Greater emotional resilience, improved physical health, enhanced academic performance…
Amanda Watson is a fully-qualified ".b" Mindfulness in Schools Project teacher, offering Mindfulness teaching and Mindfulness after-school clubs in both primary and secondary schools throughout Essex.
".b", 'pronounced' ["dot-be"], stands for "Stop, Breathe and Be". This simple act of mindfulness provides the kernel of a nine-lesson course for schools.
Written by experienced classroom teachers and mindfulness practitioners, evaluated positively by the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford Brookes, and delivered by Mindfulness Practitioner and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) specialist, Amanda Watson, ".b" can be used in a wider range of contexts and age ranges, including adults.
".b" was carefully crafted by classroom teachers to engage everyone including the most cynical of student audiences. It is taught with striking visuals, film clips and activities that bring mindfulness to life without losing the expertise and integrity of classic mindfulness teaching.
".b" aims to give students mindfulness as a life skill. Students use it:
- to feel happier, calmer and more fulfilled
- to get on better with others
- to help them concentrate and learn better
- to help cope with stress and anxiety
- to perform better in activities such as music and sport
By practising mindfulness, children can learn life skills that help them soothe and calm themselves, bring awareness to their inner and outer experience, and bring reflective quality to their actions and relationships.
Skills such as how to:
- Approach experience with curiosity and an open mind
- Calm down when they're angry or upset
- Concentrate and ignore distractions
- See what's happening in, to and around them, other people and the environment clearly and objectively
- Develop compassion, kindness and gratitude
- Develop pro-social qualities such as patience, humility, happiness for the good fortune of others, generosity, diligence and equanimity
- Live gently and in balance with other people and their environment
".b" is taught only by those who have undergone the thirty hours of teacher training developed by the Mindfulness in Schools Project's ".b" curriculum, with formal mindfulness training, such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)/Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and committed personal mindfulness practice as prerequisites.
The skills taught are clear and concrete. The practices are fun, and engage children to begin to see for themselves how mindfulness can help them navigate even the most challenging real-life situations
For more information, please contact me directly on +44 (0)7976 731373, or by email: [email protected]
To get a better idea, play the videos below
Ted Talk, "Visions for Transition", 12 January, 2013
BBC Breakfast News, 27 March 2013
What is Mindfulness?
Being mindful is an ongoing learning about how to pay attention in the present moment, without evaluation or judgment