School really stresses me out, and I get really uptight and just freak out.
Homework stresses me out, so I go out with my friends.
The future, like about college.
My math class.
My parents stress me out, so I go hang out with friends.
My grades stress me out.
My family stresses me out.
There's so much stress in teens' lives today, in terms of tests and performance, and then
also all of the electronic stimulus.
Mindfulness helps them to take a step back, slow down, reconnect to their physical body,
the physical reality of what's happening in the present moment.
Meditation makes me happy, and it focuses your attention on the present moment instead
of getting you sidetracked on thoughts in your head.
It stands for Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, a non-profit organization.
We do work in the Virginia DC area, and in southern Virginia in the Appalachian region.
So when we go into schools, it depends on each school's setup and what they're asking
for.
In some situations, we might just go into a health class, and under the guise of stress
management and bring in a set of practices that will help teenagers deal with test anxiety,
stress in their life, and learn ways of relaxing the body and calming the mind.
We're going to do it by mixing it up.
We're going to engage with some playful ways of connecting with each other, and with why
would we even want to practice mindfulness?
Why is it relevant to you as a teenager?
There's actually a lot of overlap around the parts of the brain that are being developed
in adolescence, and the parts of the brain that are affected by mindfulness.
It's the whole prefrontal cortex and the executive function that mindfulness meditation
has been shown to improve, the abilities of the prefrontal cortex, which then is able
to better regulate the amygdala, which is the kind of reptilian part of the brain that
is fight or flight, strong emotions, freeze.
Exactly the time when teens are starting to develop the ability to deal more effectively
with those emotions, these skills help them to do that.
The mind ball, so the sparkles are kind of like your thoughts when you're stressed out,
and then what we're trying to do is learn these techniques so they help settle.
This is a stillness in the mind and the body, so we can seek the early.
I think it's really important for teens to learn mindfulness at that tender age because
I think that the pressures that they undergo, be it through school or through their parents
or their peers, it's a lot to take in and to be able to find ways to get more space
around what's happening in their lives.
In 2007, we held the first teen retreat in Virginia.
That all came together because of a man named Maury Cook.
He's a businessman who lost his teenage son in a car accident when his teenage son was
19 years old.
During the time of his grieving and the devastation of that loss, a friend of his introduced him
to the practice of meditation.
So he credits meditation really with saving his life.
And so he then had this passion to try to figure out how to share with young people especially.
So he found out about these folks out in California who were running teen meditation retreats.
And where suffering comes from?
Maury Cook, out of his son's memorial fund, went ahead and covered all the expenses to
fly.
This crew of teachers to Virginia and to create this first teen retreat.
This model was crafted over 20 years of time from, it was started by some folks at IMS,
Michelle McDonald and Steve Smith, and then they brought it to California.
By the time it came to Virginia, it had a lot of that already together.
Knowing that their happiness depends on their own actions and not upon our wishes for them.
So I actually began meditating as a teenager myself on teen retreats in Massachusetts,
the Insight Meditation Society.
And that's actually the lineage of where these retreats originally came from.
When you go to school in such a high stress environment, it's always like, think about
your future, it's not, colleges are going to go to, so it's like, really good to come
here and just be in the present and not have so many worries.
I really like getting away from like the hustle and bustle of society and just relaxing.
I think giving teenagers this opportunity to have safe, authentic community for that
sense of belonging and connection and to develop their inward-looking and self-identity nested
inside of that, it's like a mental health, another layer of the immune system, it's
the mental health immune system.
This is my first meditation retreat, I'm looking forward to it.
I'm learning how to calm down more and like control my anger, so I want to get those two
things.
My mind's always caught up in the past or the future, so this will probably be like
one of the first times that I can actually forget about everything.
The day on an IVME retreat is quite full.
We wake up at 6.30 in the morning and we have our first meditation at 7 and we actually
are in silence through the morning, through breakfast, so the teens get an experience
of a silent meal and eating meditation.
Then there's a long period of meditation in the morning, so sitting and walking meditation
and then each day we have small group discussions, there's also in the afternoon a period of
yoga and then a workshop period where the staff on the retreat can offer art or mindful
sports or theater or drumming, dancing.
Each evening we have a loving kindness practice and that's often one of the favorite things
for the teens and the wisdom talk.
There's also a fair amount of free time, after each meal they get to hang out and play instruments
and check around.
I understand that it's scary and it sounds really weird, but I think you really need to
just, it's one of those things where you just need to like plunge yourself in it and you'll
be grateful later.
I know like I go home and say, tell my friends about it, they're like, you're weird, that's
not fun, that's weird.
So what happens on these retreats is you get a small number of teens, 20 to 35 show up
and they don't just have to be there to interact and learn from adults.
There's this horizontal layer of transmission that happens where the teens, who are the
veteran teens you might say, are sharing with those other teens how do we do this, how do
we make this environment happen.
They get a chance to tell their story, to be seen and to be heard for who they really
are and that's where the I be me part of the name came from.
It's a place where it's safe enough where I get to be me and you get to be you and we
all together get to create this incredible community.
I'm good at hiding my emotions and I do that a lot, but here I didn't even have to and
I just let myself go.
Having the option to do that and to like get so real is a really important thing being
a teenager and being able to get to express yourself like that.
And so you have this small group that meets twice a day that you get to get really seen
and heard and connected with and then you come out of that and you go back to the larger
group of 35 people of teens and adults and to spend that time inside looking and then
be able to come out and share that and have it be received, you know, in a mindful way.
I never thought I could stop thinking before.
When you stop thinking it's almost like you know more in a weird way because then you can
like I felt so much more clarity so it's like I stopped thinking but I know more now.
I know how to deal with stress much better and I know that it's okay to be yourself and
that you know there's no such thing as normal, just be yourself.
These kids are actually my teachers in so many ways and they've so much healed my own
inner 14 year old.
So I'm really grateful to be a part of IBME, it's totally changed my life and it's changed
how I share the Dharma.
It's very hard growing up where I am and I can't be myself, I cannot fully express myself,
I get judged.
This is a place where you can come and relax but also look within yourself.
And now we've been teaching these retreats for five years in the same place so some of
our teens I've seen grow up from 13 to 18, 19 years old and I've just seen a dramatic
impact on an improvement in our lives from coming back many times a year.
I undertake the commitment to speak truthfully and kindly.
When I'm talking to my mom, when I'm dealing with my dad, when I'm dealing with all the
stuff that's happened, I can just take a step back, you know, understand that sometimes
you need to step back and not believe everything you think.
I learned that the best thing for myself is to love myself.
Someone really inspiring said that no one deserves you to love more than you do.
And I think I'm on that path.
I had been closing myself off to the world and I've been hiding what I was really feeling
and then with the support of my peers and the staff I was able to let that out and just
open up my heart.
I love you all.
So the first retreat that my girls went to, they had a lot of opportunities to connect
with nature and to connect with themselves and to connect with their peers in a really
deep way.
When she came to the retreats and saw the kids and especially the teachers, it's really
quite dramatic that she is so energized.
There's the neurons that are in the brain, there are the neurons that are surrounding
the heart, there are the neurons that are surrounding the gut.
And this entire embodied brain, as Daniel Siegel talks about, is what we're helping
the teenagers to work with.
So they can sit down and do this practice that they know now is nurturing to the calming
of the mind, relaxing the body, but also nurturing of the heart and bringing the whole system
into coherence.
That feels good.
So they're motivated to do it.
Being back and being around all these people who weren't on the retreat, it's definitely
really hard at first.
But over time, I think with this teen song and being able to just renew your practice,
it gets easier.
It's easier to be around these people and see their mindful actions, but not necessarily
participate in them.
When I got back home, it was like I was introducing myself to my friends again.
I was like, well, this is who it turns out I am.
The first couple of days, I just tried to be by myself.
You're in this environment where the world doesn't really encourage you to be in the
present moment.
So I just had to be with myself.
But then when I started meditating again at home, it really helped.
This thing is mother's milk.
It belongs to the teenagers.
And I hope that it gets disseminated as far and wide as possible, that it goes into every
town and every school someday.
You can say I'm a dreamer, but I'm definitely not the only one.
Thank you.
