New York Times In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind:

Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept — as they did yoga five years ago — and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects

This story has the potential of making it into the punch lines of Jay Leno jokes on late night TV. The story is also honest that the trial run of mindfulness in the classroom is still too early to predict an outcome. As someone who tries to cultivate mindfulness on a daily, even hourly basis (not much luck), I really cheer for this introduction of meditation in the school system. Expect a book to be written about this whole phenomenon in the near future because the kids can come up with jaw-dropping insights out of the blue or live compelling lives in the midst of urban mayhem (and that's not to say that suburban or rural kids don't have their own high-odds struggle to healthy adulthood).

Labels: meditation, news, reading