Three Meditations

Our school day begins and ends with meditation, and lunch is bracketed by first moment of silence and afterwards a brief meditation. Each has a very different quality. They have evolved.

Morning begins with a brief talk and a twenty minute sit, in which some students concentrate on their martial arts forms and others focus on a basic breathing meditation. Here they are invited to notice what moods, thoughts, sensations, and so on they are starting the school day with.

The afternoon meditation is quite different- they tend to rather tumble into the meditation room, noisy and relaxed. Here they are asked to master a change of state, from the bustle of lunch to some quiet and centered breathing for just a few minutes. It is a change to set the tone for the rest of the day.

At the end of the day, a student usually leads a 5 or ten minute sitting. Here students are left to their own ability to settle in and let the school day go.

Abstract of the Day

MATERIALISM AND DIMINISHED WELL-BEING: EXPERIENTIAL AVOIDANCE AS A MEDIATING MECHANISM

Todd B Kashdan, William E Breen. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.New York: May 2007. Vol. 26, Iss. 5; pg. 521, 19 pgs

Abstract (Summary)

Being preoccupied with the pursuit of money, wealth, and material possessions arguably fails as a strategy to increase pleasure and meaning in life. However, little is known about the mechanisms that explain the inverse relation between materialism and well-being. The current study tested the hypothesis that experiential avoidance mediates associations between materialistic values and diminished emotional well-being, meaning in life, self-determination, and gratitude. Results indicated that people with stronger materialistic values reported more negative emotions and less relatedness, autonomy, competence, gratitude, and meaning in life. As expected, experiential avoidance fully mediated associations between materialistic values and each dimension of well-being. Emotional disturbances such as social anxiety and depressive symptoms failed to account for these findings after accounting for shared variance with experiential avoidance. The results are discussed in the context of alternative, more fulfilling routes to well-being. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Yesterday's Talk

If you are looking at problem, picture this: A mountain, a river, and your practice. The mountain is the thing you cannot affect or change, the river a force either cresting or falling. When the river is fast and rising, one doesn't cross it, one waits. When the river is becoming shallow, one crosses. There is a proper time to wait and a proper time to cross.

Meanwhile, the one thing we can always count on is our practice: sitting meditation, compassion towards ourselves and others, and focused work.

Why Bother?

Election Day poses a problem that most voters and (especially) non-voters miss: why does anyone vote at all? Or more specifically, why does an individual vote? A single vote is a simple summation of some very complex processes, like any observable behavior. But at its heart is a paradox. And this can be said about any human endeavor. The paradox of voting is that one vote really amounts to almost nothing, and yet it is also much more than a ritual act of democracy. Lurking in the heart of every voter is this: what if I didn't vote and no one else did either?

Why bother? In this morning's meditation I asked this of the students. Why come to school on time? Why be kind to others? Why do your work well? At our school, we have few punishments or "consequences" (a term I am never comfortable with). We continually nudge a student's acts and words back onto them. Punishment usually only distracts from the serious grappling with one's responsibility. So why bother trying hard at all... it seems so much easier not to.

But, alas, it is not easier. Slowly one's awareness broadens, and along with it, one's conception of self-interest. But within this process- however long it takes- a person wrestles with the question. Or they avoid it. But at some point it becomes clear- in this school- that it is all about relationships. Why bother? The answer is not "because I have relationships". The answer lay within each of our particular web of relationships: to others, ourselves, our ambitions, and our desires.

No one can answer this question but the individual alone. The best teacher can't make a student work or give a damn. But the trust that must be the basis of a relationship- any relationship- is based on previous experiences and our deep inclinations as humans to have relationships. This is what the teacher and student steps into. The student must become conscious of all this. The teacher must manage the trust.

Trust is faith. There is every reason in the world to be nihilistic and not bother much at all. Yet we keep on bothering, most of us, every day. Those of us who can honestly ask the question every day are the best among us.

TBI (traumatic brain injury) and Vets

Good piece in the Washington Post about TBI, the extent of the injuries, and the hopes for treatment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/02/AR2010100203969.html

Allentown's Veteran's Sanctuary

Last year, the student body voted without dissent to donate 500 dollars from the student fund to the Veteran's Sanctuary in Allentown, PA. With remarkable speed the organization running it has converted an old Catholic school- a giant one- into a fully accessible treatment center and residence for traumatized and brain injured combat vets, male and female. The program is family and mindfulness based. It is due to open in November.

This Tuesday, we are heading up their to prime and paint a number of dormitory rooms. This is an important relationship...why? Not to get too political about this, but these wars were planned to be mostly hidden. Sure, we have a sense of the financial costs, but the human costs are isolated from us. For those with eyes to see.

Our older students must come to grips with these wars and their costs. Not in the sense of risking overwhelming them and creating helplessness within them, but rather an orientation to life and death, suffering and relief.

My hope is that a few of the many students we have who seem interested in psychology take this injustice on as they grow older.

Post # 214

At this moment it is raining, raining, raining. Maybe it rained 4 times this summer, and now the Delaware is rising high, figuring out when and how high its crest shall be. There has been a remarkable amount of energy- good and not so good- at school for the last few days, and it is difficult to avoid tracing some of it to the giant weather turnover. But a month into school and a very interesting year is shaping up, one quite unlike any other. 15 years or so after we started this thing I am still astounded at the variety of human community.

One thing I have noticed over the years is that, generally speaking, the more difficulty a kid is having in school, the more his or her world shrinks around them. For instance, for a long time now behavioral difficulties get shoveled over to special education specialists. There is a logic to this, but one net result is that the pool of children and adults that the kid is exposed to daily gets reduced, interactions become more stilted.

Simplifying the world for a person in trouble is a two-edged sword. Things become more manageable, but the live-giving complexity of genuine and mutual relationships are compromised.

This is one of the reasons that we work very hard at maintaining a very diverse student body- diverse, that is, in terms of ability, experiences, and expectations. The range is a head-scratcher sometimes: a few brilliant students, some kids wild as puppies, others clearly on the autistic spectrum, others still struggling with post-traumatic syndromes, a few others utterly alienated from school, and of course, kids swept up in a family's emotional chaos. A small school with all this variety must return to a basic principal, that of basic needs. And the most basic need is to

speak and be heard, act and be consequential.

Too often it is second of these that is ignored. Schools and special programs all have "groups", and therapists, who excel at facilitating a "talking" arena. But where can a teenager really act, really stretch out and flex their power and direct their energy? Invariably, for the person having trouble, the situation is recognized intuitively: they do crazy things. Action is reserved and approved for kids who get the rules. The rest is pathologized.

At this school, kids do things that effect everybody. That is the virtue of a small community, your own fingerprints are everywhere, and the feedback is instant and natural, whether you want it or not.

This is where self-awareness training comes in. All that feedback is pretty stormy; mindfulness and self-awareness slows the game down, it cuts the reactivity. When a young person can manage much of the input (as it were), the stress of everyday life becomes an experience of efficacy.

Where adults come in is the role of managing the "arena" so mistakes don't get out of hand, but otherwise practicing in themselves being genuine and spontaneous with their charges. Too often, adult control is projected into all the interactions between adult and student. This will drive away the kids who are already rightly questioning the usefulness of adults.

Some Updates From a Busy Week...

Soon I will be putting together (hopefully) an online chat for people involved in teaching and practicing mindfulness in high school. About a dozen people have shown more than passing interest, which really gives me confidence about the venture. My meditation, teaching, and psychotherapeutic practice will deepen with all that input. I sent out an introductory email that might have made a few people wonder about what they were getting into... but I can't help myself. It is a new field and we need to develop the frameworks for productive discussion. Here is the bulk of that email:

Thank you for showing interest in some sort of formal or informal discussion of mindfulness in high schools. Some of you might be aware of the school we have here in eastern Pennsylvania, Tinicum Art and Science, an alternative, private school that has come to be a preferred resource for our area public schools.

The school has 25-30 students, most of whom have had serious emotional difficulty in school due to bullying, teacher indifference, past abuse, and various identified disorders such as Asperger's, PTSD, depression, and so on. A number of students also have significant learning disabilities. We use a combination of zen, a low student-teacher ratio, a liberal arts curriculum, good food, chores, and a strong emphasis on community and basic decency to bring our kids back into their own lives fully.

Mindfulness is big nowadays. I am confident that unlike so many other fads in psychotherapy and in education, the huge research output in this area will make a lasting contribution. My concern is that schools will adapt mindfulness techniques for students without developing the skills among staff in order to facilitate mindful relationships between teachers and students. Unless mindfulness is part of the relationships within the school itself, it is merely another technique imparted to the student. This negates most of the benefit of the practice, as it is really the complex, fluid, mutuality of relating to others that reinforces the sort of behavior associated with the pre-frontal cortex that schools are seeking to cultivate with mindfulness practice.

In other words, you can't "do" mindfulness to someone, and you can't "teach" it. We have to experience it with another. And sadly, this mutuality is sorely lacking in so many schools today.

TAS practice

From Dan Siegal in the most recent Garrison Institute newsletter:

The prefrontal cortex does three things. Number one, it allows self-awareness to develop. The amazing irony of reflective practices is that as you develop the capacity to have more attunement to yourself, you actually start dissolving what Einstein called the optical delusion of your separateness and, ironically, the more you become in tune with yourself, you realize the notion of [self] (in my case, Dan) is just an illusion. In fact, we are all a part of an interconnected whole. So, reflective practice is the opposite of self-indulgence; it’s self-liberation. And this, I believe, needs to be taught in every school. We need a program called, ‘No prefrontal cortex left behind.’ The prefrontal region is able to see the truth, because the truth is we are all interconnected.

Number two, this area of the brain (and studies on reflective practice show these areas get thicker) actually can regulate the sub-cortical distress. In people who develop what is called “mindfulness traits,” you actually can show how inhibitory peptides are secreted to calm the lower, distressed areas in the brain.

Third, in middle prefrontal development, through contemplative practice, through reflective practices, [you develop] the ability to see and shape the internal world by tracking and transforming this flow toward something called integration. What I believe happens — and all the studies suggest it is true — is that when people do this, they start making not only “me maps,” but “you maps.” They become more empathic. Then they start making something we can call “we maps,” where they realize we are actually in this together. When you do that, compassion and kindness become integrated and natural to the prefrontal cortex, [perceiving] our membership in the larger family, as natural as the breath is to life. [“We maps”] have the potential to actually awaken our larger human family to the need to preserve the Earth.

These are the postulated neural pathways for empathy, self-awareness, and tolerance of pain and ambiguity that are reinforced by mindfulness practice. This is what the TAS curriculum and school structure continually supports and develops.

The context for Siegal's argument is that developing these qualities make one more receptive to see the big picture, in this case, the vast environmental changes overtaking so much of the planet. It is a leap from science into psychology (a little snark there, excuse it please) but is an interesting direction nonetheless.

But let this be stated clearly: measurable, observable, and enduring changes in brain structure are the results of mindfulness and meditation practice. This is what TAS is based on. We've been practicing this longer and more comprehensively with teenagers than anyone else. It works.

Another item from the world of science that will gratify all you alternative types....deep tissue massage clearly decreases levels of the stress hormone cortisol (as well as a precursor- arginine vasopressin). Light massage increases oxytocin, "a hormone associated with contentment", according the the NY Times article.

Get frequent massages and meditate as much as you are able. Life will get better. Or rather, if life seems better, then it is better.

Why Listen to Your Teacher?

Most mornings at TAS begin with meditation and a short talk. Traditionally, these are called "dharma talks", where a teacher addresses the students and develops on a particular theme, or gives something quite like a performance. For years now, headmaster and principal have either begun or ended morning meditation with these. Young meditators need context and direction, and the dharma talks provide these.

Often I bring my affectionate and mellow water dog, Milton, to school with me. He tends to follow me around for a while, and then settle into whomever it is most tempted to rub his belly and scratch between his shoulder blades. In the morning, as we herd the students into the large room we use for meditation, yoga, and martial arts, Milton follows along. But for some reason, we have decided that animals should not be in that room- perhaps this is a vestige of Catholic upbringing and sacred spaces- and poor Milton is barred.

This brings a few comments of protest from the students, who doubtless agree that the sensation of a nuzzling dog is a fine antidote to the tedium of sitting quietly. A typical koan- a zen puzzle- leaps to mind: does a dog have Buddha nature? And a conflict between convention: no animals in sacred space, and tenet: all beings are interconnected, is joined.

Koan is a long avenue of study in Zen. I have little experience with it formally. Yet any student of philosophy, or deep lover of art, or person deeply engaged with any spiritual tradition recognizes the provoking value of parodox. In koan study, the teacher presents paradoxes that cannot be resolved by rote or by logic, and the student meditates upon it until it becomes completely enmeshed in their subjective experience. And it is the free apprehension of one's own subjective experience that is the topsoil for the sudden insight into a particular koan.

Koans are tests of a uniquely Zen sort. But they are not, in my limited understanding, tests that a teacher "subjects" a student to. But rather, they are the very relationship itself, in instant awareness to the student, an awareness that the teacher has facilitated and exposed herself to. They are also a chance to notice the difference between one's habitual thinking and one's genuine experience. They are mutual, the very "I-Thou" that Martin Buber wrote of, in contrast to the "I-it" of relationships that transfer goods and knowledge, that dominate, or otherwise create distance between two people.

In our tradition, existence itself- everyday life- is a koan, a paradox. And why not? Isn't perceiving life as irreconcilable to one's own dearly held notions a tremendous kick in the rear? Isn't it a great spur to personal growth? This can't be "taught"; it must be experienced. And in a school, a student's primary experience should be between teacher and student. It should be an experience, not easily reduced to a formula, something that strikes both as open ended and filled with risk: something alive.

A koan, then, for the student at TAS is simply "Why listen to your teacher?". There is no particular answer for that question. Every student must answer it for themselves. Obviously, "because I said so" won't work. Nor will "because your parents (or school district) is paying for this education". A student must look deep within and notice what it feels like to be in such a relationship, one fraught with so much risk and responsibility. It is easy to shy away, or to stick in a box, call it "school" and walk away at the end of the day. Our new students often struggle with how disruptive our teachers are: all day long the usual teacher-student, cat and mouse game is undermined. We have few rules and no punishments. In the end, the question is always "why bother, why am I here?".

Why listen, indeed.

A New Week...

A few quick updates, while I try to figure out a posting schedule that will actually work...

First, we begin the year with 24 students, more than we usually have. Over the last two years we have angled for a younger group- that is, more students who enter as freshman or sophomores. This allows for much longer exposure to the practices of meditation, chores, and good eating.

Second, our four year curriculum is fully underway. The art and all academic programs are moving along nicely.

Third, we have reorganized our teacher/advocate responsibilities. Instead of one teacher being responsible for 5 or 6 students, a pair of teachers looks after the younger half of the school, and another pair looks after the older half. A third teacher makes sure that any students with learning difficulties is fully advocated for in all goings on at school.

Other new items: meditation every Thursday at 6:15- all are welcome; our open house is Tuesday, October 4th at 5pm.

Day One

The building is more or less ready, a batch of wonderful students will join us today for the first of many interesting days. Of course, several former students will be joining us as well.

Of note, this item from the Times:

Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits

Basically, forgetting is part of learning, difficult tests make recalls more challenging and thus create multiple pathways for later recall, and studying the same thing in different places creates new pathways as well.

School Thinking

Kevin Drum, thoughtful as usual, wonders if the memory of his quizzing of a four year old years ago is accurate, as a year or so later a kid who clearly had mastered basic math could hardly do it at all. It turns out there is some evidence that people learn on a "U" shaped curve, that we get a handle on a cognitive skill, demonstrate it well, start processing it deeply, and become confused before the skills become more deeply set.

There's evidence that this U-shaped pattern is common (this paper, for example, compares 7-year-olds and 9-year-olds on certain kinds of math problems and finds that 7-year-olds do better). So is this what happened with my four-year-old friend? Did she learn simple arithmetic, then get confused about it during kindergarten, and then learn it for good in first grade? Maybe. Maybe I didn't imagine the whole episode after all.

If this is true, it obviously has disturbing implications for the use of standardized tests in primary schools to evaluate teacher performance. If students routinely go through U-shaped learning curves, it means that a terrific third grade teacher might produce mediocre test scores if her kids tend to be in the trough of the U at year-end, while the fourth grade teacher who gets the kids the following year reaps the benefits.

I think we all have "U" shaped learning experiences, and for me it is another example of how the exigencies of profiting off of schools both politically and fiscally drive very simple minded "solutions" to educational issues. It also highlights a self-knowledge problem for students: what sort of kid might interpret the middle phase of her own learning pattern as a an end-point and thus evidence of inability and failure?

Something to think about.

Mindfulness

  It is only April, but teachers and students feel year's end acutely: there is a lot to do. The other side of seeing year's end approach is to cast an eye over what we've done. 

   One of our goals this year was to make the class schedule more rational and predictable. This sounds absurd; of course a schedule should be rational. But ours really wasn't. It evolved over the years out of a commitment to meeting what students considered important, be it particular subjects or class formats. For instance, our classes tend to be small, and our school year is divided into trimesters. As a result, we also tend to have vast number of classes, which can be quite labor intensive, and over all, rather confusing. So we have radically simplified things. Our transcripts now make much more sense. This is important, as most of our students go on to college.

  The variety of classes is still significant, but they are embedded in a larger class format such as American History or Science. 

   That has been one change, ongoing. A second has been quite a bit of experimenting with how to incorporate mindfulness into the curriculum. We begin the day with meditation, have a moment of silence at lunch, end the day gathered quietly. We teach yoga, martial arts, and meditation, and the psychology class is organized around developing self-awareness. Importantly, however, I think a TAS style is evolving regarding teaching mindfulness, and it has emerged from our typical approach: a bit freewheeling, restless, and very student driven.

  

  A mindfulness listserv I subscribe to provided an opportunity for some comments of mine:

All of our students...begin the day with any of a number of mindfulness exercises. It is a 25 minute period that I usually lead, and we begin with a modest ritual (sitting still, paying attention, lighting incense) and then I get a feel for where the group is at. Sometimes I have them do some pretty vigorous warm ups, and then some sitting. Sometimes we shake out our bodies and get pretty ridiculous about it. Sometimes we sit zazen, sometimes with a brief talk, sometimes not.   We may do a group shout, or walking about very slowly, deliberately, and then gradually speeding up to a manic run. This is a favorite of mine, especially in winter, as the kids are often so sluggish and dark. After the run around, I have them lay down on the floor, every which way, and ask them to notice their hearts beating, their breath slowing down, the changes in their body state. We do a simple body scan, noticing changes and warmth and discomfort, eventually becoming very quiet. I often end by asking them to notice what *they* want to do- stretch, lay there, pop up, and tell them they can leave the dojo when they feel like it. Ending in this way is very grounding and empowering. I strongly recommend some version of this.    I feel that responding to their states with a variety of techniques works well, and helps them develop a wide sense of the ways one can be aware, and learn to self-soothe.    We always have a moment of silence before the midday meal, and at the end of lunch we gather in the dojo again for five minutes of zazen to transition to the next part of the day.    At the end of the day, a small group of students lead a final meditation. Again, very empowering.    I suggest becoming familiar with Gendlin's Focusing training- check out Anne Wieser's book The Power of Focusing; it is very compatible with all mindfulness practices and adapts well to teenagers.    Again, I can't emphasize enough how important the vigorous physical movement is, and the grounding in the body. Also, I strongly suggest that when you lead groups do so by suggesting a given technique- for instance, "Now that your body is a little more settled, you might want to imagine a lovely little park, with a brook and sunshine and lots of trees...but if you would rather not, just try to stay still etc etc"   Giving choices like this allows the student to have a more personal and empowering experience. After all, there is no way of evaluating how they are doing, so it is a great chance to help them explore freely.    I also suggest creating a language of exploration, mystery, relaxation, and surprise- that their inner world is very much worth getting to know, that it is theirs alone, and no one can judge the quality of their experience. This is important. Without this, how can they learn to experience without reflexive judgement?

 More on this later in the week.

Sleep and other basic things

If your teenager is having trouble the first things to consider are sleeping, eating, hydration, and safety. Unfortunately, so much of the first three are habits long cultivated in the home, and are very difficult to alter once they become problems and are compounded during adolescence. Nevertheless, these are worth taking a long look at.
It is one thing to wring our hands over the poor eating habits and lack of sleep that characterizes the average teenager, it is another to engage them in a deeper look. Often enough things are not what they seem. Take sleep for instance. The everyday is understudied, and sleep, for all the research that has explored it over the last 20 years, is still not seen by many as all that worthy of consideration. The Times today has an interesting item on the subject, some speculating on sleep itself:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/what-is-sleep/

Counterintuition?

  The psychology class I am currently teaching is mostly about intimate relationships, and the way "attachment"  to a caregiver one's early years is such a profound influence. This following item is interesting...but as Ezra Klein asks, how does one regulate one's own attractiveness?

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Posted Without Comment

As Americans struggle to keep New Year’s weight-loss resolutions, experts’ alarms about obesity ring in our heads. We obsess about portion control, flock to the gym, and can’t get enough of The Biggest Loser. As schools, congressional subcommittees, and even first lady Michelle Obama -- who’s made the issue a top priority -- take on the problem, the focus turns to the usual suspects: fast food, oversize servings, and sedentary lifestyle. For some battling weight problems, those factors are indeed critical. But overlooked in all this is one of the primary causes of America’s obesity epidemic: The elephant in the living room is the skyrocketing use of psychiatric drugs. Many of these, which are used to treat emotional problems including depression and anxiety, cause weight gain -- often of the rapid and massive sort -- as one of their “side effects,” that brilliant marketing term for what are simply negative effects of a drug.

from the Boston Globe

Long time off

  All kinds of things get in the way of constant blogging. But I'm back this week.