In today's rapidly changing educational landscape, where classroom challenges like lockdown drills, information overload, and teacher burnout are increasingly common, one question arises: Why isn't mindfulness a mandatory part of our educational curriculum?

Our guest, Annamarie Fernyak, founder of MindBodyAlign, shares her journey of introducing mindfulness practices in schools and what she learned along the way. It’s not just about teaching kids to breathe; it’s about helping them—through their teachers—handle the emotional rollercoaster of school life and beyond. Annamarie's insights reveal that when we equip educators to be more mindful, they can create a supportive environment where kids feel less stressed and more in control of their emotions. 

Check out the shownotes for resources and more!

Takeaways:

• Mindfulness is crucial for students, helping them manage stress and emotions effectively in an increasingly challenging educational environment.
• The introduction of mindfulness in schools can significantly empower both students and teachers, creating a more resilient and focused atmosphere.
• Teachers often feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities, leading to burnout, which negatively impacts their students' learning experiences.
• Annamarie's journey into teaching mindfulness in schools highlights the urgent need for emotional support systems in education today.
• Children naturally possess mindfulness skills, but puberty complicates their emotional regulation, making mindfulness education even more essential.
• Mindfulness practices not only help students cope with anxiety but also foster kindness and gratitude, improving overall classroom dynamics.

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In a world where lockdown drills, information overload, and teacher burnout are on the rise, one question lingers.

Why aren't we teaching mindfulness in the classroom?

Welcome to another episode of the Global Health Pursuit podcast.

The podcast where we explore the world's most pressing health challenges through a beginner's lens.

My name is Hetal Daman.

I'm a biomedical engineer turned social impact podcaster, and I'm your host.

Schools are meant to prepare students for the future, but are they equipping them with the tools to handle stress and uncertainty?

Anna Marie Ferniak, founder of MindBody Align, asks herself the same question.

What started as a single invitation to teach mindfulness in a middle school became a mission to transform how students and their teachers manage emotions, focus, and resilience.

But bringing mindfulness into education isn't as simple as it sounds.

The idea came about when she was asked to teach mindfulness to middle schoolers in her community.

This was probably four or five years ago.

I was teaching mindfulness and meditation to adult women and to veterans.

The purpose really at that point was to bring alternative wellness practices to our community, which is a Rust Belt community that is maybe a little bit behind when it comes to health and wellness in this community.

Anna Marie was invited by a woman into her health classroom to teach mindfulness to seventh and eighth graders, an age group that she was most definitely not used to.

I am not.

I'm not really very comfortable in that environment with children.

Like, adults are my sweet spot.

And even actually today, I don't teach the Littles.

So I was invited by this teacher to teach her in her health class.

I did a bunch of preparation about middle school children.

You know, what is going to appeal to them.

Annamarie admits that she was a bit naive about what was going to happen in these schools when she arrived.

She says that she had this sort of idealistic view of what it was going to be like.

Yeah, you know, I put the students all in a circle and, you know, they would just listen perfectly and it would be this amazing meditative, mindful experience for the kids that would be transformative, you know, and.

And it's not that it was so different from that necessarily.

Like, what I found was that these kids were just beautiful and brilliant and that they.

That they really wanted to learn, and they were blossoming from the attention that that mindfulness environment gives you.

While she spent time at the school, she discovered that the environment was quite toxic and toxic in a way that she would never have imagined.

During the three days that she Was there.

There were three lockdowns of the classroom.

She had no idea what was happening until a school bell sounded and an announcement from the principal came booming through the school PA system that said, teachers, look at your email.

I didn't know what was going on, but what I saw happen with the students, particularly this beautiful young girl who was sitting next to me.

She had been, you know, sitting with her feet on the floor, her hands kind of relaxed.

And as soon as that announcement was made, she curled up.

Literally her whole body curled up into a fetal position.

The bottoms of her feet went up onto the seat of her chair, and she kind of curled into herself and brought her head down.

The students were now starting to get really anxious.

The teacher then came over to Anna Marie and whispered in her ear, there's a lockdown.

There's a student with some kind of weapon.

So I find out later, much later, hours later, that it was pepper spray.

But what I saw with the kids was this developing trauma.

And I could see it building in the students.

And some of them were more advanced than others in the way that they were expressing it in their body language.

And then after that, at that point, there was no really bringing the children back.

So what we know is that when any of us are in fight or flight, that the certain things happen in your body.

Physiologically.

Adrenaline gets secreted, cortisol gets secreted.

Your brain kind of goes a little bit silent because all of the energy of your body is going into your limbs, right, to fight or to flee.

And so what happened was then just this.

This anxiousness among the kids and no way to actually calm them.

At that point, it was close enough to the end of the class that the bell rang.

Once they unlocked all the doors, the kids just left.

At this point, Anna Marie herself felt like she was in fight or flight mode.

When she left the classroom, the student's teacher was crying.

And she told Anna Marie that she just couldn't handle it anymore, that she was going to retire at the end of the year.

There was all of this desperation about the teacher, about the children.

And so when Annemarie went back to her office around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, her team could see that she was also quite visibly shaken by the incidents at the school.

So then she and her team started to wonder if there was anything she could do to support the schools during these times of stress.

And at that point, I was only working with adults, and they said, well, let's see what we can do.

So coincidentally, my sister, who is an elementary school teacher, and had been an elementary school teacher for many years.

I invited her to do a feasibility study to really look at the schools in our area, Talk to all the leadership teams in the schools, the administrators, the supervisors, the teachers, and find out if there one was a need for the work that we do and if they would be willing to bring a program like ours into the school.

And after six or eight months of researching, she came back to me and she said, yes, they're really excited about what we can do for them.

And so we ended up selling a pilot program through our local foundation called the Richland County Foundation.

And in just the first year, Annamarie's team implemented her mindfulness program in 21 classrooms within the Mansfield school system.

And it was in that first year of teaching that Covid hit.

And as you can imagine, that only accelerated the amount of anxiety and stress that everyone, the students, the staff and the teachers were feeling.

So that first time that you stepped into this classroom, do you think that these kids ever really had an understanding of what mindfulness practices were?

Or was this like the first time that they were being introduced to it?

My experience is that it's the first time that they've been introduced to it.

I do think that children are more naturally mindful.

Yeah, they live more in the present moment.

You know, they're not as rooted in the past and as much set on what's happening, you know, what they want to see happen in the future.

So teaching children mindfulness skills is not as heavy a lift as it is with adults.

And they just naturally pick up the skills, the deep breathing, the body scan, the noticing their surroundings.

But once middle school hits, Anna Marie says that there is a lot more rumination that takes place.

She says that there's all of these hormones surging in their bodies that they don't understand well, you know, puberty.

So all of these emotions, happiness, sadness, rage that they can't control or even understand, all of these emotions that they still haven't had the skills yet to control.

But the thing that took me by surprise is the connection that Annamarie made between puberty and menopause.

I have to say, as a middle aged woman, I'm re.

I'm re experiencing a lot of those same things that middle school kids go through, which is all of the variety of hormones that just make you make you feel a little bit out of control at times.

So I have an even greater understanding now than I did when I was even 10 years ago about what middle school kids are experiencing.

I think this is the first time that I've ever heard someone compare the experience of going through menopause and like the, all the hormone changes to like the beginnings of puberty.

It makes a lot of sense.

And then the other thing that you'd mentioned, you had mentioned that the teacher in that classroom that you went to teach mindfulness to, that teacher was like, I'm done, I want to leave.

I saw that you had posted a statistic on your LinkedIn which is 44% of new teachers will leave their professions.

And I wanted you to maybe explain a little bit why you think that is so.

I think there are two professions that I come into contact with frequently that are the most undervalued, underappreciated professions, and that is teaching and nursing.

And I think coincidentally, not that I want to get into any political topics, but maybe this will get us there.

Coincidentally, those career paths have been chosen by women.

So I have to say that my experience in the educational world is that teachers, they have to go through a four year degree and oftentimes they have to do postgraduate studies to continue to advance in their career.

And yet they are paid a stipend essentially for the work they do.

I just read a book, I think it's called Teachers and it describes the life of a teacher.

And teachers are expected to create curriculums in their classroom.

Anna Marie paints a picture of a classroom.

Imagine being a teacher and you have 25 students.

Imagine having to create a new curriculum for each student because each student has a different set of needs.

You could have a teacher who has created curriculums for a class before the class year starts.

And then all of a sudden you have three new students that are coming into the classroom also with special needs.

Those students need three separate new curriculums.

So there's that anxiety that teachers have of really wanting their students to do well and wanting to be the best teacher that they can be.

And yet being in this environment that's really making it very difficult for them to do that.

And in some cases teachers feel helplessness about it.

From what they talk to us about.

There'S an anxiety that teachers have of really truly wanting their students to do well and wanting to be the best teacher that they can be.

But at the same time, being in an environment that really makes it very difficult for them to do that, they feel a sense of helplessness about it.

Teachers not only are underpaid, but they also have these expectations placed on them that are simply not attainable.

They almost have to be working 24 hours a day.

One of my Friends was asking me about education and about the work we do.

And she was telling me her boy is in first grade.

And she was saying that they have been given an app that they use, the parents have been given an app that they use where they can directly message the teacher and that there are people in her son's classroom that will message the teacher at 9 o'clock at night, 10 o'clock at night, saying that their child is sick and can't come to class, or that their child didn't understand the homework, or expressing some discontent or some upset about something that the teacher did or is planning to do, maybe tomorrow.

And I'm thinking, when do you turn it off?

How do you turn it off?

And there's an expectation that these teachers are going to be available.

Now I, I have to say it's up to the school to set boundaries around that for the parents and for the teachers.

And it's also up to a teacher to set the boundary.

But there is this kind of growing expectation about how the teacher is expected to be as a teacher in the educational community that is very stress inducing.

I was curious how Annamarie's work within these schools was different from having a child go to therapy or take mindfulness classes outside of the school.

And she says that the most important work that they do is actually not to teach the children, but teach the teacher instead.

And the reason is, is if the teacher is self regulated in the classroom, if the teacher is being mindful with how they are perceiving and interacting with the children, then they are teaching the children through their own behaviors.

And that's way more powerful than the work that we do teaching the children the exercises.

It's the same at home.

You know, if you have parents that are behaving mindfully with their children, those children are going to become more mindful children because they are learning from their parents.

Children are learning from their teachers and from other leaders in their life.

And through these teachings, Annamarie has seen a real difference in how children feel when it comes to mindfulness.

Overall, she's found that 98% of children say that they feel less stress and more in control over their emotions.

They even say that they feel like they can be more kind and more grateful.

We have one young boy who has high anxiety and his mother was related to our company.

She was working in our company.

So she would tell us these anecdotes about him.

And one of the things was that one year, one season, we happened to be in his classroom and she would tell me Stories then of how he utilized what he was learning.

And she told one story about him going to the doctor's office and he's sitting in the doctor's office and he's super anxious about this experience.

We have this Hoberman sphere, which is a ball that we use to teach the kids belly breathing, which is when you inhale, your belly expands.

When you exhale, your belly contracts, right?

So he was sitting on the doctor's table and he's doing this.

For those of you not watching the video, Annamarie is demonstrating belly breathing with her hands expanding and contracting.

And the doctor comes in and says to his mother, what is he doing?

And she says, he's practicing his belly breathing because he's feeling very anxious.

And the doctor said, I wish all of the kids would learn these techniques.

And so that's kind of one anecdotal story about some of the benefits.

But I hear from parents and from teachers all the time about how children are using these techniques in the classroom.

And we have these statistics that also indicate the success that these techniques are having in the classroom and how it's benefiting the children.

At Mindbody Align, Annamarie has introduced a curriculum with children's books that are fully equipped with a handbook of 12 lessons for the teacher, which can even be purchased if you're homeschooling as well.

One of these books is called TIA Takes a Pause, which is all about learning to take a moment, to take a few deep breaths, to pay attention to how you are feeling in times of stress.

These books are part of a series called the Labyrinth Adventures and can even be purchased on Amazon.

And if you're interested, a link will be in the show.

Notes.

The most important aspect of mindfulness is this non judgmental pause.

And what I mean by that is you pause for a moment.

Often the pause is initiated by taking a deep breath, which is why we'll use belly breathing or we'll use hugging breath.

And hugging breath is simple.

You literally just hug yourself and you feel the inhale and the exhale.

So you feel your body expanding into your arms when you inhale.

We're just doing it on camera right now.

And then you feel your body kind of contracting or relaxing during the exhale.

And that is enough of a pause that it can stop the rumination or whatever is happening in the thought process because you're focusing now your thoughts, your mind is focusing on the sensation of breathing.

And then wrapping your arms around yourself is actually activating the parasympathetic nervous system, just like Somebody hugging you, if you've ever heard about the 22nd hug.

So all of the exercises that we do with the kids are some variation of pause, breathe, notice, and then this resistance to judging something as bad or good, right or wrong, good or bad.

And the reason that you resist the judgment, or if you notice there's a judgment and you gently put it aside for a moment, is because the judgment filters how you perceive the world around you.

So, for instance, as a middle aged woman, I'm having hot flashes all the time.

My first instinct when I have a hot flash is I, I hate this.

This is bad.

I wish it would go away.

When is this gonna end?

And the moment that I pause and invite myself to simply notice what it's like to have a hot flash, it's actually somewhat awe inspiring because the hot flash itself is not quite a hot flash.

It's actually the sensation of hot and cold at the same time.

And it's actually a really cool sensation.

Really interesting, really.

It has a lot of depth and nuances to it.

So if I stop and I pay attention to it without this judgment that it is bad and I hate it, I can actually see it as something else, something other than something I don't like.

So the mindfulness practice is about paying attention without the judgment.

And the judgment is so that you have the potential of seeing something else in what's happening rather than what your habits or your beliefs are going to bring to it.

It's not about saying that an action is okay or that it's acceptable.

Right.

Some people have criticized mindfulness, saying that, well, we're mindfulness people are just passive.

You know, they're watching the world go by in a passive way.

It's not the way it is.

It's about having a really deeper understanding of the world and providing an opportunity to see the world from a perspective that as an individual, I've never seen it before.

So it's about really rooting yourself in the full 360 view of what the world is like, what it is to be alive.

Annamarie is the author of the best selling book the Right side of A Practical guide for embracing mindfulness and living your best Life, A book in which asks the question, are you sitting still or living fully?

It explains how mindfulness is so much more than sitting still for a set amount of time.

Find the right side of happiness on Amazon or by clicking the link in the show notes.

As Annamarie and I were chatting, a very simple question came up.

Why was she so passionate about this work and why did she create Mind Body Align in the first place?

Well, so I started out in community development.

My husband and I.

I was an interior designer by trade and I owned a retail store in a revitalizing downtown.

I'm in.

I live in a Rust Belt community which pretty much lost all of its major industry in the 70s and really had a crisis of opinion about itself.

There was kind of this not good enough attitude that the community had about itself.

Right.

So at one point the community started revitalizing, late 80s, early 90s.

And I wanted to be a part of that.

And I was an interior designer.

I opened an interior design store in the community, got involved in the urban planning, the revitalization.

And then I married my husband and we bought old buildings and we revitalized old buildings.

And what I saw was, or what I realized is that you can do all this great stuff in the community.

You can change the streets to two way.

You can make the buildings look beautiful, you can bring in new businesses.

But if your schools are suffering and your children are suffering, how is that sustainable long term for the community?

You're investing all of this money in revitalizing a community that the next generation and then the generation after that isn't going to have the skills to support.

So after I was in that school, I realized this had been after a number of years of school levies not passing.

Our school was in financial distress.

And there's a large population in our school system of foster children, children of parents who are in the prison system because we have two major prisons here.

Anna Marie then realizes that she was looking at the situation in the completely wrong perspective.

She relates it to the idea of a beautiful house.

When she was doing a lot of interior design work, she would work for clients that would buy these big, grand, beautiful houses.

And then when you walk inside, they were so cash poor with high mortgages that there was nothing at all inside the house.

So I kind of relate what's.

What was happening in the community to that.

It's like we're going to have this beautiful revitalized downtown, but there's nothing inside.

There's no, there's no guts to support that long term.

And that moment I was in the school, teaching in that middle school classroom was the moment that I kind of had that epiphany that this community is never going to be a strong community unless we focus our energy on our children.

I feel it's the same globally.

What I see happening in schools in the United States, it's not unusual.

It's happening all over.

Children working in the mines, children working in sweatshops.

We need to really focus on our children globally.

And the only way I know to do that is in my own community.

And so that's my approach is just to focus on community development, community revitalization through the children.

I just love that you said that because it is so true.

You're investing in the students and the children so that the next generation really makes a difference.

You know, my last question to you, it's really like all the advice that you would give parents of young ones who might be developing early signs of stress or lack of focus in school, where, you know, maybe they're in a school that doesn't have the privilege of having a program like yours.

You know, what do you, what advice would you give these parents?

I think the biggest gift a parent can give to their children is to pay attention to them.

I mean, I think we're in a society now where there's a lot of busy people, you know, working and making ends meet and providing a quote unquote better future for the next generation.

However, I think the children are suffering from lack of attention.

The parents.

I would love to see parents spending time with their children, playing softball in the backyard, going for a walk, taking a hike, just being with their children and showing their children love and affection.

That's the best gift that they can give them.

Our guest today, Annamarie Ferniak, is the founder of the mindful education company Mind Body Align.

She is an award winning community leader who lives and works to make life better in downtown Mansfield, Ohio.

She is the author of the Right side of Happiness and is an educator, speaker and writer on building resilience and living mindfully in the present moment as the path to a life of true happiness and contentment.

MindBody Align teaches hundreds of students and educators each year how to pay focused attention, practice kindness, and share gratitude.

Annamarie is also the co author of a 16 book series for children and is the vision behind the main character, Tia, a butterfly and Dwight, a grasshopper, among other delightful inhabitants of a special garden labyrinth.

These books teach children skills of self regulation, how to navigate disagreement, to manage anxiety, and much more.

The series is set in a real life labyrinth at Anna Marie's farm in Lucas, Ohio.

A big thanks to Annamarie for her time in sharing her expertise in this podcast episode.

If you're an educator, parent or someone curious to learn more about Annamarie's mindful programs and curriculums, go to mindbody online.com and if you resonate with anything that was said in this week's episode.

Please comment below if you're watching or listening on YouTube or Spotify.

If you're listening anywhere else, feel free Free to email me at hetallobalhealthpursuit.com I welcome any questions, comments or even concerns.

I'll link all of the resources mentioned in the show.

Notes this episode was hosted, produced and edited by me, Hetal Bauman, and as always, a big thanks to my coach Anna Xavier of the Podcast space for continuing to push me to create a show that is meaningful, educational and entertaining all at the same time.

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