Biggest Mindfulness experiment to-date produces impressive results

In the biggest experiment ever undertaken on the effects of Mindfulness meditation on   school children strong evidence was produced that it increases attention, empathy and participation after only 4 hours of instruction.

The study looked at the effects of only four hours of mindfulness mediation on 915 children and 47 teachers in 3 Oakland schools in the USA.  The Mindful Schools curriculum was shown to produce significant improvements in behaviour versus the control group after only four hours instruction.  The results were impressive showing a significant improvement in many important areas.


In addition to the impressive results, the notable thing about this study is that the pupils were in an intercity school where crime and deprivation were high and in fact Oakland has the fifth highest rate of violent crime in America and 85% of the pupils where on free-school meals and 69% were EAL students.

The  results expressed as a bar chart were as follows: