to present on my recent research findings that were published in the KAY Medical Journal around mindfulness for physicians and how we bring it into fast-based environment.
13:04:01 So we're gonna do a whole kind of talk. On bridging these knowledge streams and what recent findings are.
13:04:08 So maybe I can share that out to you. Ivory when registration opens.
13:04:12 Thank you.
13:04:11 Yeah, please do.
13:04:16 Please do that. Yeah. Thank you.
13:04:17 Okay.
13:04:19 Thank you, Ellie, for coming.
13:04:21 Wonderful. Thanks for having me. I wish you both well in your day and that can be big or small.
13:04:26 Maybe wellness is just a really good Kleenex or bowl of soup. And maybe it's something bigger.