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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-
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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
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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.
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gap,” Stavis said. “It helps
students build capacity to
problem solve.”
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(Leaking Underground Storage Tank) data-
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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,
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of gallons of groundwater, at a cost of $60,000
to $100,000.
Neff didn’t have anything like that kind of
money.
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county, DOE and bank met with him to see if
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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
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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-
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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.
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