Conscious inspiration
Growing up, I attended Catholic school for about twelve years—Our Lady of Mount Carmel Elementary School and John F. Kennedy Catholic High School—and I remember being taught on numerous occasions by the nuns, the friars, and the teachers were told to pay attention. No one ever taught us how to pay attention, and one of the things I really like about practicing mindfulness, and moving it into the education field – our teachers are learning about mindfulness and social and emotional learning, our students are learning how they need to practice mindfulness – you’re essentially giving them a mindful technique and a set of skills on how to mobilize their attention and focus it on a problem they’re dealing with in the classroom.
It teaches them how to be connected to other people, and how to be kind to other people, and how to see the problems that other people are facing and then understand that in a more compassionate way.
Mindfulness can be a great opportunity for us as a country
, for all of us to develop this skill in some way, to improve our performance… but there are some fundamental things that are essential for that, and it is the ability to concentrate, to relax, to be aware, and cultivate and develop these skills; they are going to improve your performance no matter what you are trying to do. And mindfulness, in my opinion, doing a lot of work in Congress, traveling a lot, exercising, and all these things… there’s something fundamental underneath all those activities, and paying attention, and being aware, and lowered stress levels, helps in all these situations. And I think this will have transformative effects on our education system.
I don’t care how much money we spend on education, I don’t care what programs we try to teach our children… if they don’t have the basic building block of learning, which is being able to control your attention, the rest won’t be effective . And mindfulness teaches these children how to pay attention
. It teaches them how to be connected to other people, and how to be kind to other people, and how to see the problems that other people are facing and then understand that in a more compassionate way.
Mindfulness is already having transformative effects in classrooms
in Youngstown, in Northern Ohio and across the country, but we have to step it up, [the understanding that]this fundamental skill of paying attention is essential to transforming our education system. And I can’t think of anyone in my congressional district, or across the country, who isn’t experiencing very high levels of stress today – with their families, with their children, with their jobs, if they have a son or daughter in the military, or someone who has returned from serving the country, or a variety of situations where the stress level is so high…
See more about the effects of mindfulness in schools HERE
, and many things that only increase our stress levels. We don’t sleep at night. Most people don’t sleep well. Most people deal with these high levels of stress in ways that may not be the healthiest. Mindfulness is a way for us to reduce our stress levels in a way, by taking a few minutes a few times a day, or once a day, or one minute once a day, or just anytime where you can stop for a moment and slow down… you contribute to your own health. And if we can build a healthcare system where people participate in their own healthcare by helping to reduce their own stress levels – [which]lead to heart disease and a variety of other ailments that we are trying to deal with as a country, which are becoming very, very expensive to deal with… Mindfulness is about us teaching others this technique to reduce their own stress levels, ownership their own health, helping us reduce the overall cost of healthcare spending and improving the quality of their own lives.
You know, some people wonder whether the promotion of mindfulness by a member of the United States Congress is somehow a political risk, but we should pause and think about what we’re talking about here. We ask people to slow down a bit; most people want to find a way to do that. We ask people not to get too caught up in the past or the future and to stay where they are, whether they are with their children, or with their grandparents, or with the work they are doing. Most people are okay with that. We ask people to learn how to pay attention. We want to teach our children how to develop their attention span. I think that’s something that everyone in the country wants.
We ask people to recognize situations in which their friends, neighbors and fellow citizens find themselves, and to understand and sympathize with them. Mindfulness cultivates all these qualities.
I once had the personal experience of going on an extended five-day silent retreat, and you practice and meet people who are implementing mindfulness programs in the military, in our education system, in our healthcare system, for our veterans, for our caregivers. And seeing these programs have a profound effect on people who have very high levels of stress burnout in their jobs – whether they’re nurses, firefighters or police officers – and [that]this can reduce their stress and improve their performance. Seeing all this and having a personal experience myself, I felt like I would be derelict in my duty as a United States Congressman if I didn’t try to spread this stuff into society.
When we are sworn in as members of Congress, we have a responsibility to try to help our constituents and our country.
, and knowing and having personal experience with programs that will actually transform our country on a very fundamental level. There’s no way you can see and experience all that and then ignore it and put it on the back burner and say, “That’s for another day.”
Our country is going through too much at the moment. Our soldiers suffer too much. Parents and teachers, across the board, and now is the time for us to implement this. It’s not the 99% against the 1%, it’s about the 100%, all of us together. And if we all pull in the same direction together, we will succeed as a country. And we have quality of life, a higher standard of living and more happy citizens. And so, to me, a Mindful Nation is a nation where we are connected to each other, care about each other, and are willing to do whatever it takes to help our neighbor.
Words from US Congressman Tim Ryan
Try a guided mindfulness meditation