Mental focus, empathy, and optimism. These are three things lacking in the early lives of many children, particularly children who suffer the trials of homelessness or incarceration. Three things that actress Goldie Hawn wants to give to children everywhere.
Let’s start off with a quick video to get you up to speed and take it from there, shall we?
Developed by Hawn and neurologist Judy Willis the program uses short duration “brain breaks” to help school children learn to regulate their own brains.
Three times daily, kids in the program are given three minute sessions of “mindfulness training.” When totaled together the sessions cover four different 30 minute lessons.
- Quieting the mind.
- Our senses.
- Practical Applications.
- Mindfulness and ourselves in the world.
The short sessions seem to work beautifully as the children involved in the profess to really enjoy them and consistently tell their friends and families about their experiences.
Marianne Schnall recently interviewed Hawn for The Huffington Post. Here is an excerpt from it’s introduction:
Working with leading neuroscientists, educators and researchers, The Hawn Foundation has developed the MindUP program, a curriculum that has already been implemented in classrooms by over 1,000 educators throughout the United States, Canada and the U.K. — and they are receiving requests to bring their program to many other regions around the world such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The cutting-edge curriculum features 15 carefully-thought out lessons designed to help children reduce stress and anxiety; improve concentration and academic performance; understand the brain science linking emotions, thoughts and behaviors; manage their emotions and behavior more effectively; develop greater empathy for others and the world; and learn to be optimistic and happy. It is a revolutionary undertaking that seeks to dramatically transform the way we view education, using methods that are backed up by the latest research about the brain — and they are already achieving impressive results in children who are learning in the MindUp classroom.
The interview goes into a great deal of depth on the subject, including detailed discussion of how the program is implemented, the findings so far, and the science supporting it. Read it here: Goldie Hawn Talks ‘MindUP’ and Her Mission to Bring Children Happiness.
As always the question is “just how effective is this approach?” While there are no completed studies of the program at this point, the initial findings of one currently in progress come to us through serendipity.
Peter B. Reiner, a contributing writer for Neuroethics at the Core, ran into UBC Associate Professor Kim Schonert-Reich on a plane recently. Schonert-Reich is one of the lead researchers on the efficacy of the MindUP™ curriculum on schoolchildren and her description on the astonishing results of the program led him to cover it in a recent post:
Kim is in the process of carrying out a proper experiment on the MindUP™ program, with some classes receive no training, others receiving sham training, and other getting the full MindUP™ curriculum. The results are not yet published, but even the non-quantitative results are compelling. When teachers who are not using the program see what a powerful positive effect it is having on kids in other classes, they clamour for having the curriculum included in their daily lesson plans. High school teachers are starting to ask for a version of the program for their students. It has turned into a full-fledged meme, spreading like wildfire in the absence of marketing. As an added benefit, MindUP™ is also making kids budding neurobiologists – each lesson is accompanied by a description of what goes on in the brain when one practices mindfulness, and kids apparently go home to their families and tell them about their brains.
Here’s a longer talk by Hawn for those who wish a more in depth examination of her views:
Early education and youth development are the most effective strategies for breaking the cycle of at-risk behavior, and helping our youth thrive. Programs like these can be a powerful weapon in the battle for our children’s futures. Forging a better present for those who are children now is the surest way to ensure a better future for them as they mature.
Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Fellow, The ChildTrauma Academy and author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and BORN FOR LOVE: Why Empathy Is Essential — and Endangered put it succinctly:
What we are as adults is the product of the world we experienced as children. The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today, we reap what we have sown.
