Mindfulness requires no particular time zone or cultural beliefs. Research supports the benefits of secular mindfulness, as you’ll see below. It consists of contemplation, reflection, and observation. These universal human practices can improve concentration and, historically, have been employed in science, social relationships, leadership, diverse religions, arts, and many other areas of life. You may hear these discussed, but at its essence, as practiced in schools, and supported by research around the world, mindfulness is quite pure.

The secret is, it’s as simple as eating a grape. Or taking a shower. Or just breathing.

Mindfulness is practiced internationally. It’s taught in some California schools. Maybe that doesn’t surprise you :-D. But did you know there are also mindful public, private and charter schools in eleven other US states? Mindfulness is taught in Vancouver, Canada public schools. (See what kids have to say about mindfulness, in their own handwriting!)  There’s evidence supporting mindfulness from the program at the University of Massachusetts, where mindfulness research in the US started, to UCLA, to Australia’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program. It’s studied from the point of view of many disciplines – Education, Business, Medicine, and Neuroscience, among others.


Through Dr. Amy Saltzman’s Still Quiet Place curriculum training, I studied and interacted with mindfulness practitioners from around the world. I’m so grateful for this warm, professional international mindfulness community, which shares practices, resources, and experiences. SQP training helped me improve my skills in teaching mindfulness to children, and sustained my own mindfulness practice, in a wonderfully supportive milieu. It’s been such a treat! This week several of us (from Russia, Portugal, California) who completed class together had our own video-conference. We’ll meet again at another hour convenient for our Australian and Chinese colleagues, and elsewhere. 

There has been significant research in the last thirty years demonstrating that mindfulness practice can produce increased density in areas of the brain associated with learning, memory, and introspection, and decreases in areas of anxiety and stress. In addition, there is a greater sense of well being, and decrease in distress associated with pain and physical limitations. Mindfulness has been shown to be an effective tool with eating disorders, and can even increase our bodies’ antibody response to flu vaccine!

“Mindfulness training has shown preliminary evidence of efficacy in the  treatment of psoriasis, type 2 diabetes, sleep disturbance, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other conditions…” including eating disorders. Journal of the American Medical Association, 2008

In case you’d like to try it, (or just examine it), I’ll share some mindfulness resources from time to time.

For now, I’m just looking closely, breathing deeply, noticing…

😀