If you've ever tried to meditate, you know that it doesn't take long for the mental chatter
to get...loud.
And, if you keep trying to get rid of those thoughts it can get really frustrating, really
fast.
This is Satyani McPherson.
She's a meditation teacher with a nonprofit called Minds Incorporated, and she's challenging
these students at Eastern High School in Washington, DC, to examine their relationships with those
distracting thoughts.
Look for a thought.
Where is it?
When I'm closing my eyes, it comes across my eyelids.
It's a figment of imagination, you should say.
It's like, if you're imagining it, it's not real, it's not true.
Satyani isn't trying to teach these students to get rid of their thoughts, but to change
their relationship with those thoughts.
And she's part of a growing movement of nonprofits and foundations whose mission is to bring
meditation into public schools.
So if you're having negative thoughts, you start to get into this mood and your body
begins to feel heavy.
To understand the connection between our emotions and our bodies, we have to look inside the
brain.
This is Sara Lazar, she's a neuroscientist at Harvard.
And, a few years ago, she started practicing yoga after a running injury.
What was interesting was that, after a couple weeks, I started noticing that I was calmer.
Sara did some research, and found a bunch of studies showing that yoga and meditation
made people feel less stressed out and more empathetic.
But, the scientist in her was skeptical.
Her yoga teacher had told her this might happen.
I thought, well, maybe, you know, it's just a placebo response, right.
She told me I was going to feel this, so maybe that's why I was feeling it.
She started doing studies.
We took people who had never meditated before and we put them in the scanner.
Then the subjects went through an 8-week program where they meditated for about 30 minutes
every day.
And, at the end of the 8 weeks, she put them back in the MRI scanner, and found that certain
parts of their brains had gotten thicker.
The hippocampus, this is an area that's important for learning and memory.
It's also important for emotion regulation.
Another region we identified was the temporoparietal junction, and it's important for perspective
taking, and empathy and compassion.
It's important to say that we don't know for sure that these students' brains are experiencing
the same changes that Sara Lazar found her in subjects.
But, that hasn't stopped meditation programs from popping up in schools all over the country.
And, they've received plenty of media attention.
Taking time out of the school day for meditation.
Misbehaving children are sent to the meditation room instead of the principal's office.
And, although these programs are happening in many different schools and communities,
news stories tend to show those serving children of color.
David Forbes is a professor of school counseling.
And he wrote an article for Salon that criticizes the movement to bring meditation into public
schools.
One of the realities that students maybe shouldn't get comfortable with is the persistent problem
of segregation by race and income in America's public schools.
We've had a rapid, massive resegregation since 1988.
Bruce Gill disagrees.
He runs the meditation program at Eastern High School, and he's brought the practice
to dozens of other schools around DC.
We're definitely not teaching our kids to be passive or to accept just anything.
In fact, it's their very survival that requires just the opposite.
We don't want them to react in the face of a threat from a police officer in such a way
that provokes something destructive happening, that provokes something fatal happening.
In a situation that you consider stressful, your thoughts can either drive you to insanity,
or you can drive your thoughts.
Even if it's only mental thoughts, it can have a great effect on your physical body
and your emotions, and how you portray yourself.
They have to be very clear-headed and clear about what's going on so they can make decisions
in the moment when they are being threatened.
Bruce doesn't think meditation teaches kids that these threats are fair, or something
they should passively accept.
He sees meditation as a tool to help them survive, and to thrive, in
a flawed system.
If you want to try meditation on your own,
there's a couple of apps out there that can help
make your journey a little bit easier.
But, you don't really need an app or any fancy equipment
to get started with your meditation practice.
All you need is a comfortable chair or a pillow on the
floor, and a little bit of patience with yourself.