Teens find stress reduction and self awareness. Two benefits of meditation.

If only I had understood the benefits of meditation when I was a teen. All those hormones, all that fear running rampant through my veins. Everything seemed like the end of the world. Heartbreaks cut deeper, frenemies were meaner, all before you had acquired any sort of self awareness. It’s an awkward stage that can result in far too much stress. That’s why the benefits of meditation would be all the more important at this life stage.

Now, a breadth of new research has led more teens to give meditation a try. In fact, seasoned meditator, comedian and author Russell Brand, recently led a meditation at Sala Burton Academic High School in San Francisco. Officials at the high school said that thanks to teen meditation, teen violence has been reduced and academic performance has improved, reported on ABC News.

A 2011 study by a team of researchers at Harvard found that first time meditators were able to grow gray matter in the areas of the brain responsible for self awareness and shrink gray matter in the areas of the brain responsible for stress.

Elisha Goldstein and wife Stephanie developed the Connecting Adolescents to Learning Mindfulness (CALM) program which uses mindfulness to give teens a crash course in how to deal with life’s stress and disappointments. The program takes into account a teen’s shorter attention span by including activities like hiking and music.

“So there’s this incredible opportunity to lay the foundation to experience a sense of personal control, so you cultivate a sense of emotional intelligence and to learn how to connect with people in meaningful ways and that lays the foundation for the adult years that follow,” he said to ABC News.

In the past decade we’ve become so engrossed in our devices and social media. These two distractions along with televisions and working too many hours takes us away from the present moment. We’ve got so much going on that we hardly stop to take a breath, let alone be mindful. But at the same time, there’s also a sense of rebellion against our device-driven world. Meditation is just one aspect of this response. And I can’t think of a more exciting trend.

I can’t even imagine being a teen today in the age of social media. One misstep and it ends up online for the world to see. Bullying has become virtual and as a result, that much more vicious. By providing teens with the tools to deal with their emotions in a thoughtful way we’re setting them up for a much happier existence later in life. It’s difficult for teens to deal with the severity of their emotions. Meditation provides perspective and self awareness for adults and teens alike. I only wish I had known this 15 years ago.

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Image: Caleb Roenigk

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California teens wonder where the race to nowhere ends and summer begins.

California high schools have let out for a couple of months but for many teens it’s just more of the same in skimpier clothing.

Afternoons at AT&T Park waving a goofy foam finger or baking on the sands of Zuma Beach are rare additions to hectic schedules calculated to give them a leg up. Sure, a short family cruise might be squeezed into June – but on deck they must tackle that required summer reading list and plug into something more constructive than Facebook or else rock the boat.

“It’s all about the competition,” shares Cam, a sophomore at Saint Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco, a private Jesuit school known throughout the state for its academic and athletic excellence. “You deserve the downtime but you feel bad if you are on the beach and somebody else is going to summer school or doing community service.”

The sophomore’s large inner circle of  friends say they concur with her view, girls who can barely remember carefree summer days of lemon-aid stands and sleep-away camps.

Instead, after a few days of freedom, they are anticipating more responsibility with temporary jobs, Spanish immersion, community service, sports recruitment camps or doing summer school online and in the classroom. Junior year means buckling down and exploring colleges.

Among those enrolled in summer schools are gifted artists repeating mandatory math and science courses – classes baby boomers took as electives but are now college musts. If a 4.0 GPA was once the standard for admittance to a good college that can lead to a good job, the new average is 4.5 plus volunteer gigs and other evidence of a well-rounded education.

“I feel a skill as particular as studying chemistry is just useless when I know I won’t be using it as a writer,” says Paige, an honors English sophomore and prize-winning poet. “I’m forced to jump through hoops and race hard but for what? You graduate and still can’t get a job. Students are protesting at Harvard and Yale and other Ivy League schools because they can’t find work.”

At Saint Ignatius, where the lunch hour will be cut in half next year to give students the “gift” of more time to be productive, several gifted athletes quit basketball and other team sports this year, despite great disappointment from their fathers who coached them since kindergarten.

The timing occurred in the months following three teen suicides  in San Francisco (two at SI, one at another private school). The tragedies have had a devastating impact on students and the community. And some of the kids cited an awakening of sorts as one reason they literally took themselves out of the race equation, quitting highly competitive and stressful activities and embracing the joy of dance, golf, theater and guitar lessons.

While the jury is out on whether pressure to be a winner in all fields is linked to teen suicide, students have balked about feeling powerless, overwhelmed and depressed over unreasonable expectations.

“You can’t just be excellent at something anymore,” insists Paige. “Adults with with the power to influence the outcome of our futures are asking if we are excellent enough.”

Teens complain that the kind of curriculum and unyielding schedules they must juggle are just too much and end up sacrificing  their childhoods. It’s a valid question for those too old for camp and running through sprinklers and too young to cope with emotional exhaustion.

This sacrifice of childhood facilitated by over-achieving parents and status hungry schools is was prompted the Race to Nowhere film and social action campaign which is making huge inroads. Advocates of an education revolution are urging for an ease to the kill and drill approach to learning and networking for an end to constant testing, more sleep, shorter school days and better homework guidelines among other steps to alleviating stress.

Evidence shows the performance pressure is entirely out of whack with the  cognitive and physical development of young adults while failing to address the reality of what awaits their generation.

Progressive thinkers like Sir Ken Robinson argue the current academic climate – which penalizes failure – is educating the creativity out of kids and failing the 21st century’s needs for creative problem solvers.

“We’re running national education systems where mistakes are the worse thing you can make, yet if you aren’t prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original,” stated Robinson in his widely hailed presentation Do Schools Kill Creativity at a TED Conference. “Picasso said all kids are born artists and the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I think math is important, but so is dance.”

Other critics blogging about the race argue a system predicated on academic ability and testing positions students on a college tract starting in kindergarten, and it doesn’t let up in the summer. All activities in and out of school are designed with an eye on the prize, college and a well paying job. Is it working?

More people than ever worldwide are going to college and graduating and suddenly degrees are actually worthless. As Robinson notes, more kids are heading home after college to play video games or wait tables in the neighborhood. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, some 17 million young Americans with college degrees are employed in menial jobs requiring less than the skill set associated with a bachelor’s degree.

“The system is designed to make us want to go to college, like college is for everyone and everyone has to be super smart,” observes Cam. “The truth is it is all about memorizing and it doesn’t build on anything. Our education in the U.S. is 10-feet wide and one-inch deep, while in Europe it is said to be the opposite.”

Cam’s friend Paige adds: “If the race is all about college, then I’m going to be damn sure to go to a school that is fun and creative with cool people so that I can thrive. Still, if I could come up with something brilliant to do other than going to college, I would.”

Adopting a new conception of how we educate our students to use their creativity wisely could create a healthy shift in seeing our children for who they are, asserts Robinson.

“We might not see the future,” he figures, “But they will.”

Images: Brandeis; Jacrews7;

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