How can Mindfulness help Students Anxiety and Stress Levels

Well-Being. It's on the minds of teaching staff and students these days. The problem is our mind is so full that it becomes challenging to be mindful about everything we do. 'Mindfulness' often hailed as the antidote to everything from depression, addiction and anxiety has been the focus of much of the current research around maintaining positive mental health and well-being. The bigger question is whether or not 'mindfulness' or being 'present' correlates to our ultimate goal of student engagement and achievement.

The answer, in a nutshell, is a resounding YES!!

The research in the area of Mindfulness and its role in fostering increased wellness, attention and resiliency is clear. Overwhelmingly mindfulness training is being hailed as the modern-day miracle of our time in promoting positive mental health and overall well-being.

According to Dr. Chris Willard, author of Raising Resilience, today's teenagers are the most 'stressed out' population in the US. Chris claims that mindfulness has the potential to decrease the automatic 'fight', flight', 'freeze' or 'freak out' response that our brains automatically default to when faced with a stressful situation.

The ability to be 'mindful' or 'present' in a stressful situation implicates other parts of the brain and due to its malleability, can in effect, re-train our brains to be less reactive, thus decreasing the potential for rumination during stressful periods of time.

Amishi Jha, a cognitive neuroscientist, says that students who are under 'protracted periods of stress' for instance around exam time, can see a significant decline and degradation in their focussed attention and working memory. Ironically it is during this time that students are most in need of these faculties. Amishi's research has clearly indicated a strong positive correlation between Mindfulness Practice and a student's ability to maintain focussed attention and working memory during exam time.

So how can regular Mindfulness practice become a part of who we are and how we respond to stressful situations? Dr. Richie Davidson, co-author of Altered Traits, says that the regular practice of meditation or mindfulness endures and becomes a baseline for maintaining equanimity and resilience, thereby altering the plasticity in the brain.

It is therefore possible for students to maintain their attention, develop resiliency and create new neural pathways in their brains which do not automatically revert to default responses to stressful situations. Regular mindfulness practice for students allows students to not only be more engaged in their school work during peak stress times, but also to be less reactive in the face of any future adversity that may come their way. It is clear, therefore that Mindfulness has the ability to mitigate and minimize student stress, thus resulting in happier and more confident kids.