If you pay any attention to the news or social media, you’ve probably heard that we’re in the middle of a youth mental health crisis in the U.S., and you’ve probably heard this, too: we can improve overall youth mental health by teaching techniques like meditation, mindfulness, and other self-care and self-awareness practices to children and teens, starting with programs in schools.
Meditation and other similar approaches to emotion and stress management – when they take place in schools – have an official name: contemplative education. Here’s the definition:
“Contemplative education (CE) is a set of practices that may foster particular forms of awareness in students, forms conducive to the conscious motivation and regulation of learning, and also to freedom and transcendence in life more generally.”
Experts in education and child development suggest CE has a critical role to play in education in general (see link above):
“Contemplative education challenges and supports students in ways that greatly expand upon traditional academic approaches. This innovative form of education equips students with perspectives and techniques useful for bringing forth their own genuine way of connecting their heart and mind.”
That begs a question: could meditation help us address the youth mental health crisis, and at the same time, help students in schools improve overall wellbeing and academic performance?
A large-scale meta-analysis published in 2015 called “Contemplative Education: A Systematic, Evidence-Based Review of the effect of Meditation Interventions in Schools” addresses those questions. In this article, we’ll review that study, and discuss the relevance of including CE in elementary, middle, and high schools as one way to mitigate the negative consequences of the current youth mental health crisis.
Meditation For Children and Teens in Schools: About the Study
After a rigorous search of studies on meditation in schools, researchers chose 15 studies that met criteria for sample size, study design, and rigorous statistical analysis. The studies included students who participated in the following types of meditation:
- Acem: Modern technique developed in Norway in the 1960s
- Religious meditation: Christian-based loving kindness meditation
- Mindfulness meditation: Buddhist meditation based on teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program: MBSR is a modern approach to mindfulness designed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, derived from mindfulness in the style of Thich Nhat Hanh
- Vipassana: Buddhist meditation developed in the 20th century in Southeast Asia
- Yoga Nidra: Meditation common in yoga classes, includes body scans and mental imagery
- Zen: Meditation derived from Zen Buddhism
Researchers divided the meditation programs into categories based on type of meditation, duration of program, frequency of sessions, and the age of participants.
Meditation Type
- Transcendental Meditation type
- Mindfulness type
- Other, such as yoga/tai chi
Program Type
- 6 weeks or less
- 6 – 24 weeks
- 24 weeks or longer
Session Frequency
- More than once a day at school
- Daily at school
- Weekly
Age
- Elementary school: 5 –10
- Middle school: 10 –13
- High school: 13-18
Let’s take a look at the results.
How Does Meditation Affect Children and Teens?
We’ll start with the results related to overall wellbeing.
Impact of Meditation on Wellbeing
- Mindfulness meditation, including body scanning practice, showed significant reductions in self-reported anxiety among students in grades 1-3.
- TM meditation led to significantly lower state anxiety and trait anxiety in high school students
- Mindfulness meditation led to significant reductions in negative affect among high school students
- 10 weeks of mindfulness meditation yielded significantly decreases in emotional problems and depression among 10-13 year old children with history of emotional problems and depression
- Campion and Rocco (2009) found that students who meditated reported reductions in stress:
- 48 % of students reported that learning meditation at school resulted in them practicing meditation when stressed outside of school
- A mindfulness meditation study intervention among high school students showed significant reductions in:
- Emotional arousal
- Intrusive thoughts
- Involuntary engagement
- Rumination
- Another study on high school students using five, one -hour session of combined MBSR, tai chi, and Zen koans among showed improvements in:
- Well-being
- Calmness
- Relaxation
- Sleep
- Reactivity
- Self-care
- Self-awareness
- Sense of interconnection with nature
- Among 7th graders, one year of TM showed improved:
- Emotional regulation
- Self-reflection
- Self-control
- Restful alertness
In this last study, one student reported that TM:
“…made me a calm person and easier to talk to, and listen to other people.”
This data shows that among the three types of meditation, transcendental meditation has a stronger impact on well-being than mindfulness and other meditation techniques. Also, longer programs – 12 weeks or more – had a stronger effect, but some programs shorter than six weeks had a significant impact. Frequency mattered, too, with daily sessions showing the strongest effects, closely followed by weekly sessions. In addition, age mattered: high school students experienced more improvements than middle school and elementary school students.
Finally, in an interesting result, meditation programs for children and teens led/facilitated by teachers showed more consistent effects than programs led by outside instructors.
Next, let’s look at the results related to social competence.
Social Competence
The research team defines social competence and describe its role in typical child and adolescent development as follows:
“The ability to balance personal desires with maintaining positive social relationships. Social competence is recognized as an essential element in childhood development, underlying long-term interpersonal outcomes, emotional and behavioral adjustments, psychological functioning and academic skills.”
Impact of Meditation on Social Competence
- Students in the mindfulness group showed significant, strong improvements in pro-social behavior
- Students in the mindfulness group showed significant improvement in overall social–emotional competence
- After mindfulness sessions, teachers reported students were more relaxed and settled in class:
- Reduced interrupting
- Decreased classroom rule-breaking
- Students in the TM group showed reduced attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms compared to students who did not meditate
- After one year of mindfulness training, students reported improvements anger management, which led to:
- Better friendships
- More positive interactions with peers
Here’s how two students describe the outcome of one year of mindfulness training:
“Like, I’m more nicer and mature…Like I can listen to them [peers].”
“If I meditate, I feel calm and feel like I don’t have to argue with anybody.”
Again, teacher-led programs had a stronger impact on social competence than programs led by outside instructors.
Next, let’s look at the results related to academic achievement.
Academic Achievement
Although the idea of meditation in schools is not new, and many schools include meditation in their complementary and auxiliary programs, only three studies directly examined how meditation affected student grades and competency.
Impact of Meditation on Academic Achievement
- In the TM group, students in 3rd–7th grades showed improved proficiency in:
- Reading
- Vocabulary
- Language skills
- Study skills
- In the TM group, students in 9th– 11th grade showed improved proficiency on standardized tests in the following subject areas:
- Social studies
- Literary materials
- Reading skills
- Quantitative thinking skills
- A group of 125 students in 6th and 7th grade who practiced TM twice a day for 12 minutes for three months showed significant improvements on standardized test scores in:
- English
- Math
A recurring theme from teachers is that students who engaged in meditation sessions showed a new “restful alertness” that teachers believe helped improve overall academic achievement.
When we look at the information above, it’s clear that meditation has a positive impact on children and teens. However, the exact mechanisms are unclear – and this new study sheds light on what happens when children and teens meditate.
Why Does Meditation Have an Impact?
There are two schools of thought about why meditation leads to the improvements we report above. One school of thought proposes the improvements are the result of improved cognitive function, while the other proposes the improvements are the result of improved emotional regulation.
We’ll look at the evidence for each school of thought now, starting with cognitive function.
Cognitive Function
“Meditation positively influences student success by increasing cognitive functioning including attention, learning and memory in students.”
- Research shows meditation leads to observable changes in the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that regulates high level executive functions, including:
- Attention
- Concentration
- Problem solving
- Decision-making
- Goal setting
- Adapting behavior to circumstances
- Modeling and predicting outcomes
- Research also shows being in a meditative state improves:
- Concentration
- Awareness
- Focus
- Memory
- Attention
- Studies on Buddhist monks show meditation increases midbrain activity, which is associated with enhance arousal – in the cognitive sense – and increased attention.
- A group of 13–15-year-old students in concentrative meditation programs in India showed improvement in attention, compared to students who didn’t meditate
- A group of 4th-7th grade students in mindfulness programs showed improvement in attention and concentration
- Compared to students who didn’t meditate, students in the TM group showed higher scores in:
- Working memory
- Cognitive flexibility
- Reflectivity
- Analytical skills
The results show that TM had the most powerful impact on cognitive function. In addition, duration and frequency mattered: longer sessions conducted more often had the strongest impact. Also, programs led by teachers, again, had a stronger impact than those led by outside instructors.
Here’s how the study authors describe the evidence for the cognitive function school of thought with regards to improved wellbeing, social competence, and academic achievement:
“The results suggest that meditation changes the brain in ways that foster cognitive functioning both during meditation and after.”
Here’s how a student in the TM group described the outcome of leaning meditation:
“You are more concentrated, but you are just not hyper and stuff; you are just more focusing.”
Now let’s look at the evidence for the emotional regulation school of thought.
Emotional Regulation
“Meditation positively influences student success by increasing emotional regulation in students.”
- Extensive research on meditation shows changes in brain areas related to emotion and emotional regulation. Brain areas changed by meditation include:
- Hippocampus: Helps form and retrieve memories, helps learning
- Amygdala: Plays primary role in processing fear and anxiety
- Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC): Involved in decision-making, problem-solving, emotions, and empathy
- Posterior cingulate cortex (PCC): Involved in emotional responses to external stimuli, memory, and internal reflection
- Temporoparietal junction (TPJ): Integrates internal and external information from a wide variety of brain areas, including areas related to emotion and all sensory systems
- Teens who participated in a year-long mindfulness program reported:
- Greater awareness of emotions in real time
- Increased ability to process psychological stress
- Increased ability to process emotional stress
- Students in a mindfulness program reported:
- Reduced aggression
- Reduced oppositional behavior
- Decreased emotional dysregulation
- 4th and 5th graders who practiced TM reported:
- Decreased rumination
- Decreased intrusive thoughts
- Reduced emotional arousal
- Reduced emotional difficulty
- Decreased behavioral problems
- A group of middle school students reported:
- Improved emotional control
- Increased ability to handle stress
- In a study with over 10,000 elementary school, middle school, and high school students in mindfulness programs:
- 80% said meditation helped them become calmer and more relaxed
- 36% said meditation helped manage anger
A student from the study in the last bullet point observed that after meditation:
“You are a lot more relaxed, you get to clear your mind and it calms you down if you are a bit angry or stressed or something.”
Overall, these results show that mindfulness-type meditation had the most powerful impact on emotional regulation. Like the results on the effect of meditation on cognitive function, duration and frequency had an impact: longer sessions of greater frequency had the strongest impact. Also, as with all the results discussed to this point, programs led by teachers had a more powerful impact than those led by outside instructors.
Contemplative Education: How This Information Helps
We see at least two important lessons from this large-scale meta-analysis on meditation:
- Meditation can help children and teens improve wellbeing, social competence, and academic achievement.
- Meditation has a place in schools and can play a significant role not only in supporting academic achievement, but also in increasing social skills and reducing behavioral problems.
In answer to the question “Why does meditation have an impact?”, we listed the evidence for two different schools of thought. One proposed the impact of meditation is related to improved cognitive function, while the other proposed the impact of meditation is related to improved emotional regulation.
It’s clear to us that it’s not either/or. Since ample evidence exists for both schools of thought, it’s logical to conclude that both contribute to the positive impact of meditation on children and teens. That makes meditation a perfect complement to school curricula. It enhances two things that have a direct effect on school success: cognition and emotional regulation.
What could be better for children and teens?
We’ll leave that rhetorical question right there, and end with a final observation from the study authors:
