By Daniel Rechtschaffen (excerpted from the blog of Omega Institute for Holistic Studies)

Students are told to pay attention a thousand times in school, but rarely are they taught how. We tell our kids to be nice to each other again and again, without ever teaching them the incredibly accessible exercises that cultivate empathy and forgiveness. We tell students not to be so reactive and even put them in juvenile detention centers all because they can’t regulate the disturbances within their own bodies. There are methods for teaching impulse control, attention, and empathy, but young people have rarely been taught them. Mindfulness has been effectively training these qualities for millennia, and there is a mounting research base that backs up its immense health benefits.