The goal of this research is to analyze the effectiveness of the MindYou : Mindfulness Program for elementary students. The program consists of two 30-minute mindfulness sessions every week for 8 weeks at a time. Each week in the 8 week program will focus on a separate theme such as “basics of breathing”, “handling difficult emotions,” and “empathizing with others.” Accompanied with these weekly themes will be a “play”book, which allow students to bring home their activities to engage their friends and families. During this program, the teachers will also be learning the basics of mindfulness and how to handle everyday situations with their students using mindfulness techniques and sustaining an empathizing, calm, and focused climate—a mindful climate. Each aspect of the program strives to instill and sustain a mindfulness culture. Before the program begins, after it ends, and 6 weeks after the first 8 weeks students and parents will submit questionnaires that will gauge the student’s focus, peer relationship, anxiety, mindfulness and overall mental health as it was before and after the program.
Parents will have to sign a consent form, in addition to the Lab School blanket consent, to allow their children to participate in the research. If there are any questions regarding this please contact Varun Agarwal at (831) 278-0457 vagarwal15@ucla.edu, or Dr. Robert Bilder at rbilder@mednet.ucla.edu.