A new study conducted at California State University has examined how effective teaching Mindful Awareness Practices (MAP’s) are in schools.
Specifically the study was examining whether Mindfulness practices would have any affect whether that be disruption or enhancement to studies and whether it would have any prevailing effect on subjective wellbeing .
Mindfulness is a technique to encourage awareness of one’s body sensations, emotions and surrounding environment. It is a natural state of focused and deeply aware mind. Mindfulness is a practice that can be learned and practiced by everyone irrespective of culture or religious orientation.
60 students were either assigned to a mindfulness group or a control group, those students in the mindfulness group undertook 10-minutes of Mindful Awareness Practices before each class while those in the control group took the class without the Mindful Awareness Practice.
The results were controlled for demographic variables such as ethnicity, religious orientation and cultural background this means that these differences would not have affected the results. It was concluded that students in the Mindfulness experimental group showed an increase in Mindful Awareness, reduced distractibility and rumination and a reduction in symptoms of anxiety levels compared to students in the control group. There was an improvement in exam results of the students in the mindfulness group and 81 percent of the students who used the MAP’s said they had a positive effect on their learning experience.
This research is yet another piece of evidence supporting the use of Mindfulness techniques to aid learning, anxiety and overall wellbeing.