Ted Fish, PhD, Executive Director, Gardner Carney Leadership Institute
If you’ve ever seen Dr. JoAnn Deak, Founding Institute Scholar of the gcLi, present about the brain, then you know that she has one of the most impressive collections of rubber bands on the planet. They are thick and thin; short and long; yellow, red, blue, and brown. They squiggle in three heaping bags. And they convey one of the central tenets of the pedagogy of leadership, a neurological principle that—if understood—is sufficient to revolutionize one’s approach to teaching and parenting: architecture supports performance. That is, the competency with which human beings perform any task is influenced by the strength of the neurological infrastructure that underlies it.
“I am going to draw an analogy,” Dr. Deak begins. “Every brain has different neurological capacity in different areas. This has to do with the number of neurons that have been wired, the proliferation of synapses, and the myelination—or insulation—of the pathways. This was Einstein’s capacity in mathematical-spatial reasoning,” she says fingering a thick, red band. “And this was mine,” she adds smiling, lifting a normal sized one that might be used to hold a stack of mail.
“But if you stretch it,” she says, “if you work the pathways, then they get stronger and more robust. If you want to put a student in the zone, where it feels good for them to learn and study, get them to use their large rubber bands. But if you want to raise the bar of their limitations, help them to stretch themselves where they are weak.”
More formally, the neurological principle says: neurons that fire together, wire together. The more that we engage a particular pathway, the more capacity is recruited by a brain ever ready to adapt and change. Without that capacity, we physically, architecturally, cannot be adept. Which is why an emerging stream of research in the area of mindfulness and meditation is so pertinent to any teacher who cares about growing the leadership of their students, or even more broadly—helping them to be healthy and happy human beings.
The notion that meditation practices and mindfulness training can have a significant salutary impact on physiological and psychological health will not strike many as news. Meditation has long been associated in the public eye with reduced stress and improved focus. What’s changed, however, is science’s view about how quickly many of these results appear to manifest, how long they may last, and how consistent the observable benefits are across a wide range of populations, including school children.
What has also changed has been the nature of the evidence: availability of f-MRI scanning means that researchers can see lasting, physical alterations in structures of the brain. For example, in a 2016 study out of Carnegie Mellon University, 35 adult job searchers who were reporting high stress were recruited to learn meditation. Half the group was given an authentic, three-day mindfulness training, while half was given sham instruction. The half receiving the real training showed demonstrable changes in their brains. As noted in the New York Times, “There was more activity, or communication, among the portions of their brains that process stress-related reactions and other areas related to focus and calm.” Four months later, the changes persisted with lower levels of unhealthy inflammation in the blood of those authentically trained, even though few were still meditating. Consider that for a moment: three days of instruction and lasting, diminished inflammation—associated broadly with a host of disorders ranging from arthritis to heart conditions to cancer—four months later.
Another study, reported in Scientific American in 2014, showed that the amygdalas, the limbic structures associated with the body’s fight or flight systems, had shrunk in subjects receiving an eight-week training in mindfulness meditation, while the prefrontal cortices, associated with higher order thinking and reasoning, grew thicker. Teachers, of course, know well the advantages of routing neurological activity away from the amygdala—which produces many of the hyper-reactive states associated with children before, during, and after they act out—and towards the prefrontal cortex, the center of calm, deliberative reasoning. We do it all the time when we give a reassuring smile to a student who is agitated, slow our own breathing, and ask them to do the same, or when we execute the myriad of other techniques that convey: your world may seem like it’s falling apart, but it’s really okay; settle in, and come back to yourself.
Additional studies have demonstrated that those practicing a particular kind of meditation that focuses on compassion training have generated a stronger sense of life purpose and are more forgiving. One study, published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies in 2008, reported that school children who did an eight-week training program had better attendance and behavior records and performed better on schoolwork, including those diagnosed with ADD.
In a blockbuster of an article in the Wall Street Journal in 2016 entitled “The Perils of Empathy,” Yale scientist, Dr. Paul Bloom, reported that compassion training is associated with exactly the acts that we want from our community members and that we expect of our leaders: “Being trained in meditation makes people kinder to others and more willing to help. (It increases activation) of brain networks associated with social affiliation.”
Bloom was making a longer argument that while training in compassion generated positive results, training in empathy was counterproductive. When subjects identify too closely with the pain of others, they can take on their enmities, or they can be so overwhelmed by feeling, that they distance themselves from taking action. Those trained to project strong, positive feelings of goodwill towards others, on the other hand—the essence of empathy training—are mobilized to act for the good.
Why? Because it appears that such mindfulness training builds the neurological capacity of human beings to socially affiliate and to build meaningful bonds of caring with others. This capacity has been found in the literature to predict effective leadership, psychological wellness, and physical health. It is a cornerstone in building and maintaining relationships, and the depth and quality of one’s relationships have been associated with long-term happiness. It’s hard to imagine a rubber band more worth stretching than that.
Ted Fish has served as the Executive Director of the Gardner Carney Leadership Institute since 2009. He is an experienced teacher, educational consultant, and speaker. Dr. Fish holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership and a master’s in Philosophy and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, as well as a master’s in business administration from the University of New Mexico.