Why mindfulness and self-compassion?

Mindfulness is a skill that enables us to focus on the present moment, to be fully aware and experience whatever is happening around us without judgement and in an open, clear and compassionate way. This brings us in contact with ourselves and helps us to relate to others in an authentic and skillful way. Thereby, inner resources, and new ways of solving problems can be accessed.

The topics mindfulness, compassion and self-compassion form a rapidly expanding research field in the medical, psychological, educational and neuroscientific disciplines. Due to the positive results of numerous studies, mindfulness has become a cross-sectional topic of pedagogic innovation over the course of the last few years, and is part of various reform efforts.

Everyday school life as well as taking care of children and adolescents are full of challenges and can be very demanding for pedagogues. Personal energies often fade easily and problems such as compassion fatigue, burnout or withdrawal into a resting mode may follow. This, however, makes it more difficult to engage in relationships, which are essential in order to foster progress and resilience and are therefore the base of successful teaching and learning.

This is why the same rule should apply in stressful teaching situations as applies on airplanes: Secure your own oxygen mask first before attending to your child! If we want to be able to care well for children and teenagers, we need to be able to care well for ourselves.

Mindfulness-based-self-compassion supports our ability to kindly care for ourselves in difficult situations - in the same way as we would care for a loved one. By caring kindly for ourselves, a compassionate attitude towards ourselves and others arises and inner ressources remain accessible. This is an essential component of pedagogic activity and allows for successful interaction between students, colleagues, and parents.

Throughout the last 20 years numerous mindfulness-based pedagogical programs and methods have been developed in various countries. These programs are being increasingly applied in schools nowadays. In Austria, the first mindfulness-based pedagogical programs are being piloted in schools at the moment, among them, our project Pedagogy with Awareness and Self-Compassion.