Mindfulness and wellness: Central components of a science of learning

Abstract

In this paper we address mindfulness and wellness from the perspective of lived experiences in our personal and professional lives. In a context of a long term study undertaken in a science teacher education program at Brooklyn College, what has emerged about teaching and learning and emotions, mindfulness, and wellness has informed the design and conduct of our research, while catalyzing changes to enacted curricula, curricula in other institutions in the greater New York area, and to the lives of the researchers, student participants in the research, and those with whom they interacted. As such, each author includes autobiographical narratives to capture salient features of our emotional lives and ways in which meditation, mindfulness, and health projects intertwined. What we learned about emotions and ways in which they are expressed physiologically further instigated research on interventions and studies of a "recovered" knowledge field, Jin Shin Jyutsu. In this paper we identify touches and holds used without apparent awareness, in teaching and learning vignettes. We address possibilities of using touches, holds, and flows, that are part of Jin Shin Jyutsu, in all contexts in which teaching and learning occur and more generally to address health projects, as they arise, as complements to or replacements for Western medicine.