A growing body of scientific evidence suggests mindfulness is an essential life skill. Mindfulness practices help focus attention and have the potential to enhance both teacher and student well being. Techniques focus on the development of the whole person – awareness of the mind, body and emotions. Mindfulness is practiced widely around the world and is also a burgeoning area of academic interest. Research started in the early 1980s with people experiencing chronic pain and stress. By the close of 2012 there were approximately 2500 journal articles on the topic investigating its impact on a wide range of health conditions and well-being.

Due to positive research results in adult populations, mindfulness programs have been implemented in schools around the world over the last decade  and researchers are conducting studies to determine how learning mindful- ness impacts a school community’s well-being. The current research project focuses on understanding children’s and teachers’ experiences and perspectives of learning and teaching mindfulness for the first time in an independent school located in New Zealand. The following questions were posed:

• What is a child’s perspective of learning mindfulness practices at school?
• How do teachers make sense of introducing a mindfulness program to children?

In 2013, approximately 40 Year 2 and Year 5 students from a primary school in Auckland, New Zealand participated in a 10-week mindfulness program. The program was developed in Australia, by Janet Etty-Leal, and is based on the text, Meditation Capsules: A Mindfulness Program for Children. The school’s Counsellor and Well-Being Director delivered the program with the general classroom teachers participating in some of the activities. During the mindfulness course, students completed age appropriate journals  designed by Nicole Albrecht. The journals were then analysed by Karen Ager, who searched for prominent themes associated with the pupils’ perceptions of learning mindfulness.Upon completion of the program, Angela Bucu interviewed the School Counsellor and Well-Being Director to find out about their experiences of teaching the program for the first time. Themes and patterns were generated from the interview data, based on the most meaningful and important experiences iden- tified by the school’s facilitators.The findings support the integration of mindfulness across the whole school, focusing initially on both teacher and student populations. Further research is recommended to determine whether mindfulness practice leads to long-term whole person development, enhanced academic performance and a reduction in student and teacher stress levels.