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Let's begin with just knowing
who are you and why should we
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listen to your advice?
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That's a great question.
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My family asks me that question
all the time, actually.
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Yeah.
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So my name is Mike Kimball.
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I'm a professor of anthropology
here at the University of
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Northern Colorado.
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I also direct the Center for
Applied Contemplative Studies
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here and I'm a mindfulness
teacher that's certified through
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the Mindfulness Institute for
Emerging Adults.
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And I've been doing that,
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I've been teaching mindfulness
for well since 2016 and
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practicing mindfulness longer
than that and also wrote a book
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that combines mindfulness with
with different kinds of social
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sciences, especially cultural
anthropology.
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And the title of the book is
Ethnowise.
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There's a colon, as there
usually is with a lot of books
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like this.
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And it goes Embracing Culture
Shock to Build Responsiveness,
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Resilience and Connection.
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-So I've been thinking about
this stuff for a really long
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time and I'm looking forward to
sharing some of that with
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others. -And a lot of facets
too.
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You say emerging adults.
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You say in anthropology, all
these different facets, but
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going back to the root of it,
what is mindfulness?
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Yeah.
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So mindfulness, there's a nice
pithy little definition of it
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provided by a medical researcher
and kind of one of the leading
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figures in integrating
mindfulness into education and
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into treatment.
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He's a, like I said, a medical
researcher, John Kabat-Zinn, who
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worked on incorporating
mindfulness practices into the
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treatment of his patients who
were suffering from a lot of
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pain and both psychological and
physical pain.
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So his definition I love and a
lot of people know it and that
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is mindfulness is practicing
training your attention in a
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particular way on purpose, in
the moment, in the present
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moment and non-judgmentally.
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So those three parts are super
important.
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You're training your attention
on purpose.
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A lot of times we, our attention
is zooming around, right?
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Our phone buzzes, you know,
somebody, we hear a noise that
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that's interesting.
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We're in a conversation with
somebody and all of a sudden we
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see somebody walk by and we're
distracted.
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So our attention is always
bouncing around, but this is
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training it, you know, to be on
purpose and also in the present
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moment.
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Because let's face it, a lot of
times when we're sitting there,
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we're thinking, "What am I going
to be doing in ten minutes?
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"What am I going to be doing
next week?"
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Or going through or ruminating
about things that we did before
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and somebody's having a
conversation with us and we're
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not really there.
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Let's say it's a two person
thing.
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We're not really there.
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We're more just living in our
headspace, roving around,
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thinking about the future or,
you know, obsessing about the
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past or whatever it might,
fantasizing whatever it might
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be.
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So that second part in the
present moment is kind of a big
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one because we're actually
realizing as we do that that
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that's all we have.
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We just have the present moment.
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And the last one is
non-judgmentally, because as
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human beings, a lot of times we
kind of spend, our headspace is
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filled with criticisms of
ourselves and of others.
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We're always judging things.
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Well, I shouldn't have said it
that way.
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That kind of thing, right?
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And instead of actually just
sort of noticing what's coming
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up in the present moment, I'm
being critical of myself or
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something like that, and then
letting it go.
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We're just clinging to it.
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So we're always kind of judging
our situation.
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So the non-judgmental part is a
huge, a huge part of mindfulness
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practice, just noticing it,
whether it's positive, negative
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or neutral, letting it go.
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So that's kind of what, it's
that practice.
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It's a little bit like thinking
of it as a muscle like you would
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do in a gym.
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You work a muscle. If you don't
work it, it atrophies.
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And it's possible that in
today's world, high tech world,
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we're letting that attention
muscle atrophy.
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It's a really good way to put
it.
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So backed by science, by someone
named last name Zinn.
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Yeah, it's very fitting.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn.
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Yeah.
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And then it, with purpose, in
the present and non-judgmental,
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and all those things can fit,
especially you work with college
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students, you're a professor.
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Why should students adopt some
of this mindfulness practice?
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So we're all human beings.
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So hopefully some of the stuff I
said just now resonates because
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as human beings, we just kind of
live in that, that world where
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we're distracted and we're
concerned about past, present,
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past and future and not so much
the present or we we're reacting
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to it.
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And so, you know, students are
no different.
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We're all human.
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And, you know, I certainly in my
classroom, I notice nowadays,
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especially after the pandemic,
and I think this will go years
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and years after the pandemic has
kind of left a ripple effect
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through through human society.
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There's more anxiety in the
room.
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-There's more confusion in the
room and obviously more
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distraction because of
technology and all kinds of
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other. And I've seen it first
person so much. -And you've
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noticed this.
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And let's face it, our society
anyway doesn't really train
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young people in how to cope with
that, how to manage it.
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Instead, we're just left to our
own devices, right?
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And that's, that makes it hard.
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And so when you're coming into a
college classroom where there's
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all kinds of demands on your
time and demands on your
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attention, you are going to as
this ancient Greek philosopher,
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warrior poet, whose name escapes
me at the moment because it has
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many syllables in it, said
something like when you're in a,
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let's say, a combat situation,
you don't rise to the level of
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your aspirations for how you're
going to perform.
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You fall to the level of your
training.
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And so I think when we're in a
classroom context and there's
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again, a lot of demands on our
time and whatnot, we're going to
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fall to a level of our training.
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And right now we have no
training in general. We're not
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given that kind of training.
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And so everybody's minds are all
over the place.
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-And so I think for students
especially, just developing some
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of these mindfulness skills will
help them be successful in the
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way that they want to be. -Which
is why you're developing these
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modules, these mini courses for
students to practice and be more
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introduced.
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There's a lot that comes with
it, right?
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Just as you mentioned, I mean,
there's three big facets that
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you mentioned, the amount that
students are going to deal with
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within these courses and these
modules.
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What do they have to be done
step by step, or can they be
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done just as needed?
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Yeah.
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So there's four modules.
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There could be a lot more, but
the four that I kind of thought
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were really key to promoting
your own academic success.
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Those four models or modules
are, you know, first of all,
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just preparing for class. Again,
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when you go into class and your
mind is scattered and you're
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just thinking about all this
other stuff or you're distracted
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by your technology or whatever,
you're not there.
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You're not present in the
classroom, so how can we prepare
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for class?
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The second one is focusing on
assignment and exam anxiety.
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Not a small problem.
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So how do we get ourselves
mindfully into a place where we
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can do the best we can do given
what however we prepared for it?
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In that context, whether it's
the high pressure of an exam or
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whether it's just even getting
an assignment done, that's, "Oh,
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wow, I've waited until the due
date, which is tomorrow to get
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that done."
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And the third one is I think a
really important one for today's
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world.
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And that is how to cope with or
manage discomfort.
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Because we live in a society
where when we're feeling
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discomfort, we just want to get
away from it.
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We hate it.
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We hate discomfort.
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I had a professor when I was in
college who wrote this, this
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very eloquent sentence or two,
which I can't remember, but I
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will paraphrase it for you.
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And it was something like this.
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He was a biology professor
actually, and he studied ecology
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and so forth.
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And he said, "When you encounter
something that, some new
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information that conflicts with
your worldview, that challenges
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your assumptions and causes you
discomfort, pay attention.
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"You're about to learn
something."
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And so really, I believe that if
we learn to sort of embrace
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discomfort rather than run away
from it all the time, we
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actually are opening our minds
to learning.
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We're actually opening our
hearts too, to connecting to
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other human beings and other
living things in the world.
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But when we're afraid of
discomfort, we feel ourselves
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contracting and sort of shutting
down.
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So I want to work on that.
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And the last module is
specifically focused on how to
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mindfully read.
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This reading still happens in
higher education, even though,
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you know, the younger generation
is like taught again and again,
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again that reading is like a
caption at best or a video.
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There's not a whole lot of
reading anymore when you're on
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your phone, right.
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And so there's really not a lot
of training around that either.
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So what is it like to actually
mindfully read?
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And so I have some ideas to
suggest for that too.
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Great.
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So we're going to be practicing
different mindfulness
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techniques, trying just when it
comes to coming into a
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classroom, exams and
assignments, just coping with
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the uncomfort that is life or
school and then actually
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focusing and reading on
something.
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That's right.
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Looking forward to it.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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Me too.
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Cool. test
