Mindful: In your TED talk you say that your grandfather introduced you to a mindful and positive approach to life. I’m curious, did he call that approach “mindfulness” or was that a word that you learned later?
Adam Avin: No, he didn’t actually use the word mindfulness specifically, but we like to say he was a yogi at heart. He had a yogi mindset, and he had his positive mantras: “Think well to be well,” “Smile and the world will smile with you,” “Smile and say thank you.” So I kind of had those messages in my head from a very young age. My mom also had a yoga teacher, Erika, who was a big part of our lives for a long time. She did yoga and meditation with my mom, so when I was little, I would pop into the sessions when I was home, for some reason.
“Think well to be well,” “Smile and the world will smile with you,” “Smile and say thank you.”
And so all these things were kind of around the house, but it wasn’t until I got older that I learned the vocabulary—that it was actually mindfulness. My grandpa never actually said it, but it was kind of implied. And still to this day, you know, I don’t practice traditional meditation every day, but my practice consists of the breathing techniques, and learning, coping, coming to my emotions the right way. I’m a golfer—I’ll put in some headphones, let’s just listen to some music on the golf course. That’s my relaxation for the day. So we all practice mindfulness in different ways, but these ideas have definitely been in my head from a really young age.
An Opportunity To Do More
M: Often, we kind of see mindfulness as a personal, individual practice, not really something that you would share with other people. What inspired you to take it further and share it with other children and teenagers?
A: As I grew up, so did our organization. Basically, as I was entering high school, I saw how a lot of my friends or just the people around me honestly were overwhelmed, with all the homework and extracurriculars and social life, whatever. I saw the stress and the anxiety, in myself too.
That’s when we really took the opportunity to create the Mindful Kids Peace Summit. It’s a digital online video library, mostly for teens, where we [Helen Maffini of MindBe-Education, and I] interview over 80 experts who—some give demonstrations or presentations—but it’s mostly interviews and we discuss topics like diversity, inclusion, communication, kindness, anti-bullying, mindfulness as a tool to deal with stress, positive psychology, social-emotional learning, self-awareness, self-compassion, empathy, so much more, and it’s a great tool for teens to use in the classroom. So as I got older, we definitely took the opportunity to expand and say, “Hey, I’m seeing this on a daily basis, we need to create a curriculum for other kids.”
What also inspired me was that we live very close to Parkland, where the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas happened. So that really brought the whole community together. We were like, with these things happening, and to high school students, the violence in the world, we really need to teach teens that might be dealing with stress or anxiety on a daily basis.
We used to say things like yoga and meditation, and now, it’s definitely grown into mindfulness, which yoga and meditation are a part of. And it’s also social-emotional learning and empathy. All we really want to do is to help teens become less depressed and anxious, and just live healthier and happier lives altogether. So that’s what furthered my interest in mindfulness.
M: That’s powerful. And before that, you had already started teaching mindfulness tools to younger kids?
A: Yeah. When I was about nine years old, we created the Wuf Shanti Children’s Wellness Foundation, which is now a nonprofit organization. We teach mindfulness and social-emotional learning. So we have Wuf, which is a dog character, which kids love, and it’s through fun and games and music and videos—we try to teach it in a way that they don’t actually know that they’re learning, in a fun way. We don’t specifically go by the definition.
What is Social-Emotional Learning?
M: Could you give me one or two examples of how you would explain to younger kids what social-emotional learning is?
A: For younger kids, like I said, no definitions. [Instead] we play self-awareness games, like Feeling Charades or gratitude games, like our Happy Ball game. We use affirmations like “Think well, be well,” or “Peace begins with me,” or a laughing game, which kind of puts that into practice for them. We also use a lot of music and videos, like Kidding Around Yoga, which I’m also certified in. We took one of those songs, “Every little cell in my body is happy,” and we made a music video with the dog character and kids like to dance around and play games with Wuf Shanti. They don’t actually know the meanings behind all the words, but they’re starting to learn it from a really young age.
For older kids, it’s a lot more serious. It’s more interactive, there’s a lot more detail. And we do use the meanings and definitions and descriptions of every topic that we go through. A lot of the students that watch [the Mindful Kids Peace Summit videos] are teenagers. I think they enjoy that I’m the one interacting with them. Obviously all the experts are adults, but I’m the one that’s interacting with them. They’re learning from a peer. One of the practices we do is the [Stressed Teens’] self-care water bottle exercise, where kids post stickers on their water bottles, things that make them happy, things that they enjoy. We tell kids to think of things that make you happy, things that are positive, that you can go back to and make you feel better, be mindful. It’s like you go to the gym for physical exercise or you brush your teeth for oral health. You go back to your water bottle for your mental health, all the things that make you happy.
Bringing Mindfulness to Schools
M: What do you think are the most effective ways to make our schools more mindful?
A: First, you have to educate the educators.