(photo from eScienceCommons)
By Jason B.R. Maxwell
Curtin University Student
16072794
I didn’t believe it. Nah, no way… Yet this wasn’t the fact that our regular
terminator-jawed teacher was away for the day. No, this was the fact that in
one of those mass-produced, shoebox classrooms, there shoved up back of our
country Victorian school in Yea, we were all quiet. Yes there with the summers
cow-paddock haze coming into the open windows, the whole afternoon year 8
class, rowdy as bay 13 was now meditating. There was no spit-balling, no names,
no hideous obnoxious jokes, for
once I
felt safe, there was nothing
but the sound of breathing and the gentle
music and calm voice coming from one
of those bulky grey
Sony CD players prolific in the nineties.
If you’ve ever taught in a primary or secondary situation you
may end up asking, so who was this miracle working emergency teacher
and when
can she come work this miracle for me? Like some pseudo mystic, I’m
afraid I’m going to have to say that the answer was not some super-powered
psychologist/hypnotist/teacher, although she had the good sense to briefly step
out of the usual monotonous curriculum
that turns normal 15 year olds into howling demons on ‘those days’.
No. The answer is called Mental Silence.
Granted, my experience back in 1997 was probably called
something different, but today, the essence is the same, it’s the ‘new’ weapon
in a schools arsenal to combat a lack of classroom concentration. Yes, with the
help of the head of Sydney University’s Meditation research program, Dr Ramesh
Monacha, schools are coming around to
the old idea. With his book ‘Silence your Mind’, and many eye-brow raising, peer reviewed
research papers, he
tells of the benefits of
Sahaja meditation, where the
goal is
to achieve a more peaceful and
therefore healthy and elastic mind.
But with my mind and
for the 22.2 per
cent of Australians declaring no religion in the last
census, I’m going to
say no, you don’t have to be
religious to believe in this practice. Sahaja meditation sounds very
hindu-kesh, code word for complete placebo balony, but what comes with Dr
Monacha’s angle is some serious, non-sectarian, evidence-based research. Dr
Monacha defines, with clinical standard experiments, the most beneficial
meditation as the experience of ‘mental silence’. What he calls in a podcast with Nightlife on
the ABC “turning off the monkey chatter”. In his demonstrations he encourages
affirmations such as “I am the pure silence” and boasts of 10 per cent of
students achieving complete Mental Silence on the first try.
But some of the most impressive results go beyond simple
volume control. What comes out of Dr Monacha’s University level data is that
meditation improves the bodies self-regulation and hence the bodies reactions
to things like inflammation, Asthma and Epilepsy, it improves mental health;
improving the the release of happy hormone oxytocin and conditions such as
depression and ADHD, and even the big one; social health - through awareness,
reducing the bully - victim cycles in schools.
Now if you’re a teacher reading this I’m sure I don’t need to
say that this is golden news. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that in the
current Australian classroom, mental and social health are in a serious
situation. Beyond Blue reports 1 in 4
people between 16-24 experience depression, Census data shows 7 per cent of
0-17 year olds are diagnosed with a disorder, and anxiety in our teaching
population? The Sydney Morning Herald claims that “School teachers in NSW are
making more than 800 compensation claims a year for stress-related injuries”.
Here “unacceptably high” seems to be a little bit of an understatement.
Of course, many schools are trying to stem this tide through
meditation on their own. One of which is Sacred
Heart Primary in Sydney where
they had 40 volunteer students on the first go and great
results concerning thought sequencing and class concentration. At Climatech in Adelaide, assistant Principle
Sue Nixon is also receiving positive feedback - that it’s great for exam
preparation and how students are easier to settle. She even had a boy come up to her at a school
camp and say “I don’t feel pathetic in side anymore.”
Thus the question has to be asked; if there is proven,
curriculum savvy methods available to us, then why aren’t we implementing these
techniques structurally? Doing research for this paper, the search results for
“meditation” in the Victorian Department of Education website turned up only
three minor results for the word ‘meditation’. In their Mental Health section
it isn’t mentioned once. Here
‘unacceptably ignorant’ comes to mind.
Especially since there was positive data in the 80’s.
Personally, paradoxically, I really can’t answer this
question without expletive poetry. However, for your sanity and mine, I’ll save
you the extensive ramble. For one thing IS for sure, if Dr Monacha and others
passionate about this amazing classroom tool have any part in it, the main
stream WILL be coming around sooner or later. And having experienced it myself,
I believe our children of the future will have something to look forward to…
Works Cited
Australian Bureau of Statistics. Who Are Australians older
people?; Stories from 2011 Census. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 12th
Dec. 2012. Web. 23rd Dec 2013.
________________________. Mental Health in Australia: A
Snapshot, 2004-05. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 30th
Aug. 2013. Web. 23rd Dec. 2013.
Beyond Blue. Young People. Beyond Blue; Depression, Anxiety. N.d. Web.
23rd Dec. 2013.
Delroy, Tony. Nightlife; The Science of Meditation Podcast. ABC local. 6th Aug. 2013.
Web. 23rd Dec. 2013.
Manocha, Dr. Ramesh. Meditation, mindfulness and
mind-emptiness. Acta Neuropsychiatrica. 23: 46–47.
2011. doi: 10.1111/j.1601-5215.2010.00519.
Patty, Anna. Ed. Conflicting
views on teachers' stress claims. Sydney
Morning Herald. 8th May.
2007. Web. 23rd Dec. 2013.
Victorian Department of Education
and Early Childhood Development. Search Results. Victorian Department
of Education and Early Childhood Development. Web. 23rd Dec.
2013.
Picture:
eScienceCommons. Can meditation
calm your kids?. Bing.com. N.d. Web. 23rd Dec. 2013.
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