 This is CESA special topic, mindfulness in the classroom with Mind Yeti. We are so excited to partner with Mind Yeti to help you bring mindfulness and all its amazing benefits into your classroom. My name is Allie. I work on the CESA content team to bring exciting research-based ideas to teachers like you. Before I joined CESA, I was a fourth grade teacher and teacher coach. I just love being able to work with our amazing community here at CESA. With me today is Brigid. Brigid, I'll let you introduce yourself. Hello, everybody. My name is Brigid. I am an educational designer working at an organization called Committee for Children, which is a Seattle-based nonprofit that creates research-based educational materials on social-emotional learning, bullying, prevention and child protection. As an educational designer, I work with researchers and other experts to create engaging, developmentally and culturally appropriate programs and curricular. I personally have been practicing mindfulness for 23 years now and helped envision and create the content of Mind Yeti. I'm a former teacher and school counselor as well. And I too, I'm really excited that you're all listening in today. I am passionate about the benefits of mindfulness. I'm very excited to share them and Mind Yeti with you. So to ground our session in previous experience, let's activate our background knowledge. A poll is going to pop up on your screen. We'd love to know what is your experience with mindfulness and or yoga? It's exciting for us to see kind of a range of experiences here. We are excited to show you how Mind Yeti content is applicable no matter what your experience is with mindfulness and yoga. What is mindfulness? Those of you with a regular practice, you may already have an idea of what mindfulness is. Those of you who are brand new or who have some experience, you know, the idea of mindfulness, you may have some ideas, but aren't quite sure kind of what you, how you would define it. Luckily, Mind Yeti has this amazing video. This is part of their introductory videos, which we'll tell you about in just a second. And by watching this with your children, you will be able to learn about mindfulness together. But for the purpose of this webinar, let's take a look at what mindfulness is. What is mindfulness anyway? When you're doing Mind Yeti, you're practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness is paying attention to things as they are right now. Things like your breath, body or the sounds around you with kindness and curiosity. It's also noticing thoughts, feelings and sensations as they're happening. Mindfulness is also being kind to others and yourself, even when you're having a hard day. According to scientists who study the brain, practicing mindfulness can help you get better at calming down, focusing and connecting with other people. And all of those things are pretty important, both at home and at school. So I'm going to talk in obviously more detail now as you're the adults and go through these points about mindfulness. As you heard in the video, mindfulness is paying attention to things as they are right now with kindness and curiosity. It's about learning to be completely present to what is happening in your life, but without judging it or judging yourself. Instead, it's about noticing what's going on and bringing kindness to yourself and curiosity or warm interest to what you're experiencing. You know, say, for example, you're having a hard day and maybe feeling anxious. It's about just noticing your anxious thoughts, emotions or any sensations you might be having in your body without judging yourself as being unworthy or bad for anything you're experiencing. Instead, it's like being your own best friend and having compassion for yourself. It's about bringing awareness to the fullness of our lives and experiences, both emotions that are comfortable and those that are uncomfortable to thoughts, including our negative and unhelpful thoughts and the sensations in our bodies. Building on that definition, mindfulness is about deeply touching into the actual experience of what's going on, including what is going on in our bodies. So when you are doing mindfulness practices with your students, it's not about teaching them a lesson which they engage within a cognitive way. It is about providing them with opportunities to experience paying attention to things as they are right now. It is giving them lots of experience in focusing their attention and noticing their thoughts, emotions and sensations. And as they keep practicing, their ability to stay focused and notice all these things grows. It's also about practicing empathy and kindness. So it's really this experience that they have in their bodies. And we can only learn, this is the third bullet here, to pay attention to things as they are right now by doing it. So the more we do it and experience it, the more we're able to do it and the more we notice. And because of the abilities of our brain to learn and grow, that's our neuroplasticity. We can actually build and strengthen new neural pathways as we do it. So mindfulness is really this practice, you keep doing it. And going to the fourth bullet here, as you can imagine, being more self-aware helps students be able to learn and apply social-emotional skills in their lives. For example, they can notice more easily when they're getting upset or angry or having negative thoughts and then can pause and apply emotion regulation or positive self-talk strategies. So I want to move now on to what the research has found. So this slide shows the four kind of main areas where research has found improvement, particularly for students. I'll just read them out and then I'm going to go through each one in turn. Emotion regulation, self-awareness and self-acceptance, executive function skills, including things like attention and pro-social behaviors and empathy. And I know as teachers, you look at these because I've been a teacher and go, whoa, these are pretty important for my kids. So let's talk about emotion regulation. Studies show that students' ability to regulate their emotions improves with practicing mindfulness. This is believed to be related to the core mindfulness practice of noticing and following one's own breath. By holding one's mind steady on the breath, it kind of steadies everything else. Another common element of mindfulness is practicing breathing techniques that have been shown by research to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. That's our rest and digest system, not our flight and flight system. And the breathing techniques are specifically designed to slow the heart rate and the pulse so you feel calmer. A common technique is slow breathing, breathing slowly in through the nose and out through the mouth and making the exhale longer than the inhale. And this is a breathing technique we have in Mind Yeti. Emotion regulation is also supported by practicing, noticing and accepting thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness develops the witness or observer part of our minds that can just notice a thought or emotion arising without having to automatically act on it. As you might imagine, this puts a pause between an emotion or a thought and an action so we can make a choice about how to respond rather than just reacting without thinking. So in this way, we're regulating our particularly strong emotions like anger. So moving on to self-awareness and acceptance. Studies show that mindfulness builds self-awareness and acceptance. It develops a fundamental understanding about the nature of our experience that we all have thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Mindfulness stress is just noticing and not automatically reacting to any of these, which I just mentioned under Emotion Regulation. Another fundamental understanding the mindfulness develops is that it is on the nature of our minds for them to wander. Mines produce thoughts all the time, but we don't need to react to all of our thoughts all of the time and we don't need to be unkind to ourselves when we get distracted and when our minds start racing and when we get caught in circular loops of thinking, but we can begin to notice that and stop and pause and bring our attention back to our breath, for example, or to our body. So executive function skills. These are cognitive processes that take place in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. There are three commonly identified skills. Working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, which includes the flexibility of attention. So working memory is the ability to remember and use information like a teacher's directions, rules of the game, or how to do, you know, division or multiplication. Inhibitory control is the ability to pause and think before acting. And cognitive flexibility is the ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts and also to think about multiple concepts simultaneously. And this is closely tied to our ability to focus, to shift and to sustain our attention. So these three skills work together to help us manage all aspects for our lives and plan and carry out goals. As a teacher, you are using your executive function skills all the time as you're managing the classroom, doing your lessons, shifting to the kids, noticing what's going on, remembering what you're going to have to say. You can imagine, it's really, really important. So foundational to mindfulness is paying attention to different objects, holding our attention there as best we can. And then when our attention wanders away, noticing it and consciously bringing it back to the object of our attention. So this process of paying attention, noticing when our mind wanders away, bringing it back, whether it's to our breath, to sounds, to sensations in the body, to our thoughts, or to our emotions. This process is a very gentle but profound way to practice directing, sustaining and shifting our attention, but also to practice stopping and starting behaviors, stopping our mind from wandering, coming back to the breath and then exercising working memory as we hold in our mind the things that we want to be doing. And lastly, mindfulness has shown to improve empathy and pro-social behavior. And this is directly related to having practices that focus on compassion for self and others. So practicing empathy and kindness through mindfulness sessions has been shown to increase both empathy and pro-social behaviors in students. So that's kind of a quick summary of the research and how mindfulness, the actual practices, what you do when you're doing mindfulness, builds those things. And so Mind Yeti really has built entirely on that research. So we focus on three themes, calm, focus, and connect. We also have a theme of gratitude, which is based on the research around gratitude, not on the research around mindfulness, but because the research on gratitude really shows that it improves well-being. We included that in our sessions. What Mind Yeti does is provide guided audio sessions for your students and you to follow along with together. It's important for you, the teacher, to listen along with the students. This is the way that you build your own mindfulness. The way I think about it is a calm and kind teacher creates a calm and kind classroom and that in turn supports calm and kind students. So Mind Yeti is unusual among mindfulness and education programs as it doesn't require that the teacher has their own mindfulness practice or goes through extensive training. So for those of you are just familiar but haven't done any mindfulness or for those of you who really don't know much about it or never done it, don't worry because this is designed to exactly support you and your students together. It's designed for you to learn and practice alongside your students. The audio sessions guide both of you in a growing understanding of the nature of mindfulness and a carefully designed to be developmentally appropriate and accessible to everyone, including adults. The sessions that you will get through CSOR are available in English and in Spanish. They're designed specifically for elementary school students from grades two to five but work very well with kindergarten and grade one students too, especially these 15 that you will be being introduced to. They feature a variety of voices or an average between four and six minutes long. And as Ali said, they include these four short introductory videos. You've seen one of them and these are to help build this foundational understanding. So let's look at another one, a video, another video. This one introduces Mind Yeti to your students. So let's take a look. Your mind is amazing. It's filled with all kinds of thoughts, feelings and sensations. Thoughts that help you figure things out, like your homework, feelings that can change your mood and sensations from your body that tell you things like you're hungry. We call these thoughts, feelings and sensations, hubbubbles. Sometimes, though, the hubbubbles can get pretty distracting. Isn't that right, Yeti? We call this the hubbub. The hubbub makes everything harder than it needs to be. Yep, the hubbub can be a real pain in the brain. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can settle the hubbub with Mind Yeti. Listening to Mind Yeti can strengthen your mind and settle the hubbub. You'll learn to calm your mind, focus your attention and connect better to the people and world around you. Settle the hubbub and get your mind ready with Mind Yeti. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the practice of mindfulness with Mind Yeti. I think the most important thing to remember is that every student needs to be invited into the experience and not forced to do it. You can, of course, encourage them to try it, but if they really don't want to continue listening to the audio sessions, you can ask them simply to sit quietly to draw or to read for the few minutes of the session. You can absolutely create the expectation they'll be quiet and still while the other students are following the audio session. And again, this invitation is because this is not like a lesson, it's not an academic curriculum. This is really something very different and we want students to want to do the sessions to find benefit from them, to enjoy practicing them rather than feeling like they have to because then they'll become resistant to really opening their minds, if you like, on their hearts to what might happen when they're doing it. So again, an invitation and if kids don't want to join in with the experience, just ask them to sit quietly and do something quiet. And that'll be of some benefit to them anyway to take four to six minutes of just being quiet. So the second thing is there's no right or wrong way to follow along to the audio sessions. Students can choose to sit on the floor or in a chair and there's a guidance around the posture we call a Yeti body. And that's introduced in the first few sessions. So there's also a video that will show students the kind of posture that helps them be, we call it being, I think, relaxed but awake or alert. You know, so you want that combination of your body being relaxed and not tense, but also your mind being very alert. Students can choose to close their eyes or keep them open. And again, it really doesn't matter. We know for some students who've experienced trauma, closing their eyes is not something they want to do because they need to make sure the world is safe out there. So again, there's no have to hear. They can close their eyes, they can open them, they can go back and forth. It really is up to them. And lastly, each session ends with a reflection question, which is a simple thing like, you know, how does your mind feel now? How does your body feel now? And really taking the time to reflect on this builds awareness of how the practices are changing how their minds and bodies feel. So again, it's connecting into their memory that, oh yes, when I did that mind-jelling session, I did feel calmer at the end, which again, encourages them to want to do it the next time. Let's practice. Let's experience one of the audio sessions. This is the very first one that you will do with your students. So just relax and follow along. Hello. Welcome to Mind Yeti. You're about to tap into the power of something that is with you all day, every day. You probably hardly notice. It's your breath. Before we begin, take a moment to sit comfortably with your back straight and your feet or legs resting on the floor. Feel how the floor or your chair supports you as you sit. We call this your Yeti body. Now notice your breath. If you want to bring your hands up near your mouth and gently breathe on them. Notice the air on your hands. Breathe one more warm breath on your hands and then bring your hands to rest gently on your lap or on top of your legs. You can close your eyes if you want to. Return your attention to your breath and as you breathe, follow your breath as it moves in and out of your body. You don't need to change how you're breathing. Just notice your breath. Rest with your breath and your Yeti body. Let's reflect for a moment. How does your body feel? How does your mind feel? How does your body feel? How does your mind feel? Notice if your mind and body feel a little calmer. Anytime you feel the hubbub bubbling out, just slow down and try to notice your breath when you are ready. Take one more breath and bring your attention back to the room. I will read out some of your answers of what you notice. I'm seeing a lot of answers saying a lot calmer. I feel relaxed. Some people feel a little tired. That's great too. I feel settled down. I feel calmness. People noticing their bodies, noticing that they're feeling calm and grounded. I just want to say that however you feel is just the way it is and it's all okay. Often if you are tired and you take a moment to stop like this, you will notice the tiredness and that is very common. Again, being bored, that's fine too. That's just a state of the mind and now you're noticing it. Again, no right or wrong. This little reflection just helps you take that moment to really tune into this present moment in your own life, in your own mind, in your own body. And notice what's going on. I think it's also really powerful to have this experience as the teacher, especially those of you who are new to mindfulness or who may not integrate mindfulness into your classroom yet. Thinking about how those three minutes made you feel and reflecting on how giving these skills to your students and sharing this practice with them will also impart those same feelings on them. So I think it's great that we were able to all experience that and ground the next part of our conversation in that experience, which kind of gets into the logistics of how we do this in the classroom. How can we integrate mindfulness using Mind Yeti into your classroom. We want to first establish a foundation as the teacher and students, learn what mindfulness is, learn about the Yeti body with those four introductory videos. Mind Yeti has these four introductory videos, you've watched two of them, one introduces mindfulness, one introduces Mind Yeti itself, one shows the Yeti body because that's, you know, pretty important for every session. And then the last one really talks about neuroplasticity, talks about the importance of practice. It's entitled Your Amazing Brain. And so there's a specific order that we want you to introduce those in and that's the order they appear in CSOR in the in the map. And then each video is paired with an audio session. What there also is is a video guide for each video. This one showing up here is the one about brain science or your amazing brain. And these really help you have a conversation with your students about the content of the videos. So we have created this curriculum map where we have created CSOR activities with each of the introductory videos and those kind of follow up experiences. So you can see here on this map, we will share the link to this in just a second, but you can see here on the top it says establish a foundation. You'll find there's those four videos right one, two, three, four, you'll see the link to the teacher guide, you'll see a link to the video, and then you'll see a link to the follow up audio session. So you can click on these links to access the guides as well as the video and audio sessions created as activities. We'll talk a little bit about CSOR activities in a second. Here is the link of where you can find all of these resources web.csor.me slash mind dash yeti. So you can visit this link now or at the end and you will see a summary of some of the research as well as this curriculum map. And you'll note that this curriculum map will be and the activities are all available in English and Spanish. So you'll want to experience the introductory videos and audio sessions with your students in the order shown to establish a strong foundations for your classes mindfulness practice. When you click on a link for a video or audio session, you'll notice that you'll be taken to a CSOR activity. As a refresher, when you click on a CSOR activity, you need to save it to my library by clicking the heart, then you can click the green assign button to assign it to your class. Some of you are saying I'm brand new to CSOR, I don't know what you mean by CSOR activity. If you want to learn more about CSOR activities, you can join us for our free training on activities at web.csor.me slash training. And that will help you understand how you can set up a CSOR class, share these activities with your students to complete in CSOR. You'll notice when you click on the activity of the CSOR activity that we have integrated those follow up reflection, drawing and writing activities right in here in CSOR. And students are able to use CSOR creative tools to complete those activities here. So not only do we link to the video or the audio session, but we also have some more information and some prompts so students can reflect on their experience right in CSOR. So again in this session we're not talking about kind of the basics of CSOR, you can find that information on web.csor.me slash training. So once students have a strong foundation, you've completed those four introductory videos and experiences. The next step is to establish routines to practice mindfulness regularly in your classroom by completing Mind Yeti audio sessions on a regular basis. Yeah, and again just the most important thing to remember about mindfulness it's a practice. You know it's about it's not about learning and mastering content or information. It's really about regularly engaging in mindfulness practice and that leads to the results that we discussed at the start of the webinar it is this embodied experience it's very different from from learning anything else, you know of an academic nature for example. And the reason for this is explained by this video this is the one one of the four introductory videos we've been talking about this one is your amazing brain where we'll learn all about neuroplasticity and the importance of practice. Did you know that a calm brain is a better thinker. It's true. Think about a time when you tried something new and it felt really hard frustrated maybe even mad when that happens your feelings can actually affect your brain. It's normal to have strong feelings everyone does but sometimes they can take over making it harder to think. You can learn to help your brain calm down. And that can help you think better. And the good news is that you can get even better at it with practice. That's because your brain is always changing and making new connections. Scientists tell us that doing new things like breathing to calm down or riding a skateboard makes those connections or pathways even stronger and as they get stronger the faster they get and the better they work. So if something you're learning feels harder first just remember to calm your brain and keep practicing. Because little by little your brain is getting stronger which means you can do more of the things you want to do. So we've added all 15 Mind Yeti audio sessions as CISA activities like I mentioned before. We recommend that you and your students experience the audio sessions in the sequence shown here. You can practice each session one or two times before moving on to the next. You can go back to your favorite sessions and then once you've completed all of them in the order you see here then it's just about continuing that practice going back to your favorites and experiencing them again and again. So here's again just the high level message. The more students practice the stronger their neuro pathways become. As Ali said the sessions are designed to be used again and again. So keep going back and practicing. We recommend that you establish two to three times a day to practice these audio sessions are really just a few minutes long. So any time that your students are coming from high energy to focus or to calm is a great time for it like the beginning of the day. It's a great time to start your day with mindfulness or in between subjects or after lunch when students are really riled up to get them back into that focus mindset and ending the day as well kind of give students that closure of the day and send them off home in a really great state. These are just a few suggestions but the most important thing here as you're establishing your practice with your students is to be consistent as you to be as consistent as you can. Students really come to rely on these times they look forward to these times as they continue to practice and practice. And so if you can establish your routines and stick to them you're setting yourself and your students up for success. Students will also start to have favorite audio sessions and as you once you have gone through the introductory videos once you have gone through all 15 of those audio sessions. It's great to involve students in you know which which session should we listen to today so that they can pick their favorites and you know that day maybe you play the one that they really love. But involving them in that process just helps them to have even more ownership over this practice and get them even more invested in practicing mindfulness. As with the four introductory videos we have created these 15 activities for the audio sessions. When you click on the link in the activity map you'll be taken to a CISA activity that looks like this. You can see that the audio session is linked in the activity. So this will take you out to YouTube if your district school and district blocks YouTube. This is the only way that we're able to integrate them into CISA so you know we apologize there if that doesn't work for you but you're able to save the activity to my library by clicking the green heart and you're able to assign the activity to your class by clicking assign. Another way you can access these the four introductory recordings and the audio sessions is actually on Mind Yeti's YouTube page but you can see that you have the full playlist of introductory videos. And the audio sessions here and in CISA if you're not comfortable with sharing an activity you can still share a link for students to see with the link tool. So as the teacher you can click the green add button post student work and then use the link tool to share the link to the journal where students can access it whenever they need. Again, if you're not familiar with these steps in CISA we recommend going to web.cisa.me slash training and you'll be able to learn the skills you'll need to engage in these tasks. As we've said the more students practice the more benefits from mindfulness they'll enjoy while Mind Yeti videos and audio sessions are designed for elementary aged children. Adults really love them too. I personally love the Mind Yeti videos. I really think they're a great experience for adults as well. As with teachers family members do not need previous experience to engage in Mind Yeti materials. Like we've shown you there is a really clear sequence of introductory videos and audio sessions that you as a teacher can experience with your students. And in doing so you are building your knowledge about mindfulness and your practice with students as well. And when you send these home family members can do the same. They can watch the videos they can do the audio sessions. They don't need any experience with mindfulness to access this information. And so you can support students to practice at home. Again it's important that the families practice together. If a caregiver does it alongside their child both of them are learning how to be more mindful and how to calm down and so on. So again just encourage your families to do it together at home. To share these links to videos and audio sessions with families you can send an announcement to all family members in CESA by clicking on the green add button and then send announcement. And you can just go ahead and copy and paste that YouTube link and that will send to family members. They'll be able to watch the videos with their children and to complete those audio sessions with their children at home and further reinforcing those benefits. If you're new to CESA and you're not sure what I mean by sending to families you can join us for our free training on getting families connected at web.CESA.me slash training. So if you're brand new to CESA please check out this website web.CESA.me slash training and you'll be able to learn all of the skills you need to implement Mind Yeti on CESA. And last but not least Mind Yeti actually has its own website and the video the free sessions that are on CESA are also available on MindYeti.com. So there's another way to get them. There's also some other resources on there, including a video showing it being used in a classroom and it has an interview with with a teacher and there's some blogs and some other things that you can get on MindYeti.com. And now we have time for questions we have about six minutes remaining. First Bridget I saw a lot of questions about what is this cost how do I get these so we want to reinforce quickly that all the four introductory videos the 15 audio sessions and those teacher guides are all for free. You can sign up for a free CESA teacher account as well. This is available to work with all account types in CESA so you do not need to pay any money to access this content or to use it on CESA. It is all for free, which is amazing because we want mindfulness to be accessible to as many people as possible. Bridget I think the biggest question I've seen so far has to do with tips for implementing this with a variety of age groups. So I'm wondering if you can speak about, you know, how can pre pre K teachers use this, and then what about older students what if they, you know, aren't buying into CESA to mindfulness just yet what if they get silly. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on, you know, how you really make this work with really young kids and also older kids. Well, the thing to keep in mind with the very young kids it really was designed for grades two through five. So if you want to use it with younger kids, you will really have to feel your way through that. They may find, you know, that first one on a low breath was like three and a half minutes. That may be a little too long for them. So you're going to especially at the beginning. So you might want to just try by just having them even take three breaths and count their breaths or notice their breaths. You can have them, you know, begin to pay attention to their bodies. You know, so you can do some very simple things and then build into starting to use the audio sessions. We found with a much older kids, often just doing audio and not showing any of the video because the video again has a younger look to it can be successful if they don't see Mind Yeti and little Yeti and, and so on. And then you might just have to summarize the information for the older kids because the the animations and the style might be off putting for them. But the actual core for those of you are familiar with mindfulness, the core components are ones that you do even as an adult when you're learning mindfulness, following the breath, paying attention to the breath, noticing your sensations in the body. And I think the main thing is to to be enthusiastic yourself to do it along with the kids. Encourage them to be invited into the experience they don't have to they don't want to do it that's okay but they do need to be quiet. And then the reflection when they begin to notice oh yeah this actually really helps me can build that in you know engagement with the audio sessions. I remember being in one classroom and kids coming in from recess and going to the teachers and say we need to do some yeti we really need to do some yeti and the teacher said what's going on oh and then they described this whole thing that was going on in the playground and they recognized that they were really kind of wound up about it and not their mind was not settled and they'd come to understand that doing a mind yeti session would really get them get them down regulated again get them calm down get them focus get them ready for learning. So I again I think your enthusiasm your commitment you doing it alongside with them and not not making it a have to more an invitation can go a long way to getting students engaged with this with this practice. And then I think the next biggest question is implementing this in the time of covid many schools are still remote and then many schools are you know doing a hybrid model. Do you have recommendations for how students or how teachers can you know start a mindfulness practice with their students remotely or if they're in person how do they navigate practicing mindfulness with masks on. I think the masks are not an issue at all you know as long as you can breathe through them and the masks are fine. And as far as you know remote learning because everything is is video and audio. I think it actually lends itself very well just like we've done it here today you know you're all over the country I'm I'm in Seattle. I was able to show those videos you were able to do the practice we were able to reflect you could put your reflections in the chat. I think those are all the exactly the same things you would do if you were doing it remotely. And you would you know if you if you're doing remote learning and you're starting your day at a particular time. You could build this habit of OK you know do a check in with them and say now we're going to do some mind yeti for the next few minutes and they'll get used to well this is part of how we begin our day. And then you can share your screen and play the audio session and they can be at home in their yeti bodies just following along. Then you do you can do the reflection and they could even just write it in a journal page to see so they could do a drawing about it they could put something in the chat. All the different ways you might get kids to respond to academic content would be the same way you would have them maybe respond to to that reflection. I just thank you all for joining today it shows your commitment to to yourselves and your kids during this time. And just be patient and kind with yourself curious about what's going to happen when you do this and keep practicing. All right everyone thank you for joining us and we will see you again soon take care.