2013-05-22T20:49:02-04:00 Andy Fraser http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=andy-fraser Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Andy Fraser Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2973142 2013-03-28T20:31:34-04:00 2013-03-29T06:49:15-04:00

Andy Fraser http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-fraser/
I would also have been able to concentrate and learn better, been more confident and composed in my interactions with teachers, friends and enemies, and I might even have scored more goals for the football team.

Having recently finished editing a book on the health benefits of meditation, I didn't need convincing that mindfulness is good for you. But this week I got to hear from teachers who have introduced mindfulness at primary and secondary schools in the UK, and from pupils who say it has changed the way they live their lives.

Mindfulness is a type of meditation based on learning to direct our attention towards our experience as it unfolds from moment to moment - and because it's presented in a completely secular and accessible way, it's perfect for schools.

The introduction to the Mindfulness in Schools course, for example, is delivered by a cartoon tortoise, in a clip from Kung Fu Panda where the comfort-eating hero is urged to stop worrying about the past or future and accept the gift of the present moment. Apparently this is the most effective way to persuade even the most cynical teenagers to put down their phones and gaming devices, sit still and start paying attention.

The course was developed by two teachers, Richard Burnett and Chris Cullen, who adapted the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programme founded 34 years ago by Jon Kabat-Zinn to create a nine-lesson curriculum for secondary school pupils called .b (pronounced dot-be). The title stands for "Stop, Breathe and Be!"

At Wednesday's Mindfulness in Schools conference in London, Burnett said children are rarely shown "how to use the lens through which all the information they are taught is being processed - their mind, and their attention... We are teaching them how to train their attention."

Kabat-Zinn, whose work has inspired an array of different mindfulness-based programmes, pointed out that we wouldn't expect musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra just to turn up and start playing. Yet we are happy to ask a group of children, some of whom might not have eaten breakfast, or might even have witnessed violence at home before leaving for school, to start learning together straight away. "Why not tune the instrument of learning before you actually use it?" he ventured.

Year 11 pupils at Bethnal Green Academy in east London, which has gone from 'Special Measures' to 'Outstanding' in five years, told us that the techniques they learn have helped them cope with assessments and exams, argumentative parents and the other pitfalls of teenage life.

At Altrincham Girls Grammar School, where voluntary lunchtime sessions were offered to Year 11 students preparing for GCSEs, mindfulness is now part of the curriculum for all Year 9 students, as well as new staff. A Colwyn Bay primary school, Ysgol Pen y Bryn, has been trialling a project for younger children. The kids said it has made them more relaxed, less irritable, and helped them steady themselves before times tables tests. One has even taught mindfulness to her grandmother.

Mindfulness now has its own street slang: Beditation is a type of lying down meditation. FOFBOC is an exercise called Feet On Floor, Bum On Chair. Pupils do "7/11s" to stop themselves losing their cool, and if you overhear two teenagers planning to "do a .b", relax. They are just taking a moment to stop and breathe, in order to settle their minds.

Only a few thousand pupils in the UK have tried mindfulness, but the project is gaining momentum. Supporters hope the benefits to pupils and teachers alike will encourage more teachers to learn how to deliver the course. At the same time, mindfulness is moving up the political agenda. A cross-party group of MPs and Lords completed their own mindfulness course in Westminster this week, and Jon Kabat-Zinn was whisked away from the conference for a meeting with the Prime Minister's advisors.

Chris Ruane, a former deputy head and now MP for Vale of Clwyd, believes mindfulness could help to address the worrying levels of mental illness among young people. Studies of the effectiveness of the .b programme suggest he is right, and have been backed up by research in Belgium which found that mindfulness helps reduce and prevent symptoms of depression in adolescents.

In other words, young people deserve the chance to give mindfulness a try - and not just because it might boost their exam results. So why don't we all stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and see what we can do to make it happen?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2250278 2012-12-06T11:23:35-05:00 2013-02-05T05:12:01-05:00

Andy Fraser http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-fraser/ the UK has the world's sixth best education system, I thought now would be a good time to share some of my own research.

This research involved zero analysis of exam results, no evaluation of teacher performance, and has yielded not a single league table. My findings are based entirely on the three days that I spent at a conference in London called Empathy and Compassion in Society.

The conference was held in two parts. First there was an event for teenagers, where 280 secondary school pupils from across London were invited to debate the question: do you have to be ruthless to succeed in life? This was followed by two days of presentations from 'international experts in the study and application of compassion', to an audience of teachers, doctors, nurses and other public sector professionals.

From these two very different gatherings emerged one striking conclusion - our institutions, and our education system in particular, are failing when it comes to building a more compassionate society.

One of the most telling moments was when a young man named Sam announced that school life was not set up to help him and his fellow teenagers to be kind and compassionate. The name of the game, he said, is to get good exam results - end of story. Society wants us all to be ruthless, arrogant and individualistic. A show of hands revealed that almost all the 14 to 18-year-olds in the room agreed.

The economist and Labour peer Richard Layard, who has been working to push happiness and well-being up the political agenda, echoed Sam's point when he spoke the following day. "The problem is we are not offering young people any proper vision of what could be the purpose of their lives. If we are offering them a purpose, it's that you have to do better than other people - and that's not a very good basis for a good society, or even a happy society."

Young people, Lord Layard told me later, are treated like racehorses whose role is simply to try and go faster than the rest. "Currently most governments, and certainly this government, are putting far more stress on intellectual development, which is actually very short-sighted. It's even the case that if you only cared about intellectual development you should invest in their emotional development, because a happy child learns better."

Amid troubling statistics about mental illness and our declining trust in our fellow human beings, the conference speakers shared examples of projects that focus on emotional development and 'pro-social' behaviour.

Roots of Empathy, for children up to primary school age, is based on the simple concept of taking a baby into a classroom with one of its parents. The children are introduced one by one to the baby, and then invited to observe its behaviour and discuss its feelings and needs. Research has shown that the programme cuts aggression and bullying. It has been running in Northern Ireland and Scotland since 2010, and was introduced in October at 14 primary schools in the London boroughs of Lewisham and Croydon.

The psychologists Yotam Heineberg and Rony Berger reported encouraging results from a pilot programme designed to reduce stress and prejudice and increase pro-social behaviour among young people in inner cities and warzones. Daniel Favre presented research showing that training teachers in empathy can reduce violence among teenagers.

Lord Layard, who co-edited the first World Happiness Report for the United Nations, believes emotional learning should be a key part of the school curriculum. He is developing a four-year course in PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) based on materials that have been subjected to randomised, controlled trials. The theologian and author Karen Armstrong, who launched the Charter for Compassion in 2009, is attempting to create a network of 'compassionate schools' around the world.

When I spoke to the teenagers after their debate on empathy and compassion, they were still convinced that you need to be ruthless to succeed in life - at least up to a point. Young people have to be tough and aggressive to be accepted and respected by their peers, they said. Their parents are so desperate to make sure they get jobs that they contribute to the problem by pushing them to succeed at all costs. And the media's relentless focus on negativity and bad news means examples of compassion and altruism are not given a chance to resonate with young people.

Three days at a conference clearly don't make me an education expert. But I heard enough, from the pupils themselves and from people who have dedicated serious time and research to this question, to realise that if we want to create a happier and more compassionate society, focusing all our attention and resources on exam results is clearly not the answer.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2116621 2012-11-12T19:00:00-05:00 2013-01-12T05:12:01-05:00

Andy Fraser http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-fraser/
You see, scientific research is showing that being kind and compassionate to others is surprisingly good for you, and it's got me intrigued. Did you know, for example, that when we do something for someone else it activates the same parts of the brain that turn on when we eat a piece of chocolate, receive a reward or have sex?

Studies have also confirmed that we can deliberately 'train' in compassion - both towards ourselves and others - with a resulting boost to our happiness, our health, our working life and our relationships with others.

In 2002, Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted fMRI and EEG brain scans on Tibetan Buddhist monks who had dedicated between 10,000 and 50,000 hours to meditation and compassion practices. The results were startling, prompting Dr. Davidson and others to investigate what effects this kind of contemplative training could have on people with little or no previous experience. It seems just half an hour a day can have a measurable effect on parts of the brain connected with happiness and well-being.

Piece together all the different studies and you get an impressive array of potential health benefits: less stress and anxiety, a strengthened immune system, lower levels of harmful stress hormones, and increased vagal function, which has been associated with efficient regulation of glucose and inflammation, as well as lower incidence of heart disease and diabetes.

A University of California San Francisco study published in April showed that teachers who took part in an eight week intensive meditation course involving compassion training were less stressed, anxious and depressed. They were also more compassionate and empathetic to others. In September, scientists at Emory University in Atlanta published research indicating that compassion training improves our ability to read people's facial expressions, a key factor in successful relationships. Their subjects also showed significant increases in brain activity in areas important for empathy.

I recently interviewed Paul Gilbert, director of the Mental Health Research Unit at Derbyshire Mental Health Trust, who has been of pioneer of compassion training programmes and research in the UK. Prof. Gilbert developed Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), which combines elements of cognitive therapy with exercises specifically designed to develop self-compassion and compassion for others. He has found that this can reduce shame, self-criticism, depression, anxiety and stress.

"There are lots of different pieces of research showing that compassion training, focusing on feelings of kindness and the wish for other people to be free from suffering, really does change your mind," Prof. Gilbert told me. "It changes your brain, it changes your body, it changes your feelings, because you are stimulating a particular system in your brain.

"If you focus on hating, anger and fear, then you focus on those systems in the brain and you will feel worse. It's kind of logical that if you focus on the systems and stimulate brain areas associated with calmness, soothing, peacefulness and kindness, and niceness to yourself, you are going to feel a lot better."

Prof. Gilbert, who spoke yesterday at a conference to discuss compassionate practice in healthcare, believes compassion has wider implications. Politicians, he insists, urgently need to focus on creating a society that gives greater importance to altruism and compassion, with less emphasis on profit and the economy. Next week he will join a number of experts in the study and application of compassion to discuss these issues at a conference for the public sector in London entitled Empathy and Compassion in Society.

When I suggested to Prof. Gilbert that compassion has a bit of an image problem, he agreed. For some, it's just too touchy-feely. Others find the religious associations off-putting. He told me that one of his colleagues in the United States gets an even balance of men and women at the mindfulness classes that he teaches. But as soon as he puts the word compassion in the workshop title, the men are suddenly nowhere to be seen.

All this has got me wondering whether we might be missing a trick when it comes to kindness and compassion. After all, the science also tells us that kindness is contagious, with one act of generosity creating a ripple effect that spreads to three other people, and so on. So I'm going to put aside my cynicism and embrace World Kindness Day - and if you feel like joining me, here are 273 ideas.

The Empathy and Compassion in Society conference is in London at Friends House on Friday 23 November from 1.30pm.]]>