8 • The Southwest Portland Post
FEATURES
October 2014
Wilson PE class first in nation to utilize yoga and meditation techniques
By Janet Goetze
The Southwest Portland Post
About two dozen Wilson High
School students enter the classroom
in comfortable clothing, take off their
shoes and settle on a yoga mat with
a round pillow.
Teacher Allyson Copacino begins
the class by running a mallet around
the edge of a metal bowl to produce
a singing tone, a familiar sound in
yoga classes.
After a few moments of relaxation,
the students rise and begin a series
of stretching exercises and breath-
ing techniques, including one that
sounds like a cat hiss that makes
several students smile.
The class, called “Mindful Medita-
tion,” is believed to be the first full-
year high school program of its type
in the United States, said Caverly
Morgan, a contractor who teaches
the class with Copacino.
The goal is to help students devel-
op emotional resilience, self-aware-
ness and compassion by using yoga
movements and focused meditation
techniques, Morgan said.
Morgan, the director of a non-
profit organization called Peace in
Schools, said the techniques are
intended to help students become
neutral observers of their thoughts,
especially those stressful ones, with-
out using coping mechanisms.
“Eating a whole chocolate cake,”
she said, is one immediate way to
cope with stress, but it can make the
eater feel worse afterward.
By examining fears, anger, depres-
sion and other emotions, students
can bring themselves into the pres-
ent moment without focusing on
what happened yesterday or what
might happen tomorrow.
According to Morgan, by taking
deep breaths students can relax as
they examine the emotion.
To help students learn the tech-
nique of mental focusing, Morgan
rings a small, brass bell. “Raise your
hand when your mind wanders from
the bell,” she tells the class.
Some raise their hands after about
a minute while others remain seated
with their eyes closed and their faces
relaxed.
Then, a truck pulls up outside the
open classroom window, and the
other hands go up as students laugh
at the noisy interruption.
After less than a month of class,
several students said the techniques
are having positive effects.
A junior, Cassia McIntyre, 16, said,
“I hold a lot of tension in my body.
I get test anxiety, too. . . . I find I’m
learning to take deep breaths when
I get stressed out.”
Senior Ryan Nilsen, 17, practices
yoga with his father and sister and
was attracted to the class because of
its yoga movements.
“I notice that the days I have the
class, I can come to class feeling
grumpy or sad or angry,” he said. Af-
ter class, he said his mood is brighter
for the day.
The “mindful” part of the class has
become mainstream in the corporate
world where executives and sales-
people are learning to be focused
and “in the moment” to perform
well, said Principal Brian Chatard.
Chatard sat in on one of the classes,
which were introduced last school
year to Wilson’s leadership class and
peer counselors.
“I found it beneficial myself,” said
Chatard, who noted that in his job,
he needs to be “in the present” for
situations he faces each day, which
may include an angry parent or a
student or a group of students.
The “mindful” ideas have come
from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, an
emeritus professor of medicine at the
Cassia McIntyre, 16, and Ryan Nilsen, 17, demonstrate an exercise used in "Mindful
Meditation," a new Wilson High School class intended to help teens reduce stress and
gain emotional resilience. By lifting opposing arms and legs, the instructor says, they are
using both sides of the brain. (Post photo by Janet Goetze)
University of Massachusetts.
For about 40 years, Kabat-Zinn has
studied mind and body interactions
in people with chronic pain and
stress-related disorders. In 1979, he
opened a clinic using what he calls
mindful meditation techniques to
assist those patients.
Wilson students may take the class
for a physical education credit or as
an elective, Chatard said. Nearly 300
expressed interest in the program
but the three classes accommodate
fewer than 100.
Some may have been attracted to
the class for the yoga movements,
Chatard said, but others may have
been seeking the mindful meditation
they saw introduced last school year.
“There is no time that I think is
more fraught with distraction than
among teenagers,” Chatard said. It’s
the kind of class that can become “an
essential part of how to teach a kid
to be successful in life. There’s more
than academics in that.”
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