Episode 15: Hit the Pause Button

Taking a moment to be mindful seems so easy. So why is it so hard for most of us to do? In this episode, Laure Sabini, founder of Full of Kindness, shares the value of teaching mindfulness to children, adolescents, and teachers. Simple mindfulness practices have been shown to improve student mental health, build personal confidence, and help us stay centered amid the pressures of our lives. Listen in to hear Laure share how the power of taking  a pause is a truly transformational tool for all of us.

Connect with Laure on LinkedIn: Laure Sabini Profile

Learn about Laure’s mindfulness programs at www.fullofkindness.org

Transcript

Announcer:

You're listening to the Voices In Education Podcast powered by Securly, where we hear from new voices and explore new ideas about how we can reimagine education to support whole student success. Education is at an inflection point. As we grapple with complex challenges like funding and enrollment, as well as diversity, equity, and safety, we also have an opportunity, an opportunity to reimagine education. Now more than ever, we know the importance that students’ overall wellbeing plays in their success. They need to feel supported and safe and connected to be able to engage in their learning and achieve their full potential. Join your host, Casey Agena, a former teacher turned instructional coach and technologist, as he interviews inspirational educators, school leaders, wellness professionals, and more to amplify their voices. You'll learn about the innovative work they're doing to support student safety, engagement, and overall wellness. And who knows, you may even spark a new idea of your own. Ready to reimagine education? Let's go.

Casey Intro: 

We are here today talking with Laure Sabini who provides perspective on student mental health and wellness, particularly with adolescents from early childhood all the way through their teenage years. She hails from Vancouver, Canada and her mindfulness work has engaged a global audience in schools through her company and her work at Full of Kindness. Laure, thank you for joining us today.

Laure:

Thank you for inviting me again.

Casey:

Yes, and we've been on some panels and webinars and had a chance to talk to and meet with a number of different educators from here in the United States and from our global audience, but you have a unique perspective on student wellness and mindfulness. And tell us a little bit about that in terms of what you see it is, and then we'll talk a little bit more about your work in the K-12 space.

Laure:

Okay, thank you. So, well, let's start with what mindfulness is, and I find that for a lot of people they've heard the word, but they still don't know what it is. And I think it's even a big difference between the definition and what it is practically. So the definition, what I tell the kids is mindfulness is paying attention to what is happening around us and with us, inside us right now, here with kindness and curiosity. So I use with kindness and curiosity instead of judgment. So especially for the little ones, judgment would probably not talk to them. So this is the definition, but it's like, okay, but what does that mean? So in practice, it's a lot of small techniques that we are going to learn, and ideally we want to make them part of our life on how we react to the world. And we actually could do a little practice at some point.

Casey:

Yeah. Well, we do have a lot of educators who listen in and there's a lot of curriculum out there that they receive from their schools or their administration on what they will do with their kids. They have perspectives from parents and other stakeholders on what they should be doing, and they're able to listen in on podcasts like this and hear from different folks on their own perspective of it. And I think there's just so much information that you have to filter through about what is actually good stuff, what is something that we can do. So especially now with whether it's working on technology at home and doing some remote learning or hybrid and doing their work. And there's so many inputs into the child's brain and then they have a lot of influences, right, it's driving them. What does mindfulness do in terms of in the classroom and what teachers, why it's important for them when they have their 20, 25 students with them, and what can they do if they want to just do something simple and small tomorrow with their children?

Laure:

Well, I guess mindfulness is about taking a pause. And so we can take a pause in so many different ways and we can install a routine. So every morning, maybe when we arrive or after lunch, just take always the same time. So for some kids it's actually very important to have a routine, but one thing we could do is just, okay, let's just sit comfortably in our chair and just listen and listen to the sound around you. And that could be just 10 seconds. That could be one minute if possible, or it could be 10 minutes if we have the time, but it could be just that small pause of listening around us, sounds that we haven't noticed in a long time because we are so agitated. There's so much noise around us, especially in big cities, right? There are so many noises around us.n So if we can take just 10 seconds to just pause, stop for a moment and listen. And just listen and maybe name those sounds that we can hear. Oh, I hear a car. Oh, I hear the bird. And just that 10 seconds, one minute of pause can help us, mindfulness help us with regulating our emotions. So calming the nervous system.

Casey:

Yeah, the physiological effects of just pausing. And I think that particularly this school year, I'm seeing it with my own children too, because we're kind of in this transition, I think from COVID, from the pandemic and whatnot, there's a rush too in schools that we need to make up for what we lost. I need to give you more. Hurry up and finish your lunch so we can get back to the classroom to finish. Here's work for you to go home so you can finish. There's this kind of a race that we're in to make up for the things that we've lost. And I think we forget about how important pausing is, but we don't know, I think as adults on when we should do it or why we should do that.

Laure:

Well, and the one thing that I've learned about mindfulness and that just kind of blew my mind, is that our nervous system, our part of the nervous system, the autonomous nervous system and parts of our brain, they need to be regulated so that our whole system can feel safe. If we don't feel safe, we actually can't learn. So we're actually trying to push this curriculum to our kids, but if they don't feel safe, they actually can't learn and they can't memorize it. So we need to go a little bit backwards and be like, Okay, well the curriculum, yes, it's one thing, but it seemed that right now it's not working anyway.

Casey:

Right.

Laure:

And we need to give tools to our kids who are coming from home with their whole baggage and do a few seconds, a few minutes of mindfulness or other tools that can regulate their system and arrive and be ready to learn. And that pause of a few seconds, a few minutes is so important because otherwise we're just pushing the curriculum to them, but actually they just can't learn it. They can't memorize it, so.

Casey:

Right.

Laure:

It's worthless. So we need to take a few seconds, a few minutes to go backwards. And I mean, not backwards, but kind of. Usually we don't like to pause because we think that, yeah we are going to miss out, but at the end of the day, a pause is necessary to do what we want the kids to learn.

Casey:

Right. Now, you have kind of an interesting story of how you even just got into this in working, starting up company Full of Kindness and working with schools and getting into this real important and particularly now timely field. Yeah. Tell us a little bit how you even just got into this work in the first place.

Laure:

Yeah, I guess it's my own healing journey.

Casey:

Okay.

Laure:

I used to something completely different, but my hands started not working. I couldn't type on the computer anymore. It was so painful. I had to take a whole time off for a whole year. And still after one year, I still was in pain. So on one hand I was looking for healing modalities to heal my physical pain, mentally as well actually. And on the other side, I was arriving at the end of Canada we call it EI, employment insurance. So I had to go back to work, but I couldn't work on the computer. So what do you do when 90, I don't know, 99% of the jobs are on the computer now, so it's so hard. So to be honest, I had to go back to a job that I might not have wanted to.

I just went back as a nanny, and it was just easy for me. I've always had a really good connection with kids. So the ego took a big hit for sure, because I thought, what the society kind of, anyway, that's another story. And then one thing after the other, and actually thanks to COVID I learned about mindfulness. So I learned about mindfulness for myself. And so I took a few courses and then somehow I learned that you can teach mindfulness to children. Because I was naturally good at working with children, I was like, Oh, I was interested. And then, yeah one thing after another, it was just so smooth. And I got to teach mindfulness to children, and it's been such an amazing, it's for me, I think I spent my best years, last year for six months, it was amazing to see kids learn mindfulness and tell me that it helps them with their emotions. It was just amazing.

Casey:

Well, I'll let you share one of your stories of working with a school and classroom in a second. But even for myself as a parent of three children, it was challenging during that time when they were remote learning. They all had their devices, and that served almost as a crutch I think, for their learning. Okay, just get online, put your headphones on and listen to your teacher or do that particular activity on your device. And it repeats itself. It's just like that is the thing that's going to help them. Where I guess I knew that as an educator, there were some things that I can do with students, and it was really easy for me, but then challenged in terms of pausing, talking about self-awareness, talking about perspective, talking about that where the parent and the educator in me got kind of mixed up, or it was really hard for me to separate one from the other.

And so I think that's where as teachers we're kind of challenged and need to rely on folks like yourself who bring that expertise and that kind of perspective, and that can talk to children in a manner that they understand. So would love to kind of share a story of one of the schools. Tell us a little about the school and the classroom and the students, and what did you do? What does that look like when you step into the classroom and talk with them?

Laure:

Well, obviously right now, unfortunately, it's through Zoom. So my program is 16 sessions, but so usually programs are maybe between 10 and 20 sessions of 15 to 30 minutes I would say, especially for the younger kids. For teens, it could go for one hour if there's a lot of discussions, and then it's one or two sessions per week. And then it's always a new topic, a new technique of mindfulness. And what I really try to do is not force the kids. So there's always at least one kid who doesn't want to do it, obviously.

Casey:

Sure.

Laure:

But then it's, Hey, let's just try it. And there's something that you're going to like, something that you won't like, but let's try at least to find one thing that you like and that you can practice on your own as well, outside of school.

Casey:

So beyond pausing, which is I think a really easy on board for teachers, particularly those, I mean, it's all ages, but I can really see the elementary students saying, Oh yeah, we get to really use our senses and really kind of listen. That type of takeaway that we could do tomorrow may not resonate so well with high school students or middle school students. And if we want to do a little bit more, if like okay, the pause is working, what can educators do tomorrow to say, Okay, this is something interesting. I feel like I can do this. It can be part of my pedagogical practice, especially with middle school and high school kids. What would you share with them that would definitely work?

Laure:

Well, there's nothing for sure.

Casey:

Yeah.

Laure:

But there's another technique that I really like, and it's part of mindfulness, but also other techniques. And actually, the funny thing is that it comes from observing animals. If you look at animals, if you have a pet, a lot of the time I have hummingbirds and I see them all the time looking and just looking, it's called the orientation. And that's a way for them to feel safe because our nervous system is actually scanning the environment every quarter of a second, just like, Is it safe? Is it safe? Is it safe?

So what we can do with our kids is this technique of just orient yourself. Just look around yourself and just notice either something you've never seen before or just notice something that your eye is drawn to and that's calming. Or it can go so many ways. Okay, let's find five things that are yellow. And just notice them. You can name them if you want. And then the next day, it can be another color or it can be, Okay, today let's find three things that are square and just this, somehow it just brings us to the present without judgment and tells the nervous system, Hey, I'm safe right now. And that's what animals do all the time.

Casey:

And it makes whatever you're going to do next different. I won't use the word easier, but just different, right? It's just there's something about pushing down that anxiety.

Laure:

It's kind of smoothing, finding something that's soothing. Right. And for some kids it might be listening to some music. So yeah, we're used to school being sit down for eight hours a day, don't move. And I see it more and more, I don't know when it started, but I see now kids have some stools where they can move a little bit. Some kids have headphones because noise is very triggering for them. So each kid should find one thing that soothes them. One thing that I like to do myself, so we can use any senses, first of all, but I love finding something soft.

Casey:

Okay.

Laure:

Is a touch. So just my fingers are soft enough to rub and it makes me feel safer. So if you have a soft sweater that day, just caress it.

Casey:

Cotton ball or something like that.

Laure:

Cotton ball. Yeah. I don't know if it's, for some people it might be soothing. For me, it depends if my hands are weight or dry.

Casey:

Well, we're talking with Laure Sabini from Full of Kindness and really her work in the K-12 space with adolescents all the way up through teenagers on SEL and mindfulness. One of the last things we want to touch upon, because it's not only educators that are listening to us, it's a lot of parents. And I mean, I can reflect on that as a rush in the morning to just get them to where they need to go. And then I'm at work and then a rush in the afternoon or in the evening, dinner, whatever, getting them to bed, and then there's even rushes there. And I think even more so I think we look broadly on parenting now, 2022, and how that is a challenging influence. And we talked a lot about the pausing and what teachers can do, but what have you seen around parents and what's challenging for them with their children in schools? And then what happens after school is done or before school even starts that we should be mindful of in terms of how we interact with our children, and what are some things that we should be thinking about?

Laure:

That's a big question.

Casey:

Yeah.

Laure:

I mean, obviously all that we talked about for teachers in school applies to anybody, parents or not parents. The big thing that I've been doing recently, and I want to do more, is self-compassion. Like we need to learn to start being kind to ourselves.

Casey:

Kind to ourselves.

Laure:

Yeah. Yes, you can. Yeah. I actually follow a workshop two years ago now, thanks to COVID again, about self-compassion. And I had no idea I could be kind to myself. And you seem surprised too, actually.

Casey:

Yeah. Well, we talk about self-care, but I've never kind of heard it framed in the way of that self-compassion.

Laure:

And actually, I think the word compassion, just the word compassion, I'm pretty sure a lot of people have a misconception of what it is.

Casey:

Yeah.

Laure:

So just to put it simply, if I look at empathy versus compassion, empathy is, I see and I feel your pain. So if you're in pain right now, Casey, I can feel it in my body. But compassion is I want to relieve your pain. And that's so powerful. So self-compassion is, I'm in pain, I recognize my pain, and I want to relieve my pain.

Casey:

I love that.

Laure:

And I think teachers need it a lot.

Casey:

Yes. Right now,

Laure:

And parents too. Again, I think that's the society that's making us so much pressure of you need to be the best, you need to be the next,

Casey:

Right.

Laure:

Person on TV or on social media. You need to have so many likes. And oh, it's so hard on ourself. It's like so much pressure. So on our self as adults, but on kids too, because of course as parents, you want the best for your kids. Of course. That's amazing. But actually, it's a lot of pressure. And unfortunately I mean, I don't have the worst childhood, but my mom wanting so much good for me, that was a lot of pressure. And unfortunately, I only remember homework, homework, homework.

Casey:

Right. Well, two things that I want to highlight, that pause and that self-compassion, those are things that really stick out to me. I'm thinking about it even just tonight. Not only having my kids pause in terms of their own brains and their hearts, but with all their devices and gaming devices that they have, we're going to pause that, too. And I think that idea of self-compassion is going to be a really awesome dinner conversation that we can talk about. So Laure, I want to thank you for your time lending your voice to Voices in Education. And I learned a lot. So thank you.

Laure:

Well, thank you for allowing me to share.

Announcer:

Thanks for tuning in to the Voices In Education Podcast powered by Securly, where we hear from new voices and explore new ideas about how we can reimagine education to support whole student success. If you enjoyed today's episode, we hope you'll consider subscribing to the podcast and sharing it with others who would benefit from listening. Even a small act of support helps us reach more people and make a bigger impact. For the resources from today's episode and additional details about the podcast, please visit www.securly.com/podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.