The Kabat-Zinn's Visit to the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India
Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn, pioneers in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream and authors of Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, spent a day at my school, the American Embassy School, in New Delhi, India this past November. Their time at the American Embassy School included making a classroom visit; conducting a free, interactive workshop on cultivating resilience through mindfulness practice for the entire school community; and connecting with teachers who are interested in deepening their mindfulness practice. Their visit was a spectacular enhancement to ongoing mindfulness in education programming at the School.
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School while working with patients attending his stress reduction clinic. Since then, MBSR has helped thousands of patients at his clinic as well as through MBSR programs at hundreds of medical centers worldwide. He is an acclaimed speaker on the science and practice of mindfulness, and was in New Dehli in association with the Mind & Life Institute.
According to Dr. and Mrs. Kabat-Zinn, “Mindfulness is truly universal since it is simply about cultivating the capacity we all have as human beings for awareness, clarity, and compassion. Mindful parenting calls us to wake up to the possibilities, the benefits, and the challenges of parenting with a new awareness and intentionality, not only as if what we did mattered, but as if our conscious engagement in parenting were virtually the most important thing we could be doing, both for our children and for ourselves” (Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting).
During their school-based workshop on November 19th the couple shared thoughts about the importance of bringing different kinds of education into the classroom to help students connect with and understand themselves. Myla Kabat-Zinn explained that the core of mindfulness practice “involves bringing an open hearted awareness to whatever arises, with kindness.” Jon Kabat-Zinn spoke about how “Schools don’t teach students how to pay attention and in our educational system we don’t receive any training in awareness which can help us discern and navigate our interior experience.”
Dr. Jon and Mrs. Myla Kabat-Zinn participated in a meditation with fourth and fifth grade students. The meditation involved students in visualizing a mountain and seeing themselves as a mountain filled with the quality of solidity. After the meditation Dr. Kabat-Zinn asked the children what kinds of weather a mountain might experience. Students shared that a mountain might experience weather that is bright, sunny, foggy, windy, rainy, snowy, etc. Dr. Kabat-Zinn then compared the weather to emotions they might feel helping them see that the weather doesn't keep a mountain from being a mountain. The mountain knows it's solid no matter what is going on around it. He emphasized that the weather is "natural", and we don't have to feel bad about our emotions. Like the weather, emotions are natural and they change quickly.
For the past 10 years teachers at my school have met weekly to share in mindfulness meditation, often drawing upon Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s writings, talks and guided meditations. The couple’s visit to the school and generous gift of time and energy meant a lot to these teachers, many of whom are actively bringing mindfulness practice into their classrooms.
