San Francisco

Walking meditation a fitness favorite

René Fay regularly walks the labyrinth outside Grace Cathedral to relax and meditate. She is seen here on Monday, December 10, 2012, on San Francisco, Calif., walking the path. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle / SF

Debra Levi Holtz, SF Gate:

René Fay, 30, San Francisco

Occupation: Referral coordinator at A Home Within, and barista at Sweet Inspiration Bakery.

Activity: Walking meditation.

Where do you do walking meditation? I walk the labyrinths (both indoor and outside) at Grace Cathedral every weekday after work. I start at the beginning of the labyrinth and, usually at a slow pace, make my way toward the center. I concentrate on …

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Room to Breathe: The official trailer

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Room to Breathe is a surprising story of transformation as struggling kids in a San Francisco public middle school are introduced to the practice of mindfulness. Topping the district in disciplinary suspensions, and with overcrowded classrooms creating a nearly impossible learning environment, overwhelmed administrators are left with stark choices. Do they repeat the cycle of forcing tuned-out children to listen, or experiment with a set of age-old inner practices that may provide them with the social, emotional, and attentional skills that they need to succeed?

Even just this brief extract of the film is powerfully moving. I can’t wait to see the whole thing.

Here’s some more background information from the film’s website:

The film begins in the halls of Marina Middle School in San Francisco – kids pouring out of classrooms, shouting to each other as they sweep down the stairwells into a concrete schoolyard that lies outside of the massive art deco building that is the weekday home to almost 1,000 children. The tough language and raw physicality suggests the underlying violence to which these kids are exposed.

Topping the San Francisco school district in disciplinary suspensions, and with overcrowded classrooms creating a nearly impossible learning environment, overwhelmed administrators are left with stark choices. Do they repeat the cycle of forcing tuned-out children to listen, or experiment with a set of age-old inner practices that may provide them with the social and emotional skills that they need to succeed?

We are introduced to Omar, a troubled African American boy with a love for playing basketball, partly to forget his brother’s murder in an unsolved crime in 2007; Lesly, a highly social girl with no interest in academics, whose hard-working parents immigrated from Mexico; Lesly’s friend Jacqueline, a tough and disruptive girl who is frequently in trouble with school administrators; and Gerardo, a winsome but defiant boy who sees himself as unfairly persecuted by his primary teacher and other school officials.

Room to Breathe has two primary adult figures — Ling Busche, an overworked young Asian-American counselor helping seventh graders deal with what they perceive as a hostile school or home environments, and Megan Cowan, a buoyant 30-something Executive Director of a growing mindfulness-in-education organization. The first question is whether it’s already too late for these kids. Confronted by defiance, contempt for authority figures, poor discipline, and more interest in “social” than learning, their young meditation teacher runs into unexpected trouble in the classroom. Will she succeed in overcoming street-hardened defiance to open their minds and hearts? Under Megan’s guidance, our characters and their peers slowly start to take greater control over themselves, and a new sense of calm begins to permeate their worlds, in class and at home.

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Hundreds create heart-shaped flash mob meditation on International Day of Peace

Via IndyBay: On Friday evening, September 21, the International Day of Peace, while Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney hosted a private fundraiser in Hillsborough, barring media access, over a hundred Bay Area residents gathered during rush hour for a lively flashmob meditation and yoga action in San Francisco’s Union Square. The action, organized by BeThePeace and Dancing Without Borders, created a heart-shaped aerial image which was photographed from a building 36 stories high.

This action was part of over 200+ organized “MedMob” events that happened on the International Day of Peace across all continents, coordinated by BeThePeace. This initiative was an opportunity for world cultures to connect to invoke peace on earth, a simple, yet powerful act in a time of deep turmoil.

“Why meditate in community? When we sit together and listen deeply, we create the spaciousness within that’s needed to access inner-wisdom and remember who we really are. This is key to create a life-sustaining future,” said flashmob organizer Magalie Bonneau-Marcil, founder of Dancing Without Borders.

“The outbreak of violence and protest in the Middle East should serve as a wake-up call for Americans to examine the impact of our society’s racism, and turn within to shift consciousness,” said Rae Abileah, co-director of CODEPINK. “Inspired by the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, we need to continue to build nonviolent, thoughtful people-powered uprisings for peace and justice across the world.”

The International Day of Peace was sanctioned by the UN in 1981, inspired by a collaboration between the Culture of Peace Initiative and Peace One Day.

The action was coordinated by Dancing Without Borders and cosponsored by CODEPINK Women for Peace, MedMob, SF Chapter of National Organization of Women, Yoga Tree (who led the yoga), EarthDance, Elevate, A-List, Harmony Festival, & Earthday SF.

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Amidst chaos, 15 minutes of quiet time helps focus students

On a recent morning at Visitacion Valley Middle School in South San Francisco, Principal James Dierke looked out over the school’s auditorium at more than 100 eighth graders. A restless din filled the large room. Bursts of laughter and errant shouts punctuated the buzz. Most of the students seemed disinterested in Dierke’s announcements about the spring’s impending graduation, upcoming field trips, and recent birthdays.

Then, Dierke struck a bell and said, “Okay, it’s quiet time.”

And just like that, a hush fell over the auditorium. Students straightened their backs and closed their eyes. Some bowed their heads. Others rested them on the backs of …

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Rethinking tinnitus: When the ringing won’t stop, clear your mind

Allison Aubrey: Silence is a beautiful thing. But Robert DeMong has accepted that he’ll likely never experience it again.

He’s got a condition called tinnitus, which means a ringing sound travels with him everywhere he goes, including to bed at night.

It came on suddenly about five years ago. And he says it threw him into depression. “It was like an ugly monster inside my head,” recalls DeMong. “I couldn’t sleep at night.”

Now, DeMong says, he’s left the anxiety and suffering behind.

He participated in a research Read the rest of this article…

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From time-out to quiet time: meditation comes to SF schools

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Natalie Jones, KALW News: Innovative ideas are often born in California. This is the home of Silicon Valley, after all. But, that spirit of innovation isn’t limited to finding more ways to plug in to the world of high tech. Innovation also means finding ways to disconnect from it all. This kind of innovation is taking place in three San Francisco public schools that have started school-wide meditation programs. The hope is that a little quiet time and mindfulness will help facilitate learning.

It’s all paid for with private money, and one school says it’s seeing results. Natalie Jones reports on how it works.

* * *

NATALIE JONES: Middle schools do not tend to be quiet places. For many people, middle school is hard enough in the best of circumstances. For students growing up in rough neighborhoods or dealing with difficult family issues, it can be especially stressful.

That’s why four years ago, James Dierke, principal of Visitacion Valley Middle School in San Francisco, decided to implement a meditation program for the entire school to see if it would help students and teachers deal with stress and focus on schoolwork.

JAMES DIERKE: There’s individual stresses of just being a teenager, there’s family stress, there’s community stress, and all those things multiply within a person. So this is something that everyone can do and doesn’t require a tremendous amount of effort on their part but has great results.

The program is called Quiet Time, and it teachers students the practice of Transcendental Meditation.

PA SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: Please excuse this interruption, teachers and students, please prepare for Quiet Time, please prepare for Quiet Time.

Mr. Tagaloa’s homeroom is getting ready for the morning meditation session – they do fifteen minutes at the beginning of their school day, and fifteen minutes at the end.

VAO TAGALOA: Going to start our Quiet Time, let’s start by sitting up straight…close the eyes….let’s enjoy.

The dozen or so 8th graders in the room turn to face front, shut their eyes, and stay that way for a full fifteen minutes, without breaking the silence or fidgeting.

Visitacion Valley is one of the more challenged schools in the district – about two thirds of its students were getting free or reduced lunch last year, and the percentage of students proficient in basic subjects is lower than both the district-wide and the state-wide percentage.

In the last three months alone, there have been two homicides and more than a hundred assaults within just a mile radius of the school. Principal Dierke compares growing up in the neighborhood to living a war zone.

DIERKE: A lot of our kids come down with post-traumatic stress, just like you would if you lived in Iraq. So it’s hard to turn that off when you come in the school building when you sit down and try to study.

Post-traumatic stress is a hard thing to combat, but there are signs that Quiet Time is effective. Since the program started, test scores have gone up a little bit, attendance rates have gone up a little bit, and suspension rates have gone down, although the changes are only by a few percentage points. Most of the evidence of the program is anecdotal. Students and teachers participate willingly and say it’s helpful for them, and surveys that school has done return positive feedback. Though not everyone was enthusiastic at the beginning.

TRISTAN: Well, when they first took me in to train, I wasn’t so sure about the program…

Tristan is an 8th-grader, and has been doing meditation at school since 6th grade.

TRISTAN: But when I started to get into it and started to do it every day I noticed that it really helped me because I was sort of a trouble child, and then when I started to meditate I started to become a leader, I got good grades, so it was really helpful.

Students do have the option of doing something else quiet, such as reading, but Principal Dierke says only a few have chosen to do that. He’s also had strong support from parents.

DIERKE: In the last four years that we’ve been involved in this, I haven’t had one negative parent complaint.

The program, which for this school year costs about $175,000, is funded almost exclusively by the David Lynch Foundation, an organization set up by the filmmaker David Lynch, who’s known for surreal films such as Mulholland Drive and the TV series Twin Peaks. The organization’s goal is to provide Transcendental Meditation in schools and communities that could benefit from stress reduction. The rest of the funds come from private donations, which pay for 3.5 full time staff members who are trained to teach meditation. They spend their time teaching new students, helping returning students remember how to use the method, and training the teachers.

Two other schools in San Francisco are also trying the program – Everett Middle School and John O’Connell High School. They haven’t been doing it as long as Visitacion Valley, but they’re all hoping that meditation can create a refuge for students who wouldn’t otherwise have one.

For Crosscurrents, I’m Natalie Jones.

Natalie Jones is a reporter with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

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Window onto meditation

suvarnaprabha and mike

That’s two friends of mine, Mike and Suvarnaprabha (also known as our very own Auntie Suvanna) meditating in a shop window on San Francisco’s bustling Valencia St.

They were just two of thirty-two people from the San Francisco Buddhist Center and the wider Buddhist community who spent a couple of weekends last month meditating in public.

Suvarnaprabha said, “For me, the experience of sitting was completely different than I thought it would be. That is, I thought the ‘being looked at’ part would be more prominent. I became deeply absorbed, just hearing the sounds of the city–cars passing, high heels clicking, dogs barking, conversations… and noticing the response in my body. There was incredible peace sitting in that window, somehow interspersed with moments of fear and wonder.”

She was also surprised by how many people thought they were statues!

Check out Suvarnaprabha’s blog for some of the hilarious comments made by passers-by.

My favorite?

“Is she breathing?”
“No, people don’t breathe when they meditate.”

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