14 DAY TRIAL // A team of investigators from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, led by professor of medicine emeritus Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, argues in a new study that mindfulness training could benefit children if it were introduced in the K-12 school system as “contemplative education.”
Past studies have demonstrated that mindfulness is extremely beneficial for the human mind, helping practitioners fight off the effects of stress, chronic pain, and anxiety, as well as a number of other illnesses affecting both their minds and their bodies, PsychCentral reports.
Kabat-Zinn says that teaching mindfulness in schools would better prepare children for their adult lives, helping them remain balanced and focus as they endure hardships. Teaching contemplative education could boost compassion, kindness, awareness and attention in children, he argues.
“The reason I started this work in the first place is that I thought it would be valuable if human beings actually knew how to meditate, how to really befriend themselves in a way that wasn’t to have an effect, not to get some good feeling, but because anything else is a kind of living a diminished life,” Kabat-Zinn concludes.