Living in the here and now

Flurina Hodel looks round and says in a calm voice: «I put my feet on the floor and straighten my back.» 20 children on wooden benches pushed together to form a square do the same. «Now I'm going to pull my shoulders up really high,» the class teacher continues, and 20 pairs of shoulders move up, so high that the heads of the primary school pupils almost disappear. «Now I'm going to drop my shoulders» - and the whole class sighs with relief as their heavy arms hang down.

Then it continues: place your palms on your knees, close your mouth and finally close your eyes. What the 1st and 2nd primary class at the Mariahilf school in Lucerne are doing is called a «silent minute» and is based on the so-called mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness is learnt and trained in so-called MBSR courses. MBSR stands for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a programme developed by the American molecular biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn back in the late 1970s. Nobody knows exactly why the method is becoming so popular now of all times.

Some experts speculate that brain research is the driving force behind this. Neuroscientists are increasingly interested in what exactly the practice of mindfulness - also known as mindfulness meditation - does to our brains. The fact that conscious perception can influence the structures and performance of the brain is the subject of more and more conferences and specialist congresses. Google Trends has been recording a steady increase in the popularity of the search terms mindfulness and meditation for around ten years, and anyone googling «mindfulness» today receives more than 24 million hits. At the same time, the number of doctors recommending a mindfulness course to their patients is growing.

Exactly how many people regularly take time to consciously pause for a moment is not known. There are no figures to show how many people sign up for courses or how many mindfulness trainers are trained. Mindfulness practice is like a good cake recipe. It is passed on as a tip because so many people have had good experiences with it. For some, it is a matter of course; for Buddhists, being mindful and meditating are part of their religion.

Athletes advise their team-mates to take a course because they realise that regular mindfulness practice helps them to focus and perform at their best. Managers and lawyers, teachers and salespeople, doctors and office workers manage to deal with stressful days and their fellow human beings more calmly with the help of mindfulness.

Mindful people feel more comfortable in their own skin and are keen to pass on this experience. Like Vera Isabella Renggli: the specialist teacher for visual and technical design has been practising mindfulness for decades and it has become a natural part of her everyday life: in every conversation, when dancing or teaching yoga, in her work as a sculptor, when shopping and when teaching.

Vera Isabella Renggli is also a health officer at the Mariahilf School in Lucerne, and as such she noticed that many colleagues in the teaching team were struggling with stress and burnout, and that teachers and pupils alike were rushing through their everyday lives.

The silent minute

«That was the reason for me to introduce a mindfulness impulse,» says Renggli. She offered mindfulness lessons for the teachers and began doing various mindfulness exercises with her pupils at the start of a lesson: the silent minute, for example, a breathing exercise or a body scan, a mental journey through the body. The headteacher was open to the idea. The teaching staff were generally open, but more sceptical. Some thought it was stealing valuable teaching time and was somehow just esoteric mumbo-jumbo, wasn't it?

Others brought Vera Isabella Renggli into their classroom, had her show them the exercises - and now regularly invite their pupils to do a short introspection session. They notice that the children become calmer and can concentrate more on the tasks at hand. «They are somewhere before, and with mindfulness practice we help them to be here,» says Vera Renggli. The crux of the matter is continuity: «The teachers have to make the change, it's not enough for me to go into a class every now and then and practise with them. Mindfulness works above all through consistency.»

When I come out of lunch with worries on my mind, it helps me to forget them and get to class.

Rigona

It's just before two o'clock and the secondary school project lesson is about to begin. The young people come out of their lunch break, an excited chatter fills the room, there is shouting, giggling and laughter. Vera Renggli welcomes the class, and seconds later it is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop on the floor: 24 pupils sit on their chairs, feet up, backs straight, hands on thighs and eyes closed. Guided by Vera Renggli's calm voice, they travel through their bodies, from their toes upwards bit by bit to the crown of their hair. You feel into every single part of your body, feel the temperature, recognise tensions. After three minutes, the body scan is over.

The 15- and 16-year-olds have now been familiarising themselves with this technology for six months. Does it help them? «It makes me calmer and more focussed, I feel like I can work better,» says Manuel, for example. Lyn appreciates being able to concentrate on herself for a few minutes. «When I come home from lunch with worries on my mind, it helps me to forget them and get on with my lessons,» says Rigona. Yves thinks the mindfulness exercise is a great start, but it makes him tired. In their project reports, some of the young people write how much they appreciated the unusual start to the lessons. Some of them have started to practise quiet minutes at home too. It has now been scientifically proven that mindfulness works. For adults. But is mindfulness also good for children and young people?

Concentrate on yourself for a few minutes

«This conclusion is obvious, of course,» says Professor Gunther Meinlschmidt from the University of Basel. However, the head of research at the Department of Psychosomatics at the University Hospital Basel warns against drawing this conclusion: «We don't simply assume that medication that helps adults works in the same way in children - the effect here can be completely different.»

Research has not yet been able to make any reliable statements. This is also due to the fact that the quality of numerous studies on the subject is «not optimal», as Gunther Meinlschmidt puts it. However, he is confident that current studies and investigations will allow clearer conclusions to be drawn in a few years' time. «When a certain number of high-quality studies are available, we can also think about establishing mindfulness practice as a therapy or even including it in the curriculum,» says Meinlschmidt.

A study has just been published that analysed 300 pupils at public schools in the US city of Baltimore. The schools are considered to be «burdened» with challenging students who have numerous problems at home. «It was shown that a mindfulness programme helped to improve the students' mental health,» says Meinlschmidt, «among other things, the children were less depressed, had fewer negative feelings, especially towards themselves, and suffered less from post-traumatic stress disorder.»

Another study from last year showed that young people suffering from the symptoms of a chronic physical illness can also benefit from mindfulness. Also interesting: A meta-study entitled «Teaching mindfulness to teachers», also published in 2017, analysed several studies on how teachers trained in mindfulness affect the well-being of pupils. It came to the conclusion that teachers trained in this way not only have a positive influence on individual children, but also improve the atmosphere in the classroom as a whole.

Mindfulness works better for children the more the parents are involved.

Vera Kaltwasser is concerned that the practice of mindfulness could be instrumentalised. A veritable hype has set in, says the author and mindfulness expert. «Everyone calls and wants quick instructions on what they can do with their pupils,» says Kaltwasser, «and I constantly have to make it clear that teachers are not there to immobilise pupils.»

The fact that children adapt better and teachers may be spared stress is not the right motivation to engage with mindfulness: «Anyone who approaches the matter in this way is turning mindfulness practice into a commodity, they haven't understood the whole thing.» Vera Kaltwasser was a teacher at a grammar school in Frankfurt am Main for a long time and now works in teacher training. She learned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) from Jon Kabat-Zinn, the inventor of this programme, among others - actually for herself.

Mindfulness: a concept for schools

The positive research results on MBSR with regard to stress reduction and attention control then prompted her to develop a mindfulness-based curriculum for school lessons. With success: the first class with whom she practised mindfulness graduated two years ago. Students would still thank her today for the techniques they learnt: simply standing consciously for a minute, feeling into the soles of their feet, closing their eyes for 30 seconds and consciously listening to themselves, concentrating on their breath.

All of these exercises are part of the comprehensive"AISCHU - Mindfulness at School" concept, which continuously and gradually encourages children and young people to explore their inner world and refine their self-awareness. Playful, body-orientated exercises are offered, as well as short units that impart age-appropriate knowledge about the human organism.

"If you ask children to imagine a lemon, they are amazed to realise that their mouths are watering. Imagining something causes a physical reaction. In this way, children can understand that their fears and worries - even though they are only thoughts - put them under stress.

The next step is then for children and young people to learn how to defuse their stress response on their own, for example by consciously paying attention to their breathing." According to the teacher, the main aim is for the children to become researchers in their own right. The AISCHU intervention programme has now also been scientifically tested. In a small pilot study, the two researchers Niko Kohls and Sebastian Sauer investigated the influence of mindfulness on the attention performance, quality of life, well-being and stress of fifth-graders.

Mindful children have fewer negative feelings, especially towards themselves.

The results show that mindfulness has a positive effect - the improved attention performance was particularly striking. The scientists emphasise that the results can only serve as initial indications that need to be further validated. A further multi-centre study is planned in Frankfurt. In the meantime, there are also teacher training courses on AISCHU.

However, scientists agree on one thing: mindfulness in children works all the better the more the parents are involved. This is because, says Vera Kaltwasser, they play a very important role as role models. «We know that verbal speeches are far less effective than behaviour and emotional attention in all the daily interactions between parents and children,» says the expert. When parents establish a mindfulness practice for themselves, a lot already changes in the way families interact.

Mindfulness is not a panacea

«Practising mindfulness in everyday family life is easier than placing it in a school context,» emphasises Basel-based expert Gunther Meinlschmidt. Take a walk in the forest, for example: breathe in deeply and sniff the individual scents, prick up your ears and listen to the sounds of the animals and plants, touch a tree and feel the bark with your fingertips - all of these things can promote mindfulness.

Or even the simple question: How do you feel? The child then has to listen to themselves a little in order to recognise and articulate their feelings. Meinlschmidt advises parents to play detective with their children from time to time. Whether during small activities or while cooking at home, perhaps embedded in a story. «In this way, children learn in small, interspersed moments what it means to be vigilant and attentive.»

If you use mindfulness to delve into the depths of yourself, you may also come across less pleasant memories.

Even though there is scientific evidence that mindfulness has a positive effect on personal well-being and mental health, it is not a panacea. «Mindfulness practice is one aspect that may make life easier, but if a family lives in difficult circumstances and has little money to spend, even mindfulness can do little to change that,» says Paul Grossman. The emeritus head of research at the Department of Psychosomatics and Internal Medicine at the University Hospital in Basel is co-founder and director of the European Centre for Mindfulness based in Freiburg, Germany. He is one of those who take a critical view of the growing prominence of mindfulness.

«You have to be careful that mindfulness exercises are not used by people who have little experience themselves,» says Grossman. After all, those who use mindfulness to delve into the depths of themselves and explore thoughts and feelings can also come across less pleasant memories. «This can certainly be a delicate experience for individual children, as there are unfortunately many who have had traumatic experiences with forms of sexual or emotional harassment,» says Grossman.

He therefore favours teaching children to cultivate certain qualities as an essential aspect of mindfulness. These include benevolence, compassion, tolerance, patience and kindness - both towards others and themselves.

However, Flurina Hodel's primary school pupils have learnt that even the «quiet minute» in class can encourage a little more mindfulness in everyday life. Sarah likes the quiet start to lessons because she can concentrate better, «and it helps me with my writing».

She has already done the exercise at home with her brother.

Now the fingers are running up, every child wants to tell how they go on a fantasy journey into their own body at home. Rahana prefers to do this in the morning when she is awake before her parents. «I then lie in my bed and go on a head journey for about ten minutes,» she says. David uses exactly the same technique in the evening when he can't fall asleep. And Louis has discovered completely different situations in which it is useful for him to pause, breathe deeply and go travelling with his head: «I always do this when I'm sad or miss someone very much.»