Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun: One of my fondest memories from a recent visit to Seymour elementary in Vancouver was joining the students in Carrie Gelson’s Grade 2 class in morning meditation.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, we concentrated on our breathing and listened to the fading tone of a bell sounded by Gelson. It brought a few moments of blissful calm in an otherwise bouncy room of little kids.
This breathing exercise is a regular event at Seymour, one of several B.C. schools that practices the MindUP program created several years ago by Goldie Hawn. Seymour teacher Janice Parry, a Mind Up trainer with the Hawn Foundation for several years, says the program is popular in Metro Vancouver. “It’s changed lives,” she told me when I interviewed her for a feature story a few years ago.
My colleague Gordon Hoekstra recently interviewed neuroscientist and author Richard Davidson and wrote the following:
Simple meditation techniques, backed up with modern scientific knowledge of the brain, are helping kids hard-wire themselves to be able to better pay attention and become kinder, says neuroscientist Richard Davidson….
Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.
