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2C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2015 Mindfulness training in school helps teens cope with stress sures. It’s also the onset of mental illness for some kids, depression hits, and there’s the pressure of college and sports. All these things kids do is overwhelming without having a strategy to deal with it.” By GOSIA WOZNIACKA Associated Press PORTLAND — As the morning school bell rings and students rush through crowded corridors, teenagers in one Portland classroom settle onto mats and medita- tion pillows. They fall silent after the teacher taps a Tibet- an “singing bowl.” “Allow yourself to settle into the experience of being here, in this moment,” teach- er Caverly Morgan tells two dozen students at Wilson High School. The students are enrolled in a for-credit, yearlong mindfulness class meant to ease youth anxiety and de- pression and to prevent vio- lence. For 90 minutes, three days a week, they practice a mix of yoga, sitting and walk- ing meditation, visualization techniques, deep breathing, journaling and nonjudgmen- tal listening. The idea behind mindful- ness is that focusing on the present moment helps a per- son deal better with stress, GLI¿FXOW HPRWLRQV DQG QHJD- tive thoughts. Mindfulness, yoga and meditation have gained pop- ularity among Americans in recent decades, buoyed by studies showing their bene- ¿WVWRHPRWLRQDOPHQWDODQG physical health. The centu- ries-old practices have roots in Buddhism and Hinduism, but Western culture has sec- ularized them to focus on physical postures, breathing and relaxation techniques. Such practices are now offered by corporations like Google, Target and Gener- al Mills to their employees. Prison inmates, hospital pa- tients and the U.S. Marines are using them to combat stress and illness, increase fo- cus and well-being. And now schools all over the country are introducing the practices. Some objections Some people have greeted the move with less than en- thusiasm. Last year, an elementa- ry school in Ohio ended its Nonjudgmental listening Photos by Gosia Wozniacka — AP Photo Students meditate during Mindful Studies class at Wilson High School in Portland. The yearlong course is one of a growing number of programs that are incorporating mindfulness, yoga and meditation into school curriculums to bring socio-emotional benefits to students. notforsale ABOVE LEFT: Caverly Morgan speaks while teaching a Mindful Studies course to students at Wilson High School in Portland in October. Morgan started the course after studying for eight years at a silent Zen Monastery. ABOVE RIGHT: Students work on yoga postures during Mindful Studies class at Wilson High School in Portland. mindfulness program after parents complained it was too closely linked to Eastern religion and a conservative &KULVWLDQ ODZ ¿UP XQVXF- cessfully sued on behalf of a couple in Encinitas, Calif., arguing their school district’s yoga classes indoctrinate children. But many school districts are reporting success. In Richmond, Calif., where a teacher started a mindfulness program called the Mindful Life Project, schools have re- ported drops in detentions and referrals among low-income, at-risk youth. The school district in South Burlington, Vt., imple- mented a successful mind- fulness course as part of a health and wellness program, and now administrators there have written a manual on in- corporating mindfulness into K-12 curriculums. Portland is known for its progressivism, so it should be no surprise the idea of teach- ing mindfulness is being em- braced here. Students at Wil- son say the class has been a boon for them. “Sometimes I have trou- ble breathing, I have panic attacks. This class helps me bring more attention to my breath and overcome that,” junior Cassia McIntyre said. “I’m less stressed out and able to better cope with stress.” The class is the brainchild of Morgan, who trained at a Zen Buddhist monastery for eight years and started a meditation center in Sacra- mento. After moving to Port- land two years ago, Morgan teamed up with Allyson Co- pacino, who teaches yoga to children. The two started an af- ter-school program at Wil- son. After hundreds of stu- dents signed up, principal Brian Chatard took note. The school was dealing with a student’s suicide, and few re- sources were available to ad- dress students’ emotional and mental health. Chatard said high school years are hard for many stu- dents, because they entail emotional and hormonal changes, social and academ- ic pressures — and for some, depression. “High school is the hard- est period of time for kids,” Chatard said. “You’ve got emotional changes, hormonal changes, all the social pres- During a class in October, after a half-hour of yoga ex- ercises, Morgan asked stu- dents to visualize a stressful moment in their lives and notice the negative internal dialogue in their heads. Students wrote the neg- ative self-talk in a journal, then shared it with the class and practiced compassionate — nonjudgmental — listen- ing in pairs. Learning how to recog- nize the “inner critic” is cru- cial for teens, Morgan said. “It’s very important that teens learn how to do that, be- cause that critical voice leads to behaviors that are extreme- ly unhealthy, such as overeat- ing, bullying, even commit- ting suicide,” Morgan said. Pediatric psychologists at Oregon Health & Science University are partnering with the mindfulness program to study its impact on students. A similar yearlong pro- gram is offered at Rosemary High School, an alternative school in nearby Gresham that serves students who were expelled or dropped out, are homeless or single parents. Unlike at Wilson, mind- fulness at Rosemary is man- datory for some 70 students, many of whom knew little or nothing about it. Some of the students were initially skepti- cal and complained about the course, the principal, Erica Stavis, said. But on midterm reviews, students reported the class had helped them better rec- ognize their feelings, deal with anger and distance themselves from destructive thoughts during difficult family situations. ³7KLV SURJUDP ¿OOHG D gap,” Stavis said. “It helps students build capacity to problem solve.” )RUPHU/RQJ%HDFK¿OOLQJVWDWLRQEHFRPHVDVHDVKRUHWKHPHGSDUN (Leaking Underground Storage Tank) data- EDVHDQGQRWL¿HG1HIIWKDWKHZRXOGQHHGWR pay for waste cleanup. The environmental company estimated that it would cost $10,000 to $20,000 to determine the full extent of the damage. Actually clean- ing it up involved excavating much of the soil, DQGXVLQJDVSHFLDOSURFHVVWR¿OWHUWKRXVDQGV of gallons of groundwater, at a cost of $60,000 to $100,000. Neff didn’t have anything like that kind of money. $IHZPRQWKVODWHURI¿FLDOVIURPWKHFLW\ county, DOE and bank met with him to see if WKH\FRXOG¿QGDZD\WRFOHDQLWXS$FFRUGLQJ to a DOE report, “Little was concluded at the meeting.” The bank decided to let Neff keep the prop- erty. By NATALIE ST. JOHN EO Media Group LONG BEACH — A dead man owns it. The bank doesn’t want it. It’s not worth a cent, and it would cost a lot more than that to clean up. But on the bright side, it looks really nice now. /RQJ %HDFK RI¿FLDOV UHFHQWO\ VSHQW DERXW $700, plus staff time, to beautify a small aban- doned downtown lot that has been derelict for many years because of its status as a hazardous waste cleanup site. Recently, Long Beach parks, streets and drainage Supervisor Mike Kitsman and his crew created a sand dune on the site of the for- mer Obie’s Union service station at the corner RI6LG6Q\GHU%RXOHYDUGDQG3DFL¿F$YHQXH They planted beach grass, installed engraved wooden posts that spell “Long Beach,” and linked them together with heavy nautical rope. They also relocated a decorative buoy that was suffering from salt damage at its previous loca- tion nearer the beach. “It was a scrounge and recycle project,” City Planner Gayle Borchard said Jan. 13. The city paid to purchase rope and have a wood- worker route the letters in the posts, but most other materials were already on hand. Borchard said she asked the crew to spruce up the lot, because it occupies a busy intersec- tion that every visitor to Long Beach sees. A couple of years ago, the city demolished the Obie’s building as part of an effort to clean XSWKHVRXWKHQGRIWRZQVRFLW\RI¿FLDOVIHOW that sprucing up the bare lot was a logical next step. “I think we’ve just incrementally made progress on this site. It is the second most im- portant entryway to the city,” Borchard said. “I wanted to give a statement that we’re a beach town.” CO L U M BI A CO N N E CTO R D AY TRIPS All dressed up with nowhere to go NATALIE ST. JOHN — EO Media Group City of Long Beach workers recently adopted a semi-abandoned lot on a key corner of downtown and turned it into a seashore-themed pocket-park. Trouble below the surface The thrifty project was a practical response to an unfortunate situation. From the 1930s until the early 2000s, vari- RXVRZQHUVRSHUDWHG¿OOLQJVWDWLRQVRQWKHORW A sheet-metal locomotive on the roof paid trib- ute to the Ilwaco Railway and Navigation Co., which ran nearby until 1930. Over time, fuel and oil contaminated both the soil and the table of groundwater that lies just a few feet below the surface. In early 2001, the property’s final own- er, Ervin Neff, was in serious debt, accord- ing to records from the state Department of W eekda y Bus C o n n ectio n s to Sa turda ys & Sunda ys Ro un d Trip Bus Service LON G VIEW & PORTLAN D SH O PPIN G E N JO Y TH E SITE S Ha m m ond Ecology. He had a large outstanding loan to his lender, the Bank of the Pacific. The bank had begun considering its options. As part of that process, they hired an environ- mental assessment company to test the soil and water. The tests revealed that at least one of the underground fuel storage tanks on the prop- erty had leaked, leaving parts of the property heavily contaminated. The leak didn’t pose an immediate health or environmental threat, but it was serious enough to require clean up under state law. The DOE added the site to its “LUST” Fourteen years later, it’s still awaiting cleanup, and no one knows if the pollution has spread. When the DOE last tried to get an update on the clean-up effort in August 2014, they sent a letter to Neff, who is still listed as the owner, even though he died in 2004. It’s not all bad news. The state or federal government occasionally make a little money available to pay for waste cleanup, especially when a property is considered “abandoned,” or if the site could be used for a project that EHQH¿WVWKHSXEOLFOLNHDOLEUDU\$EX\HUZKR didn’t plan to disturb the soil could probably pave it over without much risk of disturbing the contamination. In the meantime, Borchard said residents seem to like the results, and have praised the city crew for cheaply turning a former eyesore into scenic spot. “The crew kind of adopted it. They did a really nice job,” Borchard said. D IREC T TO LON G VIEW SAT U RD AY & SU N D AY RO U N D T RIP FO R O N LY $ 1 5 re! e h t u o y e W e’ll tak C O L UM BIA C O NNEC T O R RO UT E W a rrenton S venson A m tra k S ta tion Kna p p a Kels o- L ongview A s toria Sched ule a n d Fa res a va ila b le a t w w w .ridethebu s.org o r ca ll 503-861-7433 W es tp ort C la tska nie