3 Mindfulness Exercises to Inspire You + Your Students

Hey everyone! This is Jeremy Schiefling with Khan Academy. Thank you so much for joining us today! I'm super excited for a really action-packed session today, and I think this is a very timely session as well as we head into the last month of an incredibly tough year. I think one of the things that 2020 has taught us is that even in this moment of social isolation, how much we need each other, how much we need partners and collaborators in our lives.

That's why I'm so grateful in this moment of gratitude for our partners at Headspace. Because as much as we at Khan Academy love to focus on academics and scholastic development, we also know this year is about that more holistic idea of serving your students. How do you make sure that their social-emotional needs are met, as well as your own as educators? So that's why I'm thrilled to introduce you to two rockstar presenters from Headspace.

First, we have Sam Snowden, who's a mindfulness facilitator who specializes in supporting students and teachers. She has worked with tons of folks exactly like yourselves for years at this point, and has actually worked directly with elementary schools, with principals, with educators across the world. And she's joined by Alice Matthew, who's the head of social impact at Headspace. What she does there is a larger portfolio that also includes Headspace for Educators, which is an amazing program if you haven't checked it out already, which basically gives you all the power of Headspace for free just for doing the great work that you do as an educator. Alice will share more about that in a little bit.

In the meantime, before we dive in, I want to answer sort of three housekeeping questions that typically come up. Number one, in true webinar fashion, yes, the session will be recorded, and you will get a copy of it automatically in your inbox right after the session. Number two, as educators ourselves, we want to make this super interactive, so ask questions at any point using the questions tab on your GoToWebinar control panel, and also join lots of our pop quizzes that Sam will be sending your way throughout.

Then third and finally, I know a lot of you are interested in the Headspace swag bag. So, free access to the Headspace platform for friends and family, as well as a copy of their best-selling book on mindfulness. Just for being here live with us today, you are automatically entered into a drawing for one of those five swag bags. We will notify you after the session if you're one of those lucky winners.

So that being said, thank you all again for making time and investing in today's session with us. And with that being said, I want to turn it over to Sam and Alice.

Alice: Well, what an introduction! Thank you so much, Jeremy! And thank you, Khan Academy, you know, for this opportunity to talk to you all. Hello! Welcome! Congratulations for making this time for yourself. As Jeremy said, I'm Alice Matthew, and I run Headspace for Educators.

As a parent, you know, this has been such a hard year, and I can only imagine for you all as educators—renewed respect for the jobs that you do, the incredible job you do, and how challenging it's been this year for you, I'm sure. So I'm really excited to introduce Sam. I have to say my meetings with Sam are my favorite part of the day! There's just something about her that is instantly relaxing, so I'm so excited we get to spend this half hour together.

But first, we thought we'd just, before I sort of introduce Sam, just give you a little idea of what we're going to cover today. As Jeremy said, we want this to be really practical. I mean, what we say at Headspace is meditation made simple. And that's what we've thought about for today—what are some simple exercises for you to use for yourself and for your students?

So Sam's going to talk a bit about what mindfulness is. Don't worry if you have a lot of experience or you have no experience at all—hopefully, something for everyone here! And really then, how it can help you optimize your learning environment, both remotely and hopefully back in the classroom too. And then we'll finish off with some Q&A. So I'm so excited to introduce Samantha! Jeremy did a wonderful introduction. We're really excited to work with her on Headspace for Educators—she's an amazing human being.

So, welcome my friends and colleagues.

Sam: Thank you so much, Alice! I feel completely overwhelmed with love, and it's a great way to start. I just want to thank all of you, all the teachers, for showing up and caring about, you know, bettering your teaching practice. I've also been a teacher in the classroom, so I know the struggle. I've been a substitute teacher, which is kind of the hardest gig, I think.

So all of the things that I'll be offering you definitely come from a place of embodied experience. I've tried them out; they're tried and true methods for bringing mindfulness into your own life and also into your students' lives. So I'm just so grateful to be here, and I'm so grateful to all of you for all the hard work you're doing.

So I wanted us to start out actually with a practice. We'll be doing a couple of practices together, and the reason for that is that when you embody the practice, when you do it yourself, you have a better idea of how to lead it with your students.

So I want to just preface that with if you want to keep your eyes open the whole time, I'm going to invite you to keep your eyes closed. But if you want to keep them open, you can just rest your attention on a spot in front of you, a few inches or a few feet in front of you, and just let your eyelids kind of rest halfway closed.

The first practice we're going to be doing is working with anchors. When I talk about anchors with my students, I often show them this little bell and I talk about how anchors keep a boat right from drifting too far away. So if this is our anchor and our boat wants to follow the waves, or if this is like our mind and our mind wants to follow different streams of thought, the anchor brings it back. And it brings it back again and again and again. And over time, we get much better at paying attention; we get more control over our attention so that it doesn't feel like it is being taken away from us, but we have some mastery over it.

So this is really a foundational practice that you can do with your students. We're going to do a three-minute practice, but you can even shorten it to a one-minute practice with your students.

So if you're ready, I don't know, maybe you're driving in a car, or if it's not safe to do a practice, please, you know, just listen and participate that way. But if you are in a semi-private space and you feel comfortable, you can join along with me.

So the first thing we start with is our body posture. You want to have your feet flat on the floor, and you just want to bring some length to your spine. I like to tell the kids to imagine that someone has a string right at the top of their head, and they're just gently pulling that string, and it's lengthening the spine.

And then when you're ready, you can close your eyes. I like to start with just a little bit of squeezing and releasing. We call this progressive muscle relaxation, just to help you get into your body. So let's just start with our shoulders. Just bring your shoulders up toward your ears and give a little squeeze. Hold this for just a few seconds, and then take a nice deep breath in through your nose. And as you exhale, just let the shoulders relax down away from your ears.

And so we've all arrived hopefully in this still posture, and as we're sitting still for maybe the first time today, we might notice our mind is so busy. So we're going to bring just a natural curiosity to notice what our body feels like in this moment. Are our eyelids fluttering? Is our heart beating racing, or is it really slow? Do we feel sleepy? So just notice.

And then you're just going to start to take a couple of deep breaths, feeling your belly go out and in as you breathe. So let's breathe in through our nose and out through our nose. You can think of the words "breathing in, breathing out."

And then imagine it as a whisper: "breathing in, breathing out." And now just hear it as a whisper in your mind and see if you can let go of any control over your breathing so that your breath is just natural. You don't have to remember to breathe or try to breathe; breathing will just happen on its own.

We're just greeting our breath, staying with the feeling or the sensation of the belly going out and in. And if your mind starts to drift away, just like the boat drifting away on the waves, just label your thinking as thinking or planning, or maybe noticing sounds, and then very gently, very kindly, come back to the words "breathing in, breathing out" and the sensations in your belly as you breathe.

Before we end our practice, see if there's one thing that you notice today about your breath that you never noticed before. When you're ready, you can slowly open your eyes, coming back to our space together.

And I'm just curious; maybe in the chat you can mention one thing that you noticed. You might have noticed. I notice usually if I'm amped up and I have a lot of energy that my eyelids are fluttering or that my heart is beating. So it's very somatic—it's very body-driven if I'm amped up. But if I'm sleepy, I might notice heaviness in my eyes. I might notice, you know, dreams of falling asleep or cravings to get in my bed and sleep. So it's different. What we're noticing is different depending on how we're feeling.

So if you'd like to share something that you've noticed from this practice, you can go ahead and share in the chat. A lot of folks are really sort of getting into this. Deanna mentions tension in her neck. Kim says she noticed her head hurt a little bit. Emily noticed here we are in December and I have a stuffy nose. So definitely a lot of sense of heaviness and weariness at this point of the year. Thank you, guys, for sharing that too!

And so anything you're noticing, whether it's pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, is practicing mindfulness. That's the muscle that we're trying to flex with ourselves and with our students. So that's really good noticing, and they're things that if you think about the categories of things we can pay attention to, the one that we all mentioned in this practice was sensation, right? That's a huge category—our internal body sensations.

Another category is mental activity—so things that we're feeling, things that we're thinking about, or urges that we're having, or even images that arise in our mind, right? Like flashes of memories from the day. Another category is our five senses. So we might be, when we close our eyes like we just did, we might notice wind—I noticed the heater in my house, so it's nice and toasty and warm for my skin—or you might notice smells if you have a candle or any scents in the house.

So that's another category. And the final category of things we pay attention to has to do with our relationships. You might have had a memory of someone that you love that's in your house that, you know, that you just thought, "Oh, I really like that person," or "What? I wonder how they're doing," or "I hope they're well."

So any stimuli from these different categories can pop up during our practice, and when we're being mindful, we're just noticing them with this kind of curiosity and this openness to experience. So this is great! When you're thinking about how to bring this into your classroom or how to practice it with your students, you can teach them about anchoring just like I taught you.

Then you can set a timer for one minute. So once they know how to feel their breath, notice sensations in their body, and think of the words "breathing in" and "breathing out," they can practice in silence. You might start with 30 seconds if they're really young children and then work up and progress to longer periods of time, or you can just keep it at a minute. That's sufficient for a lot of students in a lot of different age groups.

So that's one practice. The second practice I want to talk to you a little bit about is the stop practice. This one I’ve talked to many, many children, and I think this is their favorite because it’s an acronym, first of all, so they can remember the steps and what to do. It's helpful because the way we're going to practice it now and how you can practice it in your classroom is to ring a bell randomly or any kind of sound.

You can, you know, program your phone to go off at different times during the class. And then when you hear the sound, you're going to practice these four steps. So the four steps—we'll just do them kind of briefly together. We stop what we're doing, and that's actually one of the hardest things to do, right? To stop ourselves from continuing to ruminate or continuing to believe a thought pattern that we're having.

So we stop, we take a deep breath, and we can do this again with our eyes closed. So let's take a deep breath together. And then we just observe. For this activity, I'm going to have us observe one thing in each of our senses. So let's start by observing a sound—just listening to a sound we can hear. Let’s notice a smell, a scent. Let’s notice a taste in our mouths or just anything we notice if we run our tongue across our teeth.

Let’s notice the feeling of our clothes against our skin—the insulation of our shirts or our sweaters—and just the feeling of being supported by whatever surface you're on, the weight of your body. Finally, as we open our eyes, just look around you and notice something beautiful or something that you're grateful for, something that you're really glad you have in your personal space. Great! So that's the stop practice.

And as far as observing, you can have your students prompt to observe their five senses like we just did, or you can just have them observe whatever they're noticing in their mind—a thought, a feeling, a sensation. So it's up to you depending on what's going on in the room or in the class.

So whenever I'm going to ring the bell twice during our presentation, it'll sound like this. I'm going to do it randomly, when you don't expect it, and we're going to do the stop practice. So I'll just say each word, and we'll practice together.

I just wanted to share a quick story about the stop practice. I had a student who was about eight years old, and I taught him the stop practice. Then the next session, the parents came, and his mom raised her hand and said, "I really want to thank you for teaching my child this practice."

She said that when they had lost their dog, their dog had run away, the mom was getting frantic and panicky, and she said her son said, "Mom, let's stop, let’s take a breath, let's observe the sensation, and then let’s proceed with more calm." And he led her through it, and she said it made such a difference.

So we never know, you know, when we're teaching our students how this is impacting their families and how they're internalizing. They often aren't very emphatic or they're not gushing about the experiences they're having or learning, but then when you hear stories like this, it's very inspiring and motivates you to keep going.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about what meditation is and our expectations versus the reality. So, I’m not sure; we’re going to do a little poll to see what your meditation background is. So I don't know if many of you have practiced before or not, but when you first start to practice, many people get really turned off, get turned away by the fact that when you close your eyes, you’re bombarded with thoughts. You're bombarded with the busyness and the rush of your mind.

So a lot of people will just give up at that point and say, "This isn't what I expected," because there's an expectation that we'll get calm—that our thoughts will start to slow down when we want them to. But the reality is that we're facing the busyness, that rush, that speed of thought that reflects the speed of our lives.

So what we're really doing, what we're trying to cultivate, is a sense of openness and a willingness to be with things as they are. So we're sitting with whatever shows up in our practice, and that's why we set a timer—because if we did this indefinitely, it would be unsustainable. But we set a timer for, you know, five—if we're adults—five to twenty minutes, and we see what shows up.

That willingness to be with things as they are changes the relationship we have to our internal world, and it becomes a lot more peaceful, a lot more manageable to confront our worries, our thoughts, our projections, and it prevents us from ruminating. We catch ourselves in the middle of the day, in the middle of our lives, when our minds start to ruminate or start to overthink. We don't want to discourage thinking, of course, but overthinking can be problematic.

So that's a little bit about how our expectations really match up with the reality of meditation and mindfulness.

So here's a great poll: what is your familiarity with mindfulness? Are you new to it? Have you tried it a couple of times? Or do you have a regular practice? And, well, I can't vote! Sorry about that. No, that's okay! The answers are coming in fast and furious, though! Back half of the more than 400 teachers across the country have now voted, and we'll close it in about five seconds.

Cool! And it looks like, as you can see here on the screen, a lot of folks have dabbled with it, but also a lot of newbies as well. Nice! Okay, great! So about half have tried it a few times, and a quarter of you have a regular practice. So that's exactly what I'm talking about!

And if we were together and we could have a dialogue, I would ask you what helps you sustain that regular practice—what keeps you coming back? I know for a lot of people if we struggle, I myself have struggled with anxiety, so mindfulness was just an amazing tool for my life. I never thought I would teach it, but I started practicing at 15 and never stopped.

So it's an incredible tool, and you all have your own reasons for being drawn to it or for continuing to practice it. Awesome! So we can go to the next slide.

So Lino, if you wouldn't mind sharing your screen once more? Sorry about that! Let's switch back from the poll. There we go! Ah, perfect! Thanks everyone for those great answers. Keep them coming! I'm gonna just...

So we'll stop, take a breath, and this time observe a sensation in your body—maybe your hands or your face—and then we'll proceed.

Nice! So what is mindfulness? To those of you that have not tried it before or maybe only once or twice, mindfulness is this way of being that we actually naturally have; it's a propensity we have. We don't have to learn it like we would need to learn math. But it's often not accessible because we're so busy, or it's very hard to cultivate deeply because—it's like for the reasons I mentioned—that there's this little learning curve we have to get over to really rest in that practice.

So a quick definition of it is that it's our ability to be present and attentive with openness, curiosity, and a kind mind. So building that relationship of kindness and openness to our experiences and being willing, like I said before, being willing to show up however you are, right? Like showing up to yourself and witnessing what's coming up however it shows up.

So there's a lot of acceptance, and when we accept what's happening, we're not rejecting it. Because the rejection is what causes us a lot of stress—trying to change, trying to get to a certain mindset that we want to get to can produce this inner conflict that becomes unsustainable and kind of zaps us of our energy.

All right, so why do we practice mindfulness? I think when I think of teaching in the classroom, I think of these moments I've had where I've become a different person, especially with students in classrooms where there was just no interest when I was a substitute teacher, and people expected to have a day off. I would get so agitated and so upset, and if I didn't have my mindfulness skills, I think I would have turned into someone that I didn't even recognize.

I would have probably, you know, screamed or hit a table or something really, really drastic because there are so many moments where there’s frustration. But if we think about using it as a stress management tool in the classroom, we're stopping to notice. We're taking a moment to notice what's going on within us, and just the acknowledgment of that sensation, that thought, that emotion helps it to settle, just the pure acknowledgment of it.

We don't have to do anything more than that most of the time, and that allows us to stay resilient and to meet our students with more calm and to meet them with more bandwidth, which makes the teaching profession a sustainable one instead of one where you get burnt out in the course of a year or two.

It also helps our physical health! So it increases our immune system; it strengthens our immune system. It's correlated with longevity, and that has to do with telomeres, which are the little strands at the end of these little frills at the end of our DNA strands that deteriorate over time. So studies have shown that it preserves, it keeps those telomeres intact for longer periods of time.

And it also helps prevent cardiovascular disease and inflammation in our body, so it has tremendous health benefits—not to mention sleep duration and quality of sleep. And then for our students, it's giving them this tool to focus and to be able to regulate their attention so that when they feel their attention drifting away, they have a strategy.

I often ask children I work with, "Who's ever told you to pay attention?" Raise your hand. And then my follow-up question is, "Who's ever taught you how to pay attention?" and there are no hands, right? Because it's something that if we're not taught, we don't really know how to do. Some of us are naturally better at it, and most of us, I can say, are not great at it.

And it's also a tool for emotional regulation. So when we notice an emotion that we're having and we're able to discern it, right? We're able to finally discern between frustration and anger, for example, or worry and regret. When we give kids this vocabulary to explain or name or label how they're feeling, again, the intensity comes down, and they stay in that zone of resilience, which allows them to bounce back and actually resume learning because learning will temporarily pause or stop if the emotion is too intense.

Okay, so we can go to the next slide.

So here's another poll for us! In a few words, what is one of the biggest challenges you experience as an educator? And I just think of so many! So let’s see what we have here: burnout, students not showing up—that's a big one right now! Keeping students motivated, grappling with technology, and students struggling academically or emotionally.

And this one educators can actually choose as many as apply. And we're seeing actually quite a few choosing the burnout, which is certainly topical tonight. The motivation piece, which also fits in with what we're talking about, and the struggles probably academically and emotionally.

So yeah, definitely all things that we can address with some of these mindfulness practices! Yes, okay, so the biggest ones here are the motivation component and then the struggle—the academic or emotional struggle! Absolutely! And a lot of students right now, I know a lot of high school students are finding, because friendships are so important in their lives at that developmental period, that having restricted access to their friend groups is causing depression in a lot of them.

And also just this like, "What is life even for anymore?"—these existential issues that are coming up. So, yeah, and I think when we're thinking about how to address that from a mindfulness perspective, I think of the word compassion, you know, just witnessing. When a student is sharing something like that with us, just being the source of witness and being the source of containment for their emotional experience and relating to it, letting them know that they're not alone, that this is part of the human experience and that a lot of students are feeling this way too.

And then if we had more time, maybe we'll have this practice in our Headspace for Educators group on Facebook, but there are practices that help you build resiliency and help build a feeling of connection and joy and ease when in the midst of these difficult emotions.

And Sam, I know that some of the folks from the very first exercise we did said they had their dinner in the oven—the ratatouille was cooking in some cases. Do you want to finish up with a final exercise, or should we go into some Q&A at this point? What do you think is best?

Sam: I think we should go into some Q&A! I want to give everyone a chance to ask questions. I know we’re at our end time, so yeah! Please feel free to ask any questions, and I'm happy to address them. And the stuff we didn't get to again that we have this Headspace for Educators group on Facebook, and we're going to be featuring these techniques on that page so you can join and take part, and so that you won't miss any of this last exercise that we didn't get to on compassionate breathing.

Alice: Very cool! And, before we dive into the Q&A—and of course, people should feel free to ask questions via the questions tab at any point—did you want to call out anything around Headspace for Educators and how they access that?

Alice: Yeah! I mean, we've got the information here, and as Sam said, we’ll be sharing exercises every week in the Facebook group, which is called Headspace for Educators.

Yeah, and I just encourage if anyone wants to sign up, they can just go to our headspace.com landing page forward slash educators, and all the information is there. So, yeah! We’re just excited to be able to share these practices today, but also welcome you to come back and check out more through the Facebook group.

That's awesome! Again, like super generous in any year, but especially pertinent in this one. So thank you all for sharing that so broadly across the world!

Lots of questions are coming in, and so I want to start with one that Kelly had asked at the very beginning of the session, Sam, which is: all this is awesome in a teacher-led way. She can really imagine using it with her students, but are there practices that you can help your students with to do on their own? So they sort of take that learning and make it part of their own practice, even when the teacher is not there?

Sam: Absolutely! That's such a good question! And I think I would say, to start with anchoring—encourage them to set a timer for one minute after you teach them the exercise we did in the beginning, using an anchor word, like the words like "breathing in, breathing out," noting what they're feeling, coming back to their anchor. Just that simple practice is going to help them develop mindfulness as a trait, as a kind of default way of relating to their internal experiences.

So if there was one I would point out, I would say that one. Another one that we’ll feature on the Facebook group is loving-kindness practice, or if your children are younger, you can call them friendly wishes, and that involves thinking about someone that you find easy to like or love—a friend or a loved one—and wishing them happiness, wishing them peace, and wishing them health. And there's a practice for that and recordings so they can practice it on their own.

We also have a lot of material like that on the app so kids can access it themselves and just press play and be guided through those exercises. But I would say the anchoring practice and friendly wishes are two really good practices that kids—once they learn them—they do say that they practice them on their own.

Alice: Awesome! Yeah, I'm so jealous in retrospect that I didn't learn this when I was at that age because I feel like it would be such a foundation for a great life!

You know, sort of a companion question, very much speaking to the reality of 2020. Carol says, "If a student wants to practice at home for right now, home is so chaotic, so noisy, with all the distractions that are facing us digitally. Do you have any practical recommendations for how students can find that space in their home lives to really invest in this practice?"

Sam: Absolutely, yes! So, I mean, one way— it might be really cold wherever you are, so outside might not be accessible—but if it is, you know, going outside and just starting the day with five senses. I did this myself; I'll sit on my stairs outside, and I close my eyes, I feel the sun on my face, I take in a deep breath, and I just tap into each one of my five senses and end with gratitude. I just say, "I ask myself what's one thing I'm grateful for."

So that's a very easy, accessible practice for them to do. And I think what I'm speaking to is the fact that it's important to emphasize to students that one minute is enough! You know, even if they're—it's a reset button, and it's a way of setting the tone for your day. So they don't need to carve out large periods of time or find, you know, an hour of quiet somewhere in their house. They can just find a little spot, you know, maybe even in their bed—just sitting upright in their bed before they get up and start the rest of their day to do one minute of breathing with a timer on their phone.

Or even lying down before they fall asleep. A lot of kids use the app and guided meditation just to fall asleep, because their minds are so busy at the end of the day that it's incredibly difficult. So those are some recommendations. I think most kids have a bed of their own, and that's like a sacred space for them. So encouraging them to do practices in the morning or before they fall asleep can be really helpful for that!

Alice: I love that! And I think that'll resonate.

Go ahead! Go ahead, Alice—my apologies!

I was just going to add—it's such a great suggestion. We see the sleep cast being used a lot by young people, and I think if—obviously, the app is free for teachers—if any of your students want to access the content, there's a lot of free content on YouTube as well as on the website, which we've made available to everyone this year, especially since COVID hit! So there's plenty of free resources there as well, even if they don't have access to the full app. So I'd encourage them to go to those other channels too!

Sam: That's awesome!

Okay, so the next couple of questions are about some of the resistance that educators have got in trying to bring mindfulness into the classroom in the past.

Mary and others have referred to the parental resistance, which sometimes is based on a religious sort of objection of, "Hey, doesn't this sort of go against my own spiritual beliefs?" Is there a conflict there? Have you heard any kind of complaints about that from parents that you've worked with? And how can an educator do that delicate dance?

Sam: Such a great question! Yes! Actually, when I first started teaching it, I was just in schools. I was working for nonprofits, and I was in schools, and I would just do it on the fly. I would say, "Okay, I see that these kids need emotional regulation skills, so I'm just going to do it."

And one time I had a parent withdraw her child from my group because of what you just said—these religious reasons. She was worried that it was conflicting with her religion. And it brought up a lot of fear for her. At the time, I didn't really know what to do. I was in my early 20s, and I was very surprised that it was being viewed that way.

But over time, I started to realize how it can be viewed in a threatening way, like this is conflicting with my religious practice. And a lot of religious practices have their own contemplative format, right? Through prayer or in other ways.

So what I would do now? I mean, if you can talk to parents, invite them to participate in the practice and kind of see it as a new experience with curiosity! Let them know that it's not a religion, that there's a lot of—and you might even provide them with the scientific research that you can find really easily. I mean, it's all over the internet.

But bringing it back to the brain, you know, bringing it back to the neuroscience and how this is helping their child with attention and focus and how secular it is—that it actually—I’ve told some people I’ve worked with who are, you know, devoutly Christian or devoutly Jewish—that these practices can actually enhance your connection to your religion. They can actually help you go deeper into prayer, or connect with readings or teachings that you find so deeply meaningful in your life.

So those are just some suggestions for bridging that gap. You know, bringing in the science, inviting them to practice with you and with their child, and encouraging them to use it as a tool. And also reminding them that it's part of our—it's a natural capacity we all have. We're just strengthening that capacity with practice.

Alice: I love that! Well said! And I think the sort of flip side to that question is from the student perspective. I remember when I was a teacher, I would get lots of questions like, "Mr. S, why do we have to learn this? Why does this matter?" I can certainly imagine students asking those questions about mindfulness. Maybe if they're younger and they don't quite understand the neuroscience implications, what could you tell a student to get them really excited about this practice?

Sam: Yeah, so it depends on their age. With kids who are younger, they just want to play! So you can do more movement. There's a lot of like, you know, drumming or playing a song like freeze dance—a lot of classic games that we were taught as kids work really well as a mindfulness teaching tool. Like red light, green light, or what's the other one? Oh, Simon says! I use a lot!

And then we play Simon says, and then we talk about attention. And then I usually use the bell, so I'm not even really talking about the benefits with the little ones. I'm just kind of inviting them to play, and while we're playing, I'm talking a little bit about attention and about dealing with hard feelings.

With older kids, I sometimes I'll read a list with their eyes closed. I’ll have—I’ll read a list of emotions like anger, fear, embarrassment, judgment—and I'll ask them to just notice what happens as they hear those feelings. And some are positive, some are difficult feelings. And then when they open their eyes, I'll ask them what they noticed. "How many of you had all those feelings at some point in your life? Or how many of you like, what feeling really stuck out to you when I was reading that list?"

And this is a jumping-off point to have a conversation about how mindfulness helps us deal with these incredibly big emotions that are arising in adolescence. I sometimes even tell teens that like a little bit about what's going on in their brain at this age, where their dopamine is—their brain is a lot more susceptible to the effects of dopamine. So their highs are higher, their lows are lower than adults over 26.

And just knowing—empowering them with that knowledge, I find so important! You know, as teens, we had health class—mine was not great; I don't think I remember, like, really retained anything—but we feel this responsibility as teachers and adults to educate students about their brain, about their body, but I think the brain is regarding when it pertains to emotional regulation largely gets neglected.

So I would say empower them with that knowledge. And also come back to the emotion and come back to the—just a lot of students can relate to the difficulty in handling difficult emotions, and they'll find a purpose and a connection to the practice as it helps them in that regard.

Alice: Awesome! And I know that Ratatouille is getting very crisp in the oven, so let me finish up with one final very 2020 question, which of course is Kimberly asking, "Any tips for implementing all this effectively, especially in a remote or online learning environment?" I can imagine how challenging and new this might feel even in person, but with this extra barrier between myself and my students, how do I cross that divide and really make this land?

Sam: That's a great question! So actually, that was on one of our slides that we didn't get to, but it's important to have a ritual so that kids expect, "Okay, Fridays we're going to do a minute of mindfulness," or "Mindful Mondays."

So that you have something realistic, and you don't want to kind of overwhelm yourself with every day, "We're going to do a practice," and then you're stressing out to find, you know, new and interesting material every day. So I would say start out small so that it's realistic for you. Have a little plan in place so that you know what you're doing, what your plan is for the week.

And then you can use resources—again, on the app we have—or even on YouTube, you can just type in Headspace, and you'll get these great videos. You can go through the videos and choose ones that you like that resonate with you, and then use it as like—maybe carve out 10 minutes in your class time online, watch the video together, and then have your students be able to share what came up for them while they watched the video, what resonated with them.

So then, it’s already pre-prepared for you, that that lesson in that theme, and you don't feel like you have to create more material and more stress on you for that, because that's, I think, all of us—none of us need that, right? So we want it to be fun; we want it to be a relief for us too! That when we show that video or when we offer a practice that it's something we need as well. It bridges this gap between adults and children—adults or teacher and student—and it helps bring us together as we realize we all need this pause! We all need this ritual in our week.

Alice: Wow, I love that! And I think I'll actually give Danielle the last word here. She says, "Thank you so much for your time and creating this lovely space! I can't wait to stop with my students!" I saw so many other comments like that throughout the session, so I know there's going to be a lot of more mindful classrooms than students and educators starting tomorrow morning!

So on behalf of the entire Khan community, I want to thank the full Headspace team—Sam, Alice, Leno, who has been running the slides behind the scenes, making this possible. Thank you for the swag bags, which we'll announce after this, and thank you for Headspace for Educators, which, as you mentioned, is free at headspace.com/educators.

One last little request of all the audience members before we go back to our Ratatouille is you will get a three-question survey that pops up right after the session. Please let us know what you thought, what was useful, and if you'd like to have Headspace come back and do other sessions—let us know as well, because we can always use that for future programming!

That being said, a huge thank you to everyone for investing your scarce time with us tonight! Hope it was well worth your while, and thank you, Sam, Alice, and Leno for sharing your expertise and your wisdom across the country! Thank you all so much!

Sam: Thank you, Jeremy!

Alice: Thank you, Jeremy! Later!