Why Prioritizing Wellbeing Matters for Leaders of Trauma-Impacted Systems
Planting seeds of kindness where they are needed most
Our children crave safety and belonging.
Well-implemented mindfulness education can offer just this. Focused attention and relational practices support us in welcoming ourselves and each other as we turn towards the tremendous difficulties we face as a human community. The evidence shows that our emotional state and our nervous systems are contagious, and that happiness spreads to the people around us in a ripple effect up to three-times removed. In modeling mindful awareness, regulation, and self-compassion, educators can plant and water the seeds of kindness and care, and when leaders are capable of turning inward and slowing down, we can truly influence the community around us. Heart-centered leadership lays the foundation for healing, especially in the most challenging of times.
Mindfulness embedded into leadership culture can give staff, administrators, and teachers tools to build strong classroom and workplace connections, and to come together across the lifespan in the shared experience of being human. Evidence from the Mindfulness Initiative in the U.K. shows us that the most effective implementation occurs when a top-down approach meets bottom-up. Let us now approach educational and organizational leadership to offer them trauma-sensitive practices and tools to support them in their work and in their process, and in turn, their staff will benefit. This is how we can offer an entire generation of youth these powerful skills that none of us learned in school, to help them navigate uncertain times.
Presence
We can learn to pay attention in the present moment, to show up for ourselves and each other, without judgment, and to offer care and compassion in moments of difficulty.
Belonging
We can co-create safety in staff meetings and classrooms, develop relational skills that heal trauma, invite ourselves and each other to rest and repair without agenda, and to share the exquisite experience of being human.
Awareness
We can wake up to what is really needed in these challenging and uncertain times. We can pause…and act skillfully from a place of regulation, right speech, equanimity, empathy, and inner wisdom.
Resilience
We can hold space for the range of human experience and tend to what is arising. And we can connect with each other in meaningful and playful ways that support wellbeing, resilience, and mental health.
One individual’s mindfulness practice can have a powerful impact on the whole community.
Mental fitness practices can help educators manage their reactivity, deepen connections, and bring present-moment awareness into their teaching in ways that promote student wellbeing and create an optimal and safe learning environment.
When classroom teachers and school staff can learn together to co-regulate, focus attention, cultivate empathy, and care for their own mental health, the benefit can ripple outward to the students, colleagues, and families throughout the school community.
The human body is designed for co-regulation.
Your nervous system is the intervention…
Relational mindfulness is more than just silent sitting meditation. This is a way of bringing awareness and care into our moment to moment interactions and conversations (verbal and non-verbal) that builds connection through the sharing of human experience.
Mindful games and movement, non-violent communication, collaborative feedback models, physiological attunement, and non-verbal check-ins are just a few of the practices we can offer in school settings to co-create safety and a sense of belonging.
Educators are grateful for mindfulness, connection, and a sense of belonging:
"This workshop was an amazing experience. This was not new material for me however it was very much appreciated and I believe that everyone benefitted from it. I felt closer as a staff by going through this together. I would love to explore the possibilities of doing more of this or perhaps some sort of retreat. I do know that the presenters will be back in January and what else can we do?" -Sarah B. High School Teacher
"I really enjoyed how peaceful the room was during this time. It was nice to start the morning in a calm setting." -Priscilla A., High School Teacher
"It really helped to put me in a good place to start my day, and that continued through all my classes." -Amanda K. High School Teacher
"My experience of the [workshop] was refreshing and was absolutely a new way of looking at my life in times of stress and busyness. I am eager to continue learning more about myself through mindfulness practices." -Maria Winston, English Language Specialist
