My Journey to Mindfulness
For my first contribution to A Teacher’s Hat, I’m being really vulnerable here. I have decided to talk about a subject close to my heart that has made a huge difference in both my personal and professional life.
I’m opening up about my mindfulness journey.
How it all started
It all started about 3 years ago. I was feeling a kind of emptiness that my life was going nowhere. I attended a conference with my vice-principal and I was talking to her about my feeling. Her advice: go on a trip; go see the world. It did help for a while but not entirely. I started to do more exercise because I knew that exercise gives a boost of endorphins. I decided to dance. It was way better than going to the gym or running for me. I was also doing yoga.
While doing all this exercise, I started to realize that I need to take care of myself. Not by taking a night off of marking or planning. Not by taking a trip to feel better. I needed to take care of my mind.
My yoga teacher had always encouraged me to practice meditation. She knew that with my job, it will be a great activity to calm my busy mind. However, I didn’t know where to start and it seems to be impossible to shut up my mind. The past two years have been particularly tough, especially on my mind. I still enjoy teaching but I don’t at the same time. Finally, I found this book: Happy teachers change the world. I can’t remember how I found it; I think that it was a conversation with a colleague. From there, things started to change.
The beginning of my journey
Mindful awareness can be considered as a way of being, more than something that involves our “doing” something — Dr Dan Siegel.
From the book Happy teachers change the world, I found many resources to help me, including an app. I started to practice a little bit more mindfulness and meditation. I started to see improvement in myself. The most obvious: sleep quality. It was a big deal for me. It was getting hard to fall asleep as my mind was always going crazy before bed.
My mind was really busy before bed on how I could solved a problem for the next class that happened during the day or how I should have solved it during the day. It was clearly focusing on past and future thoughts, not on the present moment of falling asleep. If you have experienced this, you know that from there, your mind quickly brings doubts in yourself: you’re not good enough, you don’t do enough, you are not making a difference, you’re not a good teacher…
It was hard to talk about it at work as every teacher has their own struggles. I didn’t want to add on their plate. Fortunately, I had two close colleagues who were really supportive. At that time, I didn’t realize that I was probably going to the compassion fatigue path.
Compassion fatigue is a concept that refers to the way we can overextend our caregiving without getting the adequate support we need. The problem is that when we are perpetually trying to help others but not taking care of ourselves, we get exhausted, we burn out, and we are not able to do our jobs at full capacity. -Daniel Rechtschaffen
One day, I was telling my chiropractor about the beginning of my practice of mindfulness. She recommended that I start a journal. She showed me the 5-minute journal. It’s a gratitude journal. Gratitude is a huge part in mindfulness. Slowly, with both my mindfulness practice with the app and the journaling, I realized that my life wasn’t that bad at all. In fact, I was really lucky. Eventually, I wanted more. I was always keeping an eye on mindfulness article or posts on social media. Life can be so full of surprises!
The learning process
I had to change yoga studio a year ago. I found deck cards for yoga that are students friendly, so perfect for the class! It was done by The Yoga Project. It was not only yoga poses but also breathing poses/mindful poses. I started to follow them on social media. That’s when my learning process of mindfulness really started. The owner was working on preparing a mindfulness deck cards. She posted about the five literacies of mindfulness: physical, mental, emotional, social and global. It resonated with me so much. I started to search.
I found that it was part of the book The Way of Mindful Education by Daniel Rechtschaffen: best book that I have ever bought! It was truly a revelation to me. It helped me to have a real and deep understanding of mindfulness. It also helped my practice. At A Teacher’s Hat, we will be reading this book in November. Please join us by signing up to the book club mailing list here! :)
I was really enjoying the present moment. I did more search on Daniel Rechtschaffen. I found that he was doing an online mindful training for educators, so I decided to do it too! What a great experience!
From there, I discovered that he had made a workbook (in fact, it was a huge part in the training) and I had to buy it. It had lessons to bring mindfulness into the classroom! Then, the Yoga Project announced a training for educators on mindfulness. I had to take it as well and luckily it was being offered close to my place.
With all the training and the reading that I have done, I was ready to bring mindfulness to my class.
Bringing mindfulness to my class
I was so confident and so pumped up about it. I didn’t expect that I’ll hit a wall. Before school started, I knew that it would be a challenging year as I have a split class (combined class of two different grades). In my class, I have grades 7 and 8. The good thing is that they are equal in numbers. However, the students realized on the first day of school that they were in a split class. Many of them weren’t too happy about it. I took it personally and it really threw me off right away. I knew very well that it wasn’t because of me and I knew that I shouldn’t feel that way.
The first week was truly hard because I couldn’t see myself bringing in mindfulness right away, even though it had been my plan to do it in the first week. I needed to remind myself of what I have learned from my training. I needed to be mindful first. I needed to calm myself first. As the month of September was going by, I slowly started asking my students what they thought mindfulness is. I have introduced some breathing exercises so far. They liked it as they want brain breaks from time to time. I have planned with my class for a community circle each week and we start with a mindful activity each time.
I’m slowly building a relationship with them; building trust too. Building a sense of community too. Yes, it’s not going to be perfect or easy. It will be a rollercoaster. The thing that I learned from that, so far, is that it’s a journey.
A journey is never a straight line! That’s for sure! I need to be kind to myself. Baby steps are steps.
Whatever I bring from mindfulness to my students, I know that it will be beneficial to them. I am really lucky to have this group of students as they are amazing human beings in their very own unique way.
Editor’s Note:
Since starting my teaching degree, my bullet journal has really kept me on track. Though it started as a tool for organizing, it did not take me long to incorporate reflection and gratitude for every day. My journal goes with me everywhere and I relish the time I spend writing in it. It is a form of mindfulness and self-care and I after learning from Valérie about mindfulness and education, I can’t wait to dive deeper. I have always wanted to introduce my students to bullet journalling and I am one step closer to planning it out now, seeing the psychological research in mindfulness.
What are some ways you unwind and reconnect with yourself?
