Why Mindfulness Matters in the Classroom: The Science Behind Calm and Focus

The term “mindfulness” can be described as an intentional awareness, paying attention to your thoughts and feelings, being in the present moment, being open-minded and accepting towards the experiences and sensations of your mind and body, and understanding why you feel the way you feel or why you are having certain thoughts.

Mindfulness is a non-academic activity, which is typically considered of lesser importance than academic learning within the educational system. However, research suggests that non-academic activities, including mindfulness, are just as important as academic learning and can have a large, positive impact on the academic world.

Non-academic learning can be defined as “academic behaviours (doing homework, going to class, participating and studying), academic perseverance (self-discipline, self-control, delayed gratification), academic mindsets (students’ beliefs that they belong and can grow and succeed through effort, that their work has personal value), and learning strategies (study skills, metacognitive strategies, self-regulated learning, setting goals)”. Further, non- academic learning includes cultural learning, typically found outside of the education system, such as how to address elders, handle disputes, interact with others, control emotions, organize time, and complete chores.

Within the context of non-academic learning, there are three major concepts that relate to and are important for academic learning: perseverance, focus, and positive relationships.

Non-Academic to Academic Learning

Benefits of Mindfulness in the Classroom

Research into the benefits and feasibility of practicing mindfulness in the classroom is a recent field of study, emerging in 2005, with most of the research being conducted after 2010. Although an emerging field, research indicates that practicing mindfulness increases:

⬆️ Emotional regulation
⬆️ Coping skills
⬆️ Empathy
⬆️ Self-esteem & confidence
⬆️ Self-acceptance
⬆️ Self-compassion
⬆️ Attention
⬆️ Independence
⬆️ Moral development
⬆️ Sleep
⬆️ Positive mood & affect



On the other side of this, mindfulness practices have also been found to reduce:

⬇️ Negative mood & affect
⬇️ Stress
⬇️ Anxiety
⬇️ Rumination
⬇️ Depressive symptoms
⬇️ Hostility
⬇️ Negative thoughts
⬇️ "Bad” Behaviours

share:

⭐️focus

Focus was found to be increased during yogic practice via controlled breathing techniques, which lowers heart rate and calms the mind, regulating the nervous system. This leads to increased concentration and mental alertness which, in turn, is related to improved readiness and enthusiasm to learn, academic performance, and academic achievement.

⭐️perseverance

With mindfulness practice, students experienced perseverance, self-satisfaction, pride, and accomplishment when they mastered new yoga poses and breathing exercises. Related to the classroom, perseverance translates to students wanting to overcome their learning obstacles in order to achieve that same sense of accomplishment.

⭐️positive relationships

Although mindfulness is an individual activity in which one’s practice is solely based on their body’s needs and abilities, it is typically practiced in a social setting, increasing social skills and encouraging a sense of community and social awareness. There are also numerous mindful activities that students can practice in 1:1 or group settings, further cementing their social and relationship-building skills.




Including mindfulness within the classroom provides students with the opportunity to develop non-academic skills including focus and perseverance in the face of obstacles and improved relationships with peers and educators.

Fostering mindfulness practices within the classroom also encourages a community of practice in which each student contributes as a member of the learning community, creating feelings of belonging and security within the educational setting.

With all of these benefits, it seems clear that we should be practicing mindfulness from a young age, particularly because these aspects of our development, largely stress and self-esteem, are carried from childhood into adulthood. What’s more, research has shown that children are now experiencing increased levels of stress and anxiety within the education system.

Our education system demands a lot from students beginning at a young age and students often struggle with keeping themselves and their emotions regulated. Unregulated emotions can impair a student’s attention span and memory functions, as well as harm their ability to determine what information provided by the teacher is and is not important. Students can become overwhelmed by their studies, while also managing their home life and extracurricular activities.

With all of these demands and increased stress within the educational environment, shouldn't we be teaching our students how to appropriately manage their stress, thereby providing them with the lifelong skills needed to contribute to healthy, positive wellbeing?




While small amounts of stress are part of healthy development, chronic and unmitigated stress can be detrimental to both our physical and mental health. Chronic stress has been shown to increase the likelihood of developing depression, eating disorders, and insomnia, contribute to underdevelopment of the brain, as well as increase the possibility of engaging in risky behaviour such as alcohol consumption and drug use. Further, common reactions to stress include rumination, feelings of hostility and violence, and intrusive thoughts, all of which impede learning.

Mindfulness has been found to reduce stress and anxiety, as well as increase positive mood and affect. Within the classroom, positive mood and affect help to improve students’ attention and independence in schoolwork.
Further, mood and affect are “contagious” in that how one student feels and behaves generally dictates how other students will behave. For example, if one student is experiencing a negative mood and begins to misbehave in class, it is likely that other students will follow suit.

Thus, implementing mindfulness into the classroom to improve mood and affect can help to regulate students’ emotions and behaviours, maintaining a calm, more centred learning environment in which all students are maximizing their potential.



Another important benefit of mindfulness practice is improved self-regulation skills.

Self-regulation can be defined as “the ability to flexibly activate, monitor, inhibit, persevere, and adapt one’s behaviour, attention, emotions, and cognitive strategies in response to internal cues, environmental factors, and feedback from others”. Self-regulation skills help children solve problems and adjust to new challenges, as well as develop executive function, emotional regulation, and perspective-taking skills.

During class time, students are expected to sit for long periods of time, follow rules, and pay attention to their schoolwork.

Contemplative activities such as mindfulness can help a student practice these skills as they require students to pay attention to their thoughts and breathing, as well as hold postures and inward attention for longer and longer periods of time. Further, self-regulation is associated with creating and reaching goals. Thus, improving self-regulation skills increases a student’s ability to set and achieve their short and long-term goals.

Mindfulness has also been found to help students with their executive functioning, emotional regulation, and perspective-taking skills, or metacognitive awareness. Executive functioning refers to working memory and cognitive flexibility, as well as to how students learn new information.

Within the classroom, this relates to how and what students determine is and is not important information. Thus, if a student’s executive functioning is impaired, they may miss crucial information by wrongly determining that it is unimportant, thereby not learning it.



Mindfulness helps to improve executive functioning by improving working memory as practicing mindfulness improves concentration in the classroom, helping information in working memory transfer to long-term memory.

Mindfulness also increases cognitive flexibility by helping students to expand their awareness, increase their ability to view classroom information in multiple ways and to think about multiple concepts simultaneously, help students to determine what is important information in the classroom, and adapt to changes in the learning environment such as changing from individual work to group work.



Emotional regulation refers to how students manage their emotions, as well as how they perceive the emotions of others. Emotional regulation also includes the ability to detect and control which emotions are expressed in various situations and how these emotions are expressed. Within the classroom, this is related to the ability to maintain attention and motivation in classroom transitions, including moving from one subject to another or moving from individual work to group work. Thus, emotional regulation is important for the classroom in order for students to create positive emotional wellbeing, keep up with the classroom material being given, and keep calm when upset.

Emotional regulation is also related to self-compassion. Self-compassion can be defined as “…being kind toward oneself in instances of pain or failure rather than being harshly self-critical…keeping one’s negative experiences in perspective, and recognizing them as part of a larger set of experiences that also include positive experiences”. Self-compassion in the classroom is important for students to be able to identify reasons for experiences, rather than being overly self-deprecating. For example, if a student receives a bad grade on a test, rather than attributing their grade to their abilities or intelligence, they will reason that perhaps they did not study as much as they should have and come to the conclusion that they must put in the effort to receive higher grades.

Further, emotional regulation is related to moral development. Moral development includes “ethical motivation and behaviour”, as well as “…sensitizing awareness to the costs of unethical acts (such as guilt in oneself and pain produced in others), reducing problematic motives and emotions (ie: greed and anger), strengthening morality-supporting emotions (ie: love and compassion), cultivating altruism, and enhanced identification with others ”. Within the classroom, moral development is related to ethical decision-making such as the decision not to cheat on a test or to take responsibility for one’s own actions rather than placing blame on another classmate.

Mindfulness helps to improve these aspects of emotional regulation by creating an awareness within ourselves that helps students to identify how they are feeling, why they are feeling this way, what triggered these feelings, and what can be done to help increase or reduce these feelings, depending on the feeling experienced. For example, if a student is upset because they did poorly on a test, they can determine that they need to increase their understanding of the material to improve on the next test. In this case, the student identified what needed to be done to reduce the feeling of being upset. On the other side of this, if a student is happy that they have done well on a project, they can determine that the level of effort they put into the project needs to be applied to all projects within the classroom to continue these feelings of happiness with classroom work.



Perspective-taking refers to metacognitive skills such as self-awareness of one’s cognitive processes and the cognitive processes of others, social competence, and the ability to shift between one’s own perspective and the perceptive others. In sum, perspective-taking is needed for empathy, compassion, and interpersonal relationships.
Related to the classroom, perspective-taking translates to improved peer relationships, making educational aspects such as group work easier for students and educators.

Practicing mindfulness helps students to develop perspective-taking skills as, by becoming aware of our own emotions, we become more aware of and are better able to understand the feelings of others, leading to improved social relationships as well as interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.

⭐️stress

⭐️self regulation

⭐️emotional regulation

⭐️cognitive functioning

⭐️perspective taking