Latest Issue of the MindBrainEd Think Tank + (ISSN 2434-1002) 6 MindBrained Bulletin Think Tank V4i6 Mindfulness | Page 4

Think Tank:
Mindfulness
Curtis Kelly
Mindfulness as a Lotus-free Educational Objective
When you hear the term “Mindfulness,” what comes to mind? Meditation? Yoga? A
Lotus leaf? A Google image search put this photo at the top (minus the question),
which shows my guesses are on track. (My apologies to the copyright owners.)
but how does language learning fit in?
But that makes me wonder why mindfulness, which has been around as long as
Buddhist meditation, is just now becoming such a popular buzzword. I suspect it is
because our lives have just recently become phrenetic, far more so than ever before.
Mindfulness, then, might be the promise of relief from chaos, a new way to limit the
incessant outer noise by practicing an ancient, but increasingly necessary, inner
discipline.
In that light, let’s put the pop culture and lotus leaves aside and build a new set of
associations for mindfulness. How about this: stimulus management, a tool for
mental focus, and a 21 st century study skill? After all, if our learners are travelling
through a much more phrenetic world than we did, it is not unreasonable to think of
mindfulness as a skill they desperately need in order to manage it, and no less
important a study skill than note-taking, time management, and proper caffeine use.
Some language teachers are using mindfulness training for just that purpose: to give