Meditation Helps Teachers Regulate Emotions
Feel stressed out and anxious? Overworked and under-appreciated? You must be a teacher!
Being teachers, it is especially important that we are empathetic and aware of how our students are doing and feeling – something that can be difficult to do when you are under a lot of stress.
A recent study showed that teachers can benefit from meditation —lowering stress and depression, and increasing their levels of compassion and ability to regulate their emotions. As anyone who works with kids knows, maintaining stature and calm in times of stress is difficult and important. We have to recognize the impact that we have as role models, and not just as teachers.
This is often easier said than done. But researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that meditating can help us do just that. The lead author on the paper, Dr. Margaret Kemeny, said their research shows that “increased awareness of mental processes can influence emotional behavior.” They chose to study teachers, rather than another group of people, because their emotional health directly effects their students. The 82 teachers in the study were all women, from 25-60 years old.
In the study, teachers went through an eight-week program that taught them to recognize their own and others’ emotional patterns, the important interplay between emotion and cognition. They worked on concentration, mindfulness and directive meditative practices.
“Practicing meditation” sounds intimidating and monastic, but it doesn’t have to be. Meditation can be as simple as practicing mindfulness on a walk or reflecting on dreams and emotions for the first five to ten minutes of the day. The important thing is to take a few minutes of the day to recognize how you are feeling and why. When you are in a healthy mental state, your students will feel the difference, and vice-versa.
Enjoy this free technique, and happy meditating!
PS: And don’t even think about using your “meditation time” to plan your upcoming lesson! (You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?)
Creative Commons Love: jessebezz on Flickr.com
Written by Jessica Wheeler
