by Laurel M-O Weijer / October 1, 2015

Bill Waters isn’t quite sure how he ended up on the mailing list for the Zen Mountain Monastery. But one day about 14 or 15 years ago, Waters opened his mailbox to find a catalogue of programs offered by the Buddhist monks at their retreat in Mount Tremper, New York.

 

At the time, Waters, an Upper School English teacher and college counselor, had just started teaching Recreating Nature, a unique senior elective that challenges students to slow down and observe the beauty of the world around them. An easygoing and open-minded educator with more than 30 years of experience in the classroom, Waters radiates a kind of tranquil, grandfatherly charm that can put just about any teenager at ease. But he recognized early on that students needed more than his warmth to adapt to the reflective state the class required.

 

“Teaching a spring elective to seniors – and one that involves taking walks in the morning and then writing down all these observations and illustrations – is a bit of a challenge,” Waters notes. “I was successful in it, but [what I] really wanted to establish was a little bit more of a sense of initial focus in class.”

 

In a stroke of fate, one of the programs advertised in the monastery’s catalogue centered around presentations by Hannah Hinchman, author of “A Life in Hand: Creating the Illuminated Journal” – the text Waters was using for his class. So, he packed his bags and headed to upstate New York for, in his words, “a rather intense introduction” to the world of zazen meditation.

 

Like other forms of meditation, zazen is central to the Buddhist tradition. Literally meaning “seated meditation,” it has been practiced around the world for more than 2,500 years. But far from sitting and doing nothing, zazen meditation requires one to focus on breathing and keep the mind from wandering for a sustained period of time – usually a few minutes to start, then perhaps 15, then more. The goal is to enter a state of consciousness where one is not actively thinking about anything. This is quite challenging, given that our minds naturally jump from one thought to the next. But with practice, the results can be profound.

 

Waters returned to Bryn Mawr certain that he had found the addition Recreating Nature needed. “At the monastery, they used zazen mediation as a way of beginning the jarring business of any day’s activities,” Waters explains. “So why not use it to draw the class together and have them become more universally open to whatever would be put before them?”

 

Slowly, over a few weeks, he eased his students into the practice of meditating for five minutes at the beginning of class. “And I have to say, it worked like a charm,” Waters notes with a grin, blue eyes twinkling. “It’s been a tremendously successful component of the class.”

 

Waters, it turns out, was quite a bit ahead of the curve. In the decade-plus since he began incorporating meditation into his classroom, abundant research on the neurological benefits of meditation has appeared. Driven by this information, the mindfulness movement has burst onto the scene. “George Stephanopoulos, 50 Cent and Lena Dunham have all been talking up their meditation regimens,” David Hochman noted in “Mindfulness: Getting Its Share of Attention,” a November 2013 New York Times article. “The Marine Corps is testing Mind Fitness Training to help soldiers relax and boost ‘emotional intelligence,’ the buzzwords of the hour. Nike, General Mills, Target and Aetna encourage employees to sit and do nothing, with classes that show them how.”

 

These practices are all aspects of mindfulness, a catchall term that describes attention-training methods like zazen and other kinds of meditation, breathing and visualization techniques, and exercises that help one learn to focus on a single sensation or feeling. With regular training, practitioners can become more fully present and aware of themselves and their surroundings. And the multitude of benefits is astounding: lower stress, an improvement of symptoms associated with depression and anxiety, a longer attention span, increased working memory capacity, better-quality sleep, a stronger immune system and an overall feeling of emotional wellbeing.

 

But what is it about sitting still and thinking about nothing that yields such incredible results? The short answer is neuroplasticity. The brain is malleable, and like a bodybuilder whose muscle mass increases over time, with regular training the brain can be whipped into shape, going from a tangle of scattered thoughts to a more streamlined sense of focus.

 

The long answer, though, is a little more complicated. Even with the avalanche of recent research, scientists are still not completely sure why meditation and mindfulness exercises impact the brain in the ways they do. What researchers do know is that many of the effects are related to the structural changes that take place in the brains of regular practitioners. “Mind of the Meditator,” published in Scientific American in November 2014, included the surprising finding that 20 practitioners of Buddhist meditation who underwent brain scans were found to have more tissue in areas of their brains known as the insula and the amygdayla than a control group did. “These regions play a role in processing attention, sensory information and internal bodily suggestions,” the article’s authors noted.

 

In other words, just as bodybuilders can lift much heavier weights than untrained people, thanks to their to increased muscle mass, those who meditate regularly have more mass available to help with the heavy lifting required by the millions of thoughts, feelings and sensory perceptions our brains process on a daily basis.

 

Researchers have also found that regular meditation can rewire some of the brain’s neural pathways. In a 2013 article for PsychologyToday.com, Dr. Rebecca Gladding explained that the brains of those who do not meditate regularly are stuck in the medial prefrontal cortex, known as the “Me Center” because it processes information related to our own bodies. “If you were to look at people’s brains before they began a meditation practice, you would likely see strong neural connections within the Me Center and between the Me Center and the bodily sensation/fear centers of the brain,” Gladding wrote. “This means that whenever you feel anxious, scared or have a sensation in your body, you are far more likely to assume that there is a problem related to you or your safety.”

 

In contrast, the brains of those who meditate regularly, for as little as 15 to 30 minutes per day, show a decreased connection between the Me Center and the insula and amygdala, which govern bodily sensations and fear respectively. Instead, there is a stronger connection between the lateral prefrontal cortex – the “Assessment Center” – and the insula and amygdala. “This means that when you experience a bodily sensation or something potentially dangerous or upsetting, you are able to look at it from a more rational perspective,” Gladding explained.

 

Rewiring the brain to produce positive changes like this is just one of the many benefits of a mindfulness practice. And as more research about these benefits piles up, another point has become clear: children, even young children, can also benefit from regular mindfulness habits.

 

For Bill Waters, this is good news – and news that he hopes will inspire others, at Bryn Mawr and elsewhere, to continue to find ways to bring mindfulness practices into the classroom. “Having always been a bit of a daydreamer myself, I sort of realized over time that, as a teacher, I either had to accept my hypocrisy or recognize that there are some good things about being separated from the immediate task at hand,” he remarks. “It doesn’t have to be a particular type of meditation, but I really think kids need a chance to just zone out a little bit – or zone in, however you wish to express it – before class begins.”

 

As mindfulness has gained prominence, schools around the world have begun to look for ways to incorporate the practices. In the United Kingdom, the Mindfulness in Schools Project offers a nine-week course that promises to teach mindfulness in a way that “students find fun, accessible and of genuine use in their lives.” A study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in June 2013 showed that children who participated in the course reported fewer depressive symptoms, lower stress and a greater sense of wellbeing. On this side of the ocean, public schools in California and New York have experimented with mindfulness programs for children as young as first grade, mostly with great success. The Stanford University School of Medicine now touts a Mindfulness Program as part of its Early Life Stress Research and Pediatric Anxiety Program, and researchers have been working with students in the Ravenswood City School District since 2012 to develop a comprehensive understanding of what strategies work best for children.

 

At Bryn Mawr, the faculty is also finding opportunities to integrate mindfulness into the curriculum. Last year, Upper School students began observing a “Moment of Quiet” at the start of convocation each day – a period of 30 seconds or so in which students sit quietly and breathe. Many teachers, like Upper School math teacher and Dean of Faculty Elaine Swyryn, have also begun to incorporate a few minutes of quiet breathing and positive visualization at the beginning of class or before tests. “It’s about getting them in a positive frame of mind [so that] they felt relaxed and able to put down on paper what they know,” Swyryn says.

 

Other teachers have begun to use mindfulness activities as a way to help girls understand other skills that are important in the classroom. Early in the year, Upper School English teacher Leslie Jansen brought a Tibetan singing bowl to her ninth grade English class and played it. Then, she asked her students to think about what they need to do to listen to the bowl, and how that relates to listening in the classroom. “If they’re distracted or thinking about something else, and not in the present moment, they’re not listening,” Jansen explains.

 

Fellow Upper School English teacher Peter Metsopoulos uses a similar exercise to open his classes, asking students to find three or four passages of the text that they love, then inviting them to read the passages aloud in no particular order and without worrying about context, analysis or repetition. “The recitation puts them in a contemplative mode, voicing the text from a place of personal investment without the need to articulate why,” Metsopoulos says. “And they listen to each other without worrying about what it might mean.”

 

In the Lower School, counselor Debbie Waranch works with girls in her classes on the concept of “just being.” Explains Waranch, “We’ve discussed what this means, and they get to practice it, for example, when they have completed a lesson and may need to wait for us to move on. It looks different and feels different to each child. This is a lifelong skill that they can add to their ‘toolbox.’”

 

And in the Middle School, sixth graders take part in the Fortis Puella program. Literally meaning “strong girl,” the year-long program covers a range of topics including self-advocacy skills, communication and coping skills, problem solving, self-defense, boxing, athletics, cyber-skills, body image, media literacy, babysitting, mindfulness and meditation. Middle School Director Amanda Macomber leads the girls in a three-step process: first, still your body; next, focus your mind on your breath or a mantra; third, redirect your mind back to your focus point when it wanders.

"I tell girls that meditation has many benefits for their physical health, like stress reduction, better attention/focus and so on," Macomber says. "I also tell them that meditation sounds very easy, but it's actually quite hard – but the more you do it, the better you get at it. We practice a five-minute meditation [to start], and girls are always clamoring to try another one soon after."

As the school year progresses, Bill Waters hopes faculty and students will continue to explore ways to slow down, breathe and quiet the mind. “We need the privacy of our own thoughts,” he reflects. “I think there is a dearth of that in the average school day, but the steps that we are taking are good ones.” And while he recognizes that beginning a mindfulness routine can be extremely challenging when faced with the hustle and bustle of the school day, that, he says, is precisely why students need it. “It’s amazing how many kids begin the process [of meditating] saying, ‘I can’t do this,’ – and then not only do it, but enjoy it.”

 

Cara Eisenstein ’14, a former member of Waters’ class, can attest to that. “I think I’ve become more relaxed because of some of the things I learned in the class,” Eisenstein says. “I wish everyone could take it. It’s more than just observing nature. Mr. Waters is teaching us that there is a different way to focus, and to be, and to learn. I really like that.”