Ep. 57- Conversation with Ben Painter on the power of mindfulness in the school system

Transcript

Gissele Taraba: [00:00:00] So hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele.

We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives in our world. Don’t forget to like, and subscribe for more amazing content. Today, we’ll be chatting about the importance of mindfulness in the school system. My guest today is Ben Painter, co founder and partner at Whole School Mindfulness, which is at the forefront of integrating mindfulness into education to promote wellbeing, community, and justice.

Celebrated by mindful. org as the rising voice in the field, Ben is an accomplished facilitator with over 80 days in dedicated mindfulness meditation retreats, notably at Drupadrong Monastery in Northern Nepal. Ben excels in creating engaging and safe environments that inspire growth and learning, and he is recognized for his ability to connect deeply with individuals.

His [00:01:00] workshops are designed to enhance self awareness, emotional intelligence, and resiliency, equipping attendees with the skills to incorporate mindfulness into their lives and positively impact their communities. Please join me in welcoming Ben to the show. Hi, Ben.

Ben Painter: Hey, how you doing? I’m

Gissele Taraba: good. How are you?

Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited to have this chat. I was wondering if you could start by telling the audience how you got into this work. How does, how did this sort of come about?

Ben Painter: Yeah, let’s see. It goes back to when I was a kid, actually. I had a couple of close family members who kind of went through it with fairly severe mental health challenges and mindfulness and meditation of different types was a part of their healing journey.

It wasn’t, you know, the silver bullet that made them all better, but it was a core part of it. And so I think it was kind of in my subconscious that these things could be helpful. And [00:02:00] then I went to High school in Concord, Massachusetts called Middlesex, and they had a really amazing, innovative way of introducing mindfulness to their students where there was somebody whose job it was to do that.

His title was the mindfulness director. His name is Doug Worthen. And he’s still the mindfulness director there full time. And I really just. liked him as a person and as a mentor. And so at first it was, it was kind of just like, Oh yeah, I’d heard about this mindfulness thing, knew it could be helpful.

This guy, Doug seems really awesome. I want to do whatever he’s doing. So I started to get into mindfulness then and took all the classes with him. I could, and then started going on retreats as a fairly young person. And just fell in love with the practice, what it can do to your mind. And also the communities built around the practice and yeah, it’s been a core part of my life ever since.

And the story of [00:03:00] how I got into this work with whole school mindfulness. And what we do is essentially we’re trying to launch other mindfulness teaching positions in schools across the U S. Was the model that was pioneered at Middlesex was successfully scaled once a few different puzzle pieces came together.

There was a funder that helped kind of grease the wheels of bureaucracy at the school to get it going. There was a school who’s willing and interested in integrating mindfulness. And then there was a person who was a right fit for that community had a deep practice and the puzzle pieces kind of came together.

And. The program in a school in Texas was launched and I was just graduating college. I had a first job working at this amazing organization called New Profit. And yeah, long story short, we decided to start an organization to, to try to scale this thing.

Gissele Taraba: Wow, that is so, so amazing. [00:04:00] I want to start by focusing on the part that you said that you had taken it as a student.

What was the impact for you when you, when you are a student going through that program?

Ben Painter: Yeah, it was a very deep impact for me. I think for one, it was a. It was just a cool signal from my school that, hey, this is part of what it means to be educated here. It’s, it’s, it’s just a part of what this school wants me to know.

Is these tools to help investigate your mind and relate to your own experience, process emotions, kind of get in touch with your needs so you can more effectively communicate it. So it was, it was a cool reorientation of what I thought was part of kind of a core educational experience. So that was on one hand on another hand, you know, high school I faced the normal stressors of high school experience.

I was an athlete. I, you know, wanted to get into a good college and the academics were really tough [00:05:00] at my school. So just having tools to work through all that. Was just really helpful for me. And then, I would also say it really started to impact my relationships. For one, my best friend and I both were really into it.

So it was kind of a medium of connection for us. And then I really think it did help me. Yeah, just, you know, I think, I think in order to be In relationship, well, friendship or romantic, you need to be in touch with your own experience. And so it helped me there.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. when I read this information about like what the goal of your organization is, I thought this was so, so pivotal.

And so that’s why I reached out about having you in the show. I want to talk about the state of schools in the U S is, is it anything like in Canada?

Because it’s not good. It’s not good. Yeah.

Ben Painter: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, young [00:06:00] people are having a hard time in general.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah like, I don’t know about the experience in the U. S. in particular, but I know in Canada, this has kind of been a long time coming. I do think that this, this rise in frustration with the school system in terms of sometimes the punitive approaches that are used with young people.

And in the way that intelligence is assessed through all these standardized tests and how people that are potentially aberrant don’t really fit into that mold. I think we’re starting to realize that a lot of the systems we created, including the education system. They just don’t, they just don’t work.

And so I love that your program in the schools are focusing on mindfulness, because I don’t think we focus enough on the self. So what, can you share some of the outcomes that some of you guys have seen in implementing mindfulness into the school system?

Ben Painter: Yeah, first I’ll just share, I really resonate with your, you’re just saying, and I think a core kind of reason the, you [00:07:00] know, one of the whys for me and for my team is that we do believe.

An ingredient of systemic change is the change of individual hearts and minds that, you know, the, the people in the system really matter when you’re trying to change the system. And yeah, that’s the hope for us is that, you know, mindfulness works its way into schools to districts, and it’s not only the students that are benefiting, but it’s also the adults.

The faculty staff, the administration, hopefully it changes the culture of the place and potentially the kind of more policy based structure of the place in time. Or, you know, is one of the factors that leads to positive change. That’s the hope. It’s not only about individuals. It’s about the collective and the, and the system.

Yeah. And then in terms of how, what, what the path has been for whole school, [00:08:00] we got going five years ago. And so the timing of that was a bit hectic. We really got going right when COVID was hitting.

Gissele Taraba: Made

Ben Painter: it. So on one hand, COVID totally exacerbated that. And sped up the mental health crisis young people were isolated there on screens even more than they were before not getting a lot of the, their needs met when it comes to social connection and otherwise.

Sorry, a bug. It’s coming.

Gissele Taraba: That’s the beauty of having an outdoor interview, although it’s very beautiful there.

Ben Painter: Yeah, we’ll see. If he keeps on buzzing after me, I’m going to move inside. Okay, I’m moving. So, what happened was there was, we saw increased flexibility and willingness to change. Schools and school leaders who the idea of really launching a [00:09:00] Integrated robust mindfulness program.

That wouldn’t have been an option, but COVID kind of made that an option. There was a collective change to be more willing to adapt to try to meet the needs of students. We saw that happening. But on the other hand, the need increased. And innovating in schools in a time where I’m sorry for your audience.

I don’t know if swearing is okay on this. Yeah, you can

Gissele Taraba: go ahead.

Ben Painter: You know, she was hitting the fan in schools, you know, administrators and teachers were up against so much just like the students. And so getting new programs off the ground in that time and budgets were in flux, you know, every, it was just a time of relative chaos.

So in that made it harder to integrate. But that’s all this, you know, that’s all kind of background context. What we do is we launch cohorts of what we call mindfulness directors. So folks apply to us with their partner schools. So [00:10:00] typically it’s people who are already connected to a school in some way.

So it’s an English teacher. It’s a math teacher. It’s a guidance counselor, a very involved parent who has a mindfulness practice. They’re into it. They know about it. And maybe there already is some momentum happening. Where they are already introducing mindfulness to their students or to their school in some way, and they hear about us and they say, Oh, my gosh, this is my dream job that I didn’t know could exist.

And they apply to us with support from their school administration to become a mindfulness director and we put both the person and the partner school through a fairly robust vetting process. And if they. Kind of past that, then the school we give funding to, because, you know, it’s hard to start a new thing at a school, particularly when there’s a cost associated with it.

So we, we try to act in true partnership and help get, get it going. [00:11:00] And then, and with the mindfulness director, we just try to support them a lot. In getting it going, so we bring all the mindfulness to directors together every other week to form a learning community and in that learning community, we are offering professional development on things that we think mindfulness directors got to know about.

So that’s one thing we do, but I would say the more powerful thing is just getting people together and so they can talk shop so they can support each other. And so that. There can be a mental shift and dedicated time to, Hey, I’m this person who likes mindfulness, want to get some mindfulness momentum going to, Oh my gosh, I’m a mindfulness director.

It’s my role to figure out how to strategically figure out how to deepen this in my school community and make the deepest impact. And so I think that’s something we do really well. And so yeah, since we’ve launched. [00:12:00] We’ve got 18 mindfulness directors out there in the country that we’ve been supporting.

In general, the schools like it. They want more of it. They’re seeing the impact on the well being of their students and the community culture and the mindfulness directors really value being in the cohort as part of the experience. And we’ve had some drop off mostly due to budget cuts. But In general, the programs have sustained and look like they’re on track to be sustaining in the future.

Gissele Taraba: Oh, that’s amazing. Is it only open to people in the States or is it open internationally

Ben Painter: Yeah, right now we’re only working in the United States, but I hope that other organizations pop up doing a similar thing in Canada and and elsewhere. And maybe one day we’ll be in more places.

We’ve. Thought about narrowing our geographic scope, even to a certain region of the United States. Right now we’re across the whole country, but [00:13:00] there’s something to be said about starting small.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. Cause you like, once you expand out, sometimes you can sort of lose the original quality this is why it’s, as you mentioned, it’s so important to train people in your particular Perspectives in, in the way that you want it to carry out to ensure that the quality is maintained.

Cause I think once it gets bigger, sometimes you kind of lose the vision. Why is it so important to have directors of mindfulness within the school system? Why not just have people just come in and drop and do, which is what I’ve seen. Some schools do is they come in and they have the one off where they drop off like the one person.

And for this one session, why is it so important to have a director within

Ben Painter: Yeah. And there are a lot of ways to get mindfulness into, into schools and each way it has its own set of pros and cons. We have a particular perspective that we think this one’s the best one, but that’s not to knock the other one too much because, you know yeah, there, there are different valid ways.

There are the apps. So [00:14:00] there’s, there’s ones that I would say had the benefit of being like all tech products, very scalable relatively quickly where maybe a recording is played over the loud speaker or a teacher at the beginning of their class can kind of press play and, and settle their class a little bit with a meditation.

There are the curricula based models where with some or no training, you kind of. Get teachers of other subjects to kind of teach a mini mindfulness lesson at the beginning of their class. They’re the train, the trainer models where folks will, teachers will go through a mindfulness training program to deepen their own practice, start or, and, or deepen their own practice and then introduce it to their students.

And then there are the models that you’re mentioning where an outside organization will come in, lead a mindfulness workshop or a series of workshops, and then leave. And I think the benefit of having a dedicated person or the [00:15:00] benefits of having a dedicated person, Include one, they’re a member of the community.

And I think that’s important.

Gissele Taraba: It is. Yeah.

Ben Painter: First of all, they, they, they know, and they might have a better sense of what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. And that’s one of the drawbacks of the curriculum based models is sometimes a curriculum, you know, drawn up in a boardroom in Massachusetts, just doesn’t work in Florida, or it doesn’t work.

In Kentucky or California. It’s just it’s just the cultural references don’t land. It doesn’t meet the folks where they’re at. And a person who has the skills and background can figure out how to custom tailor programming while still kind of holding on to mindfulness teaching best practice, but with some tailoring to their community way that’s going to work.

Second is in related to this idea of them being a member of the [00:16:00] community we’ve been doing as we’ve seen different mindfulness directors go through their work and we’ve seen what’s been more successful and less successful. One of the competencies that we believe a good mindfulness director have is, is really related to leadership and relationship building just as much as it is.

You know, really clearly defining mindfulness and leading a good mindfulness session, it’s about figuring out. As almost an entrepreneur of mindfulness in a fairly complicated system, you know, who should I grab lunch with and try to make them an ally to help build and establish my program? What teachers might be game to have me drop into one of their classes?

What students have social capital? And I might recruit as a mindfulness ambassador to really help grow the culture within the students. So it being a member of the community is essential for those kinds of things. Second is the [00:17:00] more time this person has. the more that they can find opportunities to offer practices to more people.

So we have some mindfulness directors who are full time with a full class load because they’re figuring out, okay, this student has this drop block. At this time, I can offer a class. Then this student has this little in between time after school before sports, I’m going to offer something. Then this group of faculty right after faculty meeting has this block.

I’m going to do this then. And they’re just finding the nooks and crannies where they can get as many mindfulness groups going as possible. And so there’s a real thing to just more time equals more successful mindfulness integration. And then lastly, if it’s somebody’s job and they are really working on developing themselves as a mindfulness teacher, They’re deepening their own practice, they’re attending professional development, kind of learning communities around [00:18:00] deepening their, their journey, and they have their own practice.

That’s really different than putting someone through a mindfulness one on one workshop and then asking them to teach mindfulness. Like we wouldn’t do that with other things. If someone didn’t know how to swim, we wouldn’t throw them in a pool for an hour and a half and then say, okay, now go teach students how to swim.

It’s just, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t do it. For sure. Yeah,

Gissele Taraba: definitely. Definitely. Yeah. I’ve

Ben Painter: been yapping, so I’ll stop.

Gissele Taraba: No, no, no. This has been perfect. I am in full agreement with what you said. I’ve had personal experiences in trying to implement mindfulness in an organization. This was a child welfare agency because I saw the amount of stress that.

The workers were in and I had had very similar experience to what you were talking about. Number one, having that role emphasizes the priority that the organization sees it as a pivotal role within the system, rather than, oh, here’s a little class on the side that you can take or not take. And I think this is why, I mean, you had mentioned leadership, why [00:19:00] having the leadership on.

On role is so important as well as understanding the culture and how to navigate, you know, like opportunities, like you said, in, in being able to promote that. What has been the feedback from leadership at all these different organizations is it a challenge to engage? Is it easier to engage or has it been sort of a mixed bag?

Ben Painter: With the leadership of the schools?

Gissele Taraba: Yeah, the leadership in the schools. Yeah.

Ben Painter: Yeah. It’s, it’s been a mixed bag. I mean, it, one thing we’ve seen is you know, the systemic inequities that are playing out impact the ability for school leaders to have the headspace to really focus on a new initiative, even if they think it’s great.

So for, for example, You know a wealthier, whiter community in general we’ve seen has more spaciousness than a more low [00:20:00] income,

Gissele Taraba: predominantly

Ben Painter: BIPOC community facing a lot of systemic stuff,

Including gun violence and, and, and, and so getting an hour on the principal’s calendar to talk about the strategy of mindfulness integration sometimes isn’t possible in communities.

Communities that are facing more systemic oppression. So yeah, it’s, it’s been a mixed bag. It’s correlated to other broader systemic themes, I’d say.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. That’s very important. Sorry, go ahead.

Ben Painter: But I was just going to say in general you know, school leadership really cares about the wellbeing of their students and you know, they’re facing their own set of challenges that they’re trying to work through in their own set of metrics that they’re trying to improve.

And yeah, the best case scenario is when we find folks who are really aligned and hold those metrics in balance with just, Hey, what What do we want to offer here as a core [00:21:00] educational component? And not just thinking about something like, you know, reducing X or improving Y score. Yeah.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. Yeah.

And, and so thank you for mentioning that because sometimes schools are so focused on those metrics that they kind of miss the larger picture. As you were talking, I thought it’s so interesting that what are the outcomes that I have seen from the whole mindfulness implementation is that the decrease in that punitive approach of the schools towards the students, improvement in behavior,

 Including improvement in violence. And so, isn’t it’s funny how sometimes that circle, you know, you’re caught in that violence, which means you don’t have a lot of time to implement something that could potentially help with the violence. And so it’s sort of like we’re caught in that

 circle struggle, if you may. And how do we support then those communities so that they can create that space to implement something that could potentially really help them get out of that. And what, where’s our responsibility in that, right?

Ben Painter: I was just going to say that that’s totally a rich topic.

 the [00:22:00] pitfall that I think is Good to have on a mindfulness teachers radar or a school administrators radar is, you know, the motivation for the person teaching mindfulness impacts the way they teach it and impacts the way that it will be received by the students. And one way that I think mindfulness in schools shows up in a less effective way.

Or a weaponized way is when it’s a tool for classroom management. When your reason for introducing mindfulness is not, you know, to give young people these amazing tools to help them understand their minds, but rather it’s to get them to sit down and shut up and focus on the thing, you know, and, and when, when it has that energy,

It’s going to feel like a control mechanism masked in the charade of well being.

Gissele Taraba: Oh, I love that you said that because the energy [00:23:00] behind anything that you do is so important and the students are so perceptive. I’ve had many conversations with students and I have my own children in their ability to perceive.

Intention is so, so amazing. And so they’d be able to see right through that anyways. But I think you were talking about mentioning motivation and that’s, I think, where having your own practice. Is important so that you can be really, really aware of why am I really doing this?

Is this from a place of ego? Is this from a place of love? Is this from a place of openness and sharing? Or is it to be able to, I’m just having a different tool now that I’m trying to use to control behavior. One of the things that I know that I have observed within the Canadian school systems is that the punitive attempt at like the punishing, especially if there are behavior issues.

And I can only imagine that things like in the States, especially, it’s probably a little bit worse there in terms of gun violence and in terms of [00:24:00] like mass shootings and so on. Have you had any experiences in terms of where mindfulness has helped? Individual sort of address some of those more difficult challenges, but from a place of compassion and from a place of love.

Ben Painter: Yeah, we have, one mindfulness director is coming to mind in particular, and she is. She’s truly amazing. Maybe I’ll, I’ll see if you might want to have her as a next guest.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah, that’d be great.

Ben Painter: And she’s working in a community that is experiencing gun violence. And what we’ve seen is that she has really taken on a role in her community as a leader.

People come to for healing and community healing in the context of a lot of hard stuff. And it’s a powerful thing to see and, and to hear about [00:25:00] a community coming together using mindfulness and other healing practices as a, as a vehicle for connection, as a vehicle for building community, as a vehicle for healing in the context of really immense struggle.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. How did the students react to the mindfulness? is there any resistance in the beginning and then sort of like an embrace or is there just kind of like, let’s go.

Ben Painter: I just spent the day With one of our mindfulness directors, just following him around.

And he has done a cool thing where he he’s actually a mindfulness director at the district level rather than individual school level. So he works across a few different schools and there’s one of only one of him. So he decided to start a mindfulness ambassador program

where

he would work with young people to support them in leading mindfulness for each other.

And for younger students. And [00:26:00] so it was such a cool day. We spent a day walking around and you go from class to class, you’d come in, everyone was so excited, hand shot up in the air saying, I want to lead a mindfulness strategy. I want to lead a mindfulness strategy. And then it was really the young people steering and him acting as kind of like one, somebody who’s creating the space for that to happen and sustaining the culture where that was a cool thing to do.

And students wanted to do and then coaching. The young people on leading and it was just so cool. So I think the mindfulness directors, that’s one strategy. And one thing that we’re seeing is when young people are really into it it really latches hold. And when they are seen as experts and leaders that’s a great way of building momentum.

I want to see, I don’t know if I show a video, will that translate or not really.

Gissele Taraba: Potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Try it out.

It’s so important for young people [00:27:00] to take on those leadership roles and also I find that young people are more likely to do what other young people are saying than some adults.

Like, you know, like, it’s so funny as a mom, before in the beginning, I was like, literally like their whole world. And over time, you just kind of play the back role in their friends. So it’s become really important, their peers, what’s important to them and so on.

And so that’s the perfect venue for them to kind of, for you to embed a system or a process that will live beyond that director will leave beyond that person. Cause like you said, you’re changing a culture, right? So I think that’s pretty cool. I think that’s pretty cool.

Ben Painter: I’ll try to share. Yeah. It’s, it’s letting me share my screen.

I’ll just pull up some quotes from some of our one of our recent visits. This will be 30 seconds.

Gissele Taraba: Sorry, I don’t really know how to like say this. It’s like, it’s weird being happy in my life again. [00:28:00] My favorite part about mindfulness is that the is the freedom that it gives you, you can do like anything you want.

Other: But if we were to do more mindfulness in different schools, We will act more kinder, we will be more peaceful, less stressful, be more productive, and probably spend some more time with family and nature.

Ben Painter: Yeah. So just a couple little quotes,

Gissele Taraba: beautiful, beautiful, and you know, from the mouth of babes. Right. It’s so true. Like being able to tap into that happiness that the young girl was talking about. Because in a way, and I’m going to be totally honest in a way, I feel like school The structure conditions kids out of that joy and happiness, like it, you know, like sit down in a structured classroom, you go through all these classes, you’re not learning necessarily, at least in the public system, you’re not really learning how to focus on your joys and passions.

You have like a specific structured. And so for the students to say, Oh, I can be happy again. I can tap into that joy that was always within me. I think it’s [00:29:00] pretty powerful.

Ben Painter: And another, another thing is just, you know, this, this generation is up against unique conditions that no other generation has been up against before when it comes to COVID, but also when it comes to tech.

Yeah. No other generation has had. Anywhere near this level of sophistication when it comes to companies and phones, really effectively using sophisticated algorithms to try to distract and nab attention and keep young people distracted and on their devices. And so I think there’s also something to be said about now more than ever having it be part of the educational experience to cultivate autonomy over your own attention.

As a way to just resist the forces that are really harming young people, [00:30:00] the data is is clear and becoming more and more clear that social media in particular is just destroying young people’s mental health. And so, you know, we can. We can bank on social media being regulated, but I think also at the same time, there has to be a cultural pushback led by young people.

And our system should be supporting young people in figuring out a more healthy way to relate, to relate to tech.

Gissele Taraba: I’d love that. You just said that is the thing that popped into my mind is, you know, when you look at tech, tech is moving so quickly. Information moves so quickly. I don’t know if you’re on TikTok, but the information that just comes at people constantly all the time and you’re open to millions of people in all of their information and people don’t listen to the news anymore.

 so the subjects that they’re teaching in school. Are pretty outdated considering it takes so long to change a curriculum, you know, it takes months, like as a university prof, like contract. [00:31:00] And for that, for you to do a curriculum, it takes about eight months. Think about AI in eight months. Like, I don’t think so.

It’s like, it’s already outdated. So the fundamental thing that kids will lead to learn is about managing themselves. Managing their minds, managing their hearts, emotional regulation to, like you said, choosing where they put their energy and attention. That’s what school needs to be rather than it be here.

Some subjects that you can Google probably tell you about in like 2 seconds. It could literally search the entire internet and tell you what the answer is. If we don’t need that anymore. So what is school supposed to be? And I think that’s, this is the conversation, which is, is about managing ourselves and managing our minds and hearts.

And I think that’s how we’re going to really create changes in culture. And I think [00:32:00] this is where young people in, in, I do honestly believe that things happen for a reason. I think things are by design, so I think the whole covid situation is as a world. We needed to shake up.

The systems were outdated. It doesn’t work. And so I think, you know, and when you were talking about implementing your initiative, as as difficult as it might have been, you also said that people wouldn’t have been probably as receptive had it not been so urgent. Right and so, but it, it allowed something that is so, so critical and important to be implemented for students that needed it at the time.

Time that needed it the most and now obviously gaining momentum. And so I think that is so, so important, especially the, the, the leadership of young people. What’s your dream? Like, how big do you want to go?

Ben Painter: My, my dream is that mindfulness would be considered an integral part of what it means to be educated at scale.

And

and that, yeah. And that going back to kind of how we [00:33:00] started the conversation, just the notion of school and the systems of school would be. redesigned to really center the needs of young people and the world that they’re inheriting and a rethinking of, Hey, what, what do we think young people should know?

Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s the dream.

Gissele Taraba: young

Ben Painter: people would, would, would leave school equipped to face these and work through these. Global challenges that are increasingly global, not just local with clarity and compassion and effective communication and

Yeah, that they can keep going, keep advancing, but you know, evolution of human consciousness is the dream.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. [00:34:00] it’s a wonderful dream. And, and not like a dream dream as in like, Oh, this is a dream. Maybe someday I do think that beyond any other time in human awareness, we are at the precipice of being able to, because things are shifting so much and so fast.

And so. like you said, this is really a time for us to really ask ourselves, what do we want kids to know? Like, what sort of humans are we creating? What kind of human consciousness are we creating? Because everything that we have done up till now, when you think about the school systems, and I don’t know your experiences in the school system.

Mine were varied and I’m I have numerous degrees. And so, I mean, I was the perpetual student, but there was lots of downsides. And I see it now in my kids. And I’m kind of at a point where I’m like, I don’t know what to tell my kids, to be honest, because they don’t have, like, In your beautiful schools, a mindfulness director, that would be amazing.

They don’t, we talk to them about [00:35:00] mindfulness. We talk to them about compassion. We talk to them about loving themselves and therefore being the vehicle to love other people. But sometimes I don’t listen to us cause they’re like, Oh, what do you know? You’re just old. Whereas like. If it’s a, I have a 17 year old and a 14 year old, so they’re like, you know, like you kind of dropped off the coolness chart and you know, now they’re like, oh, because to be honest, it’s a natural evolution for children to want to do things completely opposite to their parents because they need to figure it out for themselves.

So I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s great that my kids are doing that. The only thing we can do is just offer things on the table and say, okay, this is what we believe is what our perception, but in my ideal bubble world, in terms of school system, I want them to be taught by the best. What I mean is I want them to be.

Exposed to the most compassionate, the most loving, the most mindful, the most peaceful, the most [00:36:00] abundant, the most successful. Right. And so for that to be open to any child.

So the, your program is really only to elementary schools or are you planning on expanding beyond the other educational systems?

Ben Painter: No, we have a pre k to university.

Gissele Taraba: Oh, okay. That’s good to know. That’s good to know. Cause I only assumed for some reason that it was elementary. I don’t know why I thought

Ben Painter: that. We have the whole gamut.

Gissele Taraba: Oh, that’s good. So my Americans listeners who partner up with your school, especially if you’ve got mindfulness experience and then go out and apply.

Ben Painter: Yeah. Check us out. And before. Before I forget, just thinking about your kids I don’t know if they’d be into this at all. But when I was their age ish, I went on these, there are the, there’s this organization called Inward Bound Mindfulness. Have you heard of that?

Gissele Taraba: No.

Ben Painter: They basically run meditation retreats for young people.

Meditation retreat slash camp. It’s kind of like [00:37:00] you’re meditating or doing meditation esque things, mindful movement and things like that for about five hours a day, but then you’re also playing. Kickball and oh,

Gissele Taraba: okay. That’s cool. Yeah. .

Ben Painter: Yeah, it’s, and those. Retreats are truly amazing. They haven’t made like some of the, you know, most esteemed teachers out there crawl out of the woodworks because they want to work with young people.

Gissele Taraba: And that’s beautiful.

Ben Painter: Yeah. Just couldn’t recommend it enough. I’ll check it

Gissele Taraba: I would say that my kids would give me the face, right? Especially my son. My son is so into electronics. We were just having a conversation about it this week. Because it’s a form of socialization, right?

All of his friends go on it and they go on it for hours. Like me, we tell them you have to live a balanced life. So you have to go outside, you have to do this. You have to join sportsBut for parents that are busy, for parents that are just trying to make it themselves, like it’s very easy for them to go into that kind of community.

But there is a form of [00:38:00] socialization like these sorts of kids. So how can we potentially incorporate. moments of mindfulness and not make that wrong. Right. Do you know what I’m saying? Like how, how do we enable kids to find the balance so that then as they start to see the difference in how they feel, cause they get an immediate hit from these electronics.

Ben Painter: We all do. I do.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. And in the beginning, when I started meditating, I was practicing mindfulness. It felt really gritty and terrible, but over time, it’s just one of the most beautiful things you can do is like meditate and be in the present moment. It just feels like, Oh, amazing.

Ben Painter: I was just going to say, but it doesn’t always feel like that right away. That’s, that’s the tricky part.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah.

Ben Painter: On retreats, sometimes I find the first couple days really difficult. It’s like going through withdrawal or something from the attention, having so much juicy stuff to land on and bounce around in.

It’s [00:39:00] like, and just like, okay, I’m going to be a spaciousness. And then you settle in after a few days and then it’s like, oh yeah, I remember, I remember why I do this. But. Yeah. So it makes that’s a challenge in introducing this stuff to young people.

Gissele Taraba: And so thank you for mentioning, because I think that’s very important.

It’s not just for young people, though, because I remember experiencing that myself. I went to this it’s sort of, it was sort of like a silent retreat at a, a monastery. And I was, for some reason, separated from my husband and my friend, like, I was put at a separate. Building, I guess I was supposed to be paired with someone else, but I just ended up being me

So I wasn’t sleeping very well. I don’t know. That brought up a whole bunch of things for me. And so the first 2 days, like you said, I, first of all, I was on no sleep and they would wake us up like at 6 or 5 o’clock in the morning to meditate and listen to the monks chant. And I literally by the 2nd day wanted to throw the book at somebody, but I kind of started to breathe through it.

And then, like you [00:40:00] said, it was. Amazing. I didn’t even want to leave. Then you start to be so present with yourself how did the mindfulness directors help people get over that hump? Like what’s, what’s usually the conversation with young people or maybe even some of the adults about how to, to navigate those difficult moments?

Ben Painter: It’s a cool question. mindfulness directors have varying strategies.

Gissele Taraba: How do you manage it?

Ben Painter: Yeah, I’ll riff on like what I’m, how I would think about that. I think one of the primary ones is to make it optional.

If you’re

mandating that people meditate and it’s like you have to, then that’s just not the best way to introduce it to people.

So some of our mindfulness directors will have a thing where it’s like, Hey, we’re going to be meditating. It’s mandated that you are respectful and don’t interfere with other people. [00:41:00] Love it. But if you don’t want to meditate, no problem. Yeah. I think that’s one there’s not like a force or coercion.

It’s an offering that people can take or not.

Gissele Taraba: I love that.

Ben Painter: Then I think there’s like. Myth busting, you know, there’s so many conceptions and misconceptions of mindfulness floating around out there. One is that you have to be in a very certain posture in a beautiful idyllic place and your mind has to be blank and thoughts are the enemy.

So there’s like a good amount of myth busting and re re myth busting that has to happen again and again. Because one of the most common things you’ll hear is that, Oh, I’m not good at mindfulness. It’s not for me.

Gissele Taraba: I’m not good at meditating. Yeah.

Ben Painter: Yeah. And then there’s like offering a variety of different practices [00:42:00] that can help people establish their relationship with their present moment experience.

And for everyone, it’s not going to be eyes closed, sitting down meditation. It might be like, especially with younger folks, younger students, our mindfulness directors. will take other activities and make them a mindfulness exercise. So we have this one mindfulness director, that’s a hybrid gym teacher and mindfulness director and leading gym games and people are moving, having a fun time.

And then there’s moments of pausing. It’s like, all right, check in. How are you relating to your experience? What energy is flowing through you right now? How does your body feel? Okay, back to the game. And, you know, so getting creative and figuring out what’s going to work for the specific culture. And then I think there’s also ways where tapping into the whatever struggles, the young people are facing and offering mindfulness within the context of [00:43:00] Text of helping address those things.

So if students are facing a lot of test anxiety, you can kind of point mindfulness at that. If students are wanting to improve their athletic performance, that that’s a door to getting curious about your mind and how it works. And that’s a great door that works for a lot of people. So there’s also those, you know, mixing up the doorways.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah, that’s thank you very much. That was great. And as, as you were talking it, it occurred to me how often we don’t teach like young people about themselves. Like we teach about the body as like a 3d here’s your brain. Here’s a, but they don’t really get to know themselves. Like, who are you as a person?

I did an assignment with my young people and I said so think about all your identities. Then from that place, who are you? Then try to strip yourself from your identities. Then who are [00:44:00] you? And it was like, some of those, some of their brains exploded. Some of them were like, I can’t compute. I’m a robot.

I don’t exist. I’m like, okay, cool. Like, there was just some interesting answers, but there’s so little self awareness, like understanding. Who are you as a being? Like, who is this person? How does my body work? Like all of those things. And how does my mind work and how do they work together? And I think that’s the gift that mindfulness brings to it’s becoming aware in that for me, mindfulness just kind of opens the door to compassion and love, which is if you don’t mind what I’d like to talk about next, because it’s present moment awareness on how you’re feeling.

Ben Painter: And so how has mindfulness potentially helped the students become more in touch with their self compassion, self love possibly? That’s a cool question.

 I think the takeaway is that you can [00:45:00] cultivate what you want to cultivate. In your mind,

and,

You know, depending on who you talk to and what tradition mindfulness can have a very, very specific definition or it’s an umbrella term for a large swath of contemplative practices.

But

here in the United States, at least like something like a loving kindness practice or a self compassion practice would fall under the general term of mindfulness.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah. And

Ben Painter: so yeah, doing practices that help one rest in the present moment and then cultivate compassion, love, empathy for herself and others, I think are, are great.

Gissele Taraba: in my experience. The way that mindfulness really helped me cultivate compassion was I wasn’t aware of how much I was suffering. I wasn’t aware of how I was treating myself with my thoughts. I wasn’t aware of what I was creating, [00:46:00] but it wasn’t until I got fully present with myself and accepted full responsibility for what I have, what I continue to create.

Like I’m not responsible for the people that have hurt me, but I was responsible for continuing to hurt myself. But without the present moment awareness, I wouldn’t have been aware of what I was choosing and then could therefore choose something different, potentially. And I think that’s where mindfulness, at least for me has been really instrumental.

And even checking in with my body, as you were saying, checking in with, you know, where am I holding the tension? Where am I, you know, what’s happening for me in this moment and what do I need? In order for me to then be able to listen with an open heart to Ben or to someone else, or to be able to forgive or have a difficult conversation.

And so that’s why from, from my perspective, what you’re doing is so, so instrumental. And I really, really do hope that it expands as big as bold as you are desiring. It

Ben Painter: makes me think of [00:47:00] one metaphor that I really love, which is and hopefully it’ll resonate as a Canadian. Which is like this metaphor.

It’s like a sledding metaphor.

Gissele Taraba: A what? A sledding. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Ben Painter: Sledding metaphor. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, like when you go sledding and you go in the same track again and again, and each time you go in it, the grooves get a little deeper and it gets more automatic. Like you don’t have to steer the sled anymore.

It just, and you know, our minds kind of work like that.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah.

Ben Painter: Or, you know, every time you look in the mirror, a thought stream comes up about, Oh, I wish I looked a little different or you’re to this or you’re to that. Or every time you see that person, the, these unconscious stories we have about them because of the way they look, dress, talk, act, whatever play out and we don’t even know we’re in the track.

It’s just happening. What mindfulness. And help us do, and this also relates to like, [00:48:00] love, compassion, and proving school cultures. It can give us a bit more of a bird’s eye view so we can see what’s happening. And maybe we’ll make the choice to stay right in the track. Or maybe we’ll make the choice to find a new one, but without the choice, the track will just keep, the trenches will just keep getting deeper and

Gissele Taraba: deeper.

Yeah. And I love that you said that because from my perspective, curiosity is the stepping stone to compassion, like without judgment, just like you say, okay, I can continue to choose to go on the same track or I can make a different choice. And it’s a place of non judgment that I think is really opens us up to that.

I’ve got a couple more questions before we wrap up. The first one is I’m asking all my guests what’s your definition of unconditional love?

Ben Painter: Oh, cool. The word like unconditional, what it brings to mind to me is that you love them regardless of what they do which to me maybe gets to, [00:49:00] you love something

about them that is deeper. Or then even like the more surface level things it’s, it’s like an unchanging love of, who they are underneath all the stuff,

All the changing stuff and all the ways that we might mess up or lose our way.

Gissele Taraba: Thank you for that. I was wondering if you could tell the audience where they can find you, where they could potentially apply, like, you know, what are you working on?

What do you want to share with the audience?

Ben Painter: I would say, yeah, we can check us out at wholeschoolmindfulness. org. And we also have not super active social media, but they exist on all the, you know, normal ones and yeah, a few different ways of entry for partnering with us. If you’re a person in a school who [00:50:00] this sounds like your dream job, check us out and navigate to the, become a mindfulness director tab and fill out the form.

So you get that email blast when the applications open up, if you’re a school leader or a district leader, and you’re hearing. This, and you think that this might be a strategy that you want to try out also on our website or reach out to us on the contact page for partnership. And then lastly, if you’re hearing this and it sounds like something that you might want to support philanthropically we are largely dependent on philanthropy to, to make this work happen, which I think is normal.

Like private philanthropy oftentimes catalyzes. Change that then is taken over by public funds, but philanthropy is the tip of the spear for getting this stuff going. So, if you want to partner with us, we’re always happy to, yeah, make good use of [00:51:00] funds.

Gissele Taraba: Yeah, for sure. And are you available to support anyone who you know, anyone in Canada who might be interested or maybe internationally who might want to reach out and say, hey, how do we do this?

Can we partner with you guys? So that we can find out and make this more of a global initiative.

Ben Painter: Yeah, right now, we would have to go through some legal hurdles and in order to be a 501c3 working internationally. It’s just a different thing. We haven’t done that yet, but always game to hop on a call. To partner.

Yeah.

Gissele Taraba: You heard it. You can at least get a phone call. Yeah. Thank you so, so much, Ben, for all the amazing work that you’re doing. And for taking the time out to chat with us about this very, very important conversation about the need for mindfulness in the school, especially the role of a mindfulness director.

And please join us again for another episode of the loving compassion podcast with Giselle. See you [00:52:00] soon.

Ben Painter: Yeah. Thanks, Gissele. That was such a cool conversation.

Gissele Taraba: Oh, thank you so much.

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