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82.1% of students self-reporting improvement is quite promising. I've always been of the belief that meditation/mindfulness should be taught in schools. So valuable in this age of unlimited distractions.

It's been tried with great success. Until parents found out. Usually the christians. They've gotten various programs shut down multiple times in multiple locations. Chicago, Georgia, Australia.

Are people reinventing behavioral modification therapy?

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A Zen practioner I knew would travel 2 hours a couple of times a week on her own dime to teach mediation to prisoners at a state prison. This was entirely selfless to help prisoners keep calm and also (hopefully) control outbursts.

Even though prisoners wanted the opportunity it took her a very long time of advocating to do this. The Christian chaplain and warden didn't want Buddhist influence in the prison.

Considering mindfulness meditation predates bmt by millennia I don't think so.

And yet there are studies which show the opposite.

That study was for mental health and this one is focus and emotional regulation. The British mental health study had very poor adherance and many students thought it was boring as well with an average number of mindfullness sessions at 1 over the 10 week period while the US study only measured those that completed the training.

Fascinating (the relationship between attention control and emotion regulation was new to me) and activates my confirmation bias, but it's too early to draw any practical conclusions.

>This study compared students who completed the intervention to students who continued with school as usual, collecting self-report survey data from all students both before and after the intervention was administered.

The researchers are aware this is a limitation:

>[T]he school-as-usual control condition makes it impossible to rule out expectation effects as a source of the observed improvements

Hopefully their next experiment will give the control group and their teachers something plausible to do.

EDIT: It's unfortunate that OP's post title adds "Mindfulness-based" (and for that matter "vast") to the title of this paper. This experiment is specifically about an attention training program, not about mindfulness training.

Also, for those interested in what the program entails, there's a brief article here.

As long as it's trauma informed, sounds good! Mindfulness meditation should be used with guidance if someone has trauma & practioners need to be trained to identify it. Honestly would be a double win if that could happen.

Source: Trauma Informed Mindfulness https://davidtreleaven.com/

Moreover, it's going to exacerbate and reveal trauma from home environments that is potentially still ongoing.

Ah yes those dastardly Zen Buddhists with their ad vocations of peace and tranquility. We have to put an end to these fire brands telling prisoners to checks notes see others as important as onesself.

the meditation can be introduced as Ignatius' spiritual exercises. Jesuits have long been doing this.

I suppose it might be very difficult to determine if mental benefits of things like meditation come inherently from the exercise itself, or from the meditating person expecting them. On the other hand, in that case one might argue is there really a difference, since to some degree meditation is a process of affecting oneself's mindset

Correction… via your own source, “a” study found…. This is the error of thinking in todays glut of information from anywhere and everywhere. Curation is actually a good thing as it would have weeded out this article to obscurity. I’m not outright refuting the veracity of this , one, study. But, it didn’t also look long term about the efficacy of showing teens that it is an option and in their later years may be more receptive. If you ask a bunch of kids, “What’s better? We spend an hour talking about Tiktok? Or we do some mindfulness exercises?” Of course they’re going to say “it’s boring”. They’re teenagers. Quite literally their brains are still developing but to throw the baby out for the bath water is a very bad conclusion made by this, one, study.

What I’d rather see is a meta-analysis study across many ages, survey/data collection methods, pooled mental health data, etc. and who knows… maybe it will confirm this, one, study. But to go find, one, study to back your assumptions is a slippery slope to follow.

No criticism, Im not attacking you

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We shall overcome.

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Don’t tell the Republicans! They’ll outlaw this immediately. Educated young voters is their worst nightmare!

Yay, the world will be saved now.

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It ain’t just great high school students. I discovered it in my 40’s

Mindfulness meditation is the best thing I ever encountered. It is so simple yet so effective. Train your mind to pay full attention to the present moment and not to identify with the feelings that arise in those moments. No religious or new age mumbo jumbo, just attention training.

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i'm a teacher. We do 5 min of mindfulness breathing at the beginning of every class.

I have the happiest, most joyful students.

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What grade? Public school? I can't imagine a class where the kids wouldn't use the opportunity to mess around.

“Co-researcher Prof Mark Williams, from Oxford University, said that, on average, pupils only practised mindfulness once over the 10-week course.”

I think it's important to point out that the study you linked failed to find evidence that it helped. That's not the opposite of what this study found.

There is a lot of good discussion happening about false positives and false negatives in science. It's complicated. But not finding a result you're looking for is not the same as proving it's false.

I had meditation classes in my school growing up - I didn’t get the point, until I graduated and lived amongst the adults who hadn’t.

I would be interested in what and where this school is located.

Let's start taking bets on what the future holds on this:

A) Taxpayers and districts willingly fund workshops, trained professionals and or extra time to teach said strategies to high school students

Or

B) Teachers are just expected to figure it out and are responsible for another extraneous variable other than teaching

Out of all the minds to help she chose prisoners. That's so nice of her.

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This is less mindfulness medication and more an attention focusing exercise. The mindfulness part is basically not doing it mindlessly aka not giving it your full focus.

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Mindfulness is great for me too, with lifelong depression and adhd. It is hard to practice thou.

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Historically Buddhists have been more in the armed revolt/suppression line.

Well they use attention control for professional archers so it’s in practice to great affect. You focus on your draw and the feeling in your hands and tell yourself the actions. Before you do this however you give yourself a verbal command “ I’m ready to go”.

Any clear science-based lessons you would recommend? Many are very nebulous and new-agey, I've picked up some straightforward lessons over time but could always do with more.

Mindfulness is basically paying attention to what is. Insider, outside, physically, emotionally. Noticing and accepting without judgement.

Personally I’d recommend the ‘unwinding anxiety’ app— the intro videos are super helpful and explain the concepts well

Mindfulness is not behavioral modification— it’s about learning to recognize and sit with the reality of the present and what your senses reveal about that state. Behavioral modification is about training yourself into good habits through small actions which eventually lead to bigger ones. Eventually mindfulness can lead to behavioral change once the individual becomes aware of actions that do not serve them well, but the onus for change comes from a completely different place

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C) the mere discussion of this leads a small but very vocal group of parents to freak out and organize on social media. Some sympathetic (attention seeking) politicians insert this into out culture war.

Some state governments preemptively ban the practice while simultaneously claiming the high ground in both freedom of speech and protecting parents rights.

The history of Buddhism is interesting for sure. I am not sure exactly what you mean by armed revolt/suppresion line but If you mean what I think you mean philosophically it teaches non violence.

There is good evidence that civil change requires either a threat or undercurrent of violence or even a boiling over of such violence. Interesting topic but so beyond me I can't weigh in.

There are often criticisms of Buddhists and I am far from a historian on the topic. I would be happy to learn more.

Buddhism is an beast that has splintered a thousand times many of its principles are maleable, thats how you get some Buddhists staring at a wall for hours a day, and some discussing chakra points and others offering services where they recite prayer and many many other differences. To what degree do we hold Jews accountable for the abuses of the latter day saints.

Anyway you are right there is no value in idolizing anyone but on the other hand no group of people has ever been free from extreme cruelty.

You can teach meditation without the philosophy, the research is in my opinion less than robust as to how it effects the mediator, but it is very evident that a regular meditation routine has meaningful effects on physiology. I think of it as similar to having a daily reading habit or journaling.

Japan China Mongolia Myanmar Cambodia Vietnam Thailand

I'm glad all of those traditionally Buddhist societies are completely peaceful and have never engaged in conflict or violence

Could you more helpfully point to these conflicts because the entire history of Japan, China, mongolia, myanmar, cambodia, vietnam, and Thailand is a lot to sort through.

Thanks in advance.

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And, as we all know, these countries are presently (and have been historically) ruled exclusively by Buddhist monks, not power tripping sociopaths.

Correction: mindfulness training vastly increases SELF-REPORTED focus and emotional regulation...

Apologies if I seem glib I am likely just less well read then you in eastern history, American you know.

There might be no better form of medicine than one that consistently activates the placebo effect

Clearly you do not need to review (or ask me to review for you) the entire histories of the listed countries to find examples of violence conducted by Buddhist people, similar to the kinds of violence conducted by all kinds of people irrespective of religion or philosophy.

The problem with this is, that it is only an intellectual concept when you tell it. How do you noticing without judgement? I could also tell you, that mindfulness is when you feel green. You understand the concept of green, but how do you feel green? Telling or knowing that you need to accept without judgement is practically worthless.

Your unconscious permanently judge its environment and it doesn't care what your conscious intellectual thinks. It still functions in the normal reaction patterns. If something is nice, it wants it and want to keep it. If something is bad, it wants to change it. This reaction pattern needs to change.

The key to know is, how do you train your unconscious to break the lifelong trained reaction patterns? One of the best ways is the vipassana meditation that is attributed to Buddha.

Sit still and make a body scan. The reason for this is, that your unconscious always is conscious about how your body feels. And when you make your body scan, your conscious and your unconscious are on the same place at the same time. Now sit still for an hour without moving. This is uncomfortable and your unconscious want you to move, but your conscious stops your movement. This is the situation you use to train your unconscious to understand to not judge a situation is better than wanting something. If it wanting you to move, it gets more uncomfortable than accepting the situation.

The best way to learn this, is to do a 10 day vipassna retreat, where you meditate 10 hours a day. A 10 day retreat let you reach a practice that is impossible for most to reach in years. They have three times a day a sitting of strong determination in a group where everyone tries not to move for an hour while doing a body scan.

The hour starts with singing and telling you what to do. Than there is silence. In the hour, you only scan your body. Start with the top of your head and try to feel something. If you feel something, move further till you scanned trough your whole body. When you reach your feet, do the same in reverse. When you are in some part of your body and you get a strong sensation in an other part of your body, ignore it. Do your scan without jumping from strong sensation to strong sensations. Don't move, no matter what. Your Eyes should be closed the whole time. This hour is uncomfortable and your unconscious wants you to move. This makes it more uncomfortable. The hour ends with singing for a few minutes (you don't sing).

After some time, you are so sensible to your body feelings, that your conscious and your unconscious feels at the same time that wanting to change the situation makes the hour worse. When you want the hour to end and wish that the singing starts, you instantly feel how your situation got worse. When you stop wishing the hour to end, it gets better. You also feel, that a uncomfortable situation is not uncomfortable all the time. Everything changes all the time. This is when you unconscious learn to accept without judgement.

But i can you tell this, and it will do nothing to you. I can not walk the way for you. Everyone needs to walk the way for himself. It stays an intellectual concept for you and your unconscious still will react within its trained reactions patterns, till you start to teach it.

I work in a forensic hospital: it's a fairly low distraction environment but we do a mindfulness hour and a more involved meditation hour each once a week. My individuals seem to like those groups the most, it helps them "reset" from stressful court hearings and evaluations or when a processing group unzips a little too much.

If mindfulness is your jam, I highly recommend looking into more advanced forms of meditation, both for emotional well being and growth.

Try progressive muscle relaxation. Also, as far as mindfulness and thought patterns, Mentalization Based approaches are very promising for "calming" down automatic responses in one's thoughts and behaviors.

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You are awfully entrenched in your own ideas, there seemed very little wrong to me in what the person you are replying to said.

Mindfulness meditation, has scientifically backed results and that is enough for it to have value in a western context, beyond that meditation is not an inherently Buddhist concept, its just become the standard association.

All the best and happy meditating.

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Its astounding the difference when we give people the time time and space to reset.

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Personal anecdote. I went to a CBT therapist about 8 years ago and it changed my life. It was the gateway drug into meditation and mindfulness training. Not only did it help with my anxiety, it allowed me to improve focus on activities such as reading or studying. I became more aware of my attention.