Book Description

This book explores how mindfulness has been infused into education to produce favorable outcomes, such as stress reduction, heightened focus, resilience, calmness, alertness, mood regulation, self-awareness, professional commitment, and increased compassion and kindness to self and others. The chapters are situated in diverse contexts, including schools and colleges, warfare, violent extremism, global warming, child sex abuse, and species extinction. A feature of the book is the use of what is learned from ongoing research to design interventions to increase the incidence of mindful practices, to enhance learning and forms of conduct to transform social life and sustain harmonious lifestyles. Inclusion of mindfulness-based interventions in teacher education programs include breathing meditation and tools such as heuristics and mindful writing. Breathing meditation and its relationship to mindfulness is addressed, including abdominal breathing as a component of meditation, leading to mindful conduct and physiological changes, including heart rate and blood oxygenation levels. The extent to which breathing practice includes nasal and oral inhalation and exhalation is also considered in relation to increasing levels of nitric oxide in the airways, thereby enhancing social communication and wellness. This book was originally published as a special issue of Learning: Research and Practice.