Secure Learning To Breathe: A Mindfulness Curriculum For Adolescents To Cultivate Emotion Regulation, Attention, And Performance Generated By Patricia C. Broderick Displayed In Manuscript

behavior in the classroom, poor academic performance, outofcontrol emotions: if you work with adolescents, you are wellaware of the challenges this age group presents, What if there was a way to calm these students down and arm them with the mindfulness skills needed to really excel in school and life

Written by mindfulness expert and licensed clinical psychologist Patricia C.
Broderick, Learning to Breathe is a secular program that tailors the teaching of mindfulness to the developmental needs of adolescents to help them understand their thoughts and feelings and manage distressing emotions.
Students will be empowered by learning important mindfulness meditation skills that help them improve emotion regulation, reduce stress, improve overall performance, and, perhaps most importantly, develop their attention.
The book also includes a website link with student handouts and homework assignments, making it an ideal classroom tool,

The book integrates certain themes of mindfulnessbased stress reduction MBSR, developed by Jon KabatZinn, into a program that is shorter, more accessible to students, and compatible with school curricula.
Students will learn to pay attention in the moment, manage emotions as they are perceived, and gain greater control over their own feelings and actions, These mindfulness practices offer the opportunity to develop hardiness in the face of uncomfortable feelings that otherwise might provoke a response that could be harmful e, g. acting out by taking drugs, displaying violent behavior or acting in by becoming more depressed,

This easytouse manual is designed to be used by teachers, but can also be used by any mental health provider teaching adolescents emotion regulation, stress reduction and mindfulness skills.
The author is a graduate of the MBSR advanced practicum at the Center for Mindfulness in Massachusetts, led by Jon KabatZinn, She is also a clinical psychologist and a certified school psychologist and counselor for grades K, In the book, Broderick calls on her years of experience working with adolescents to outline the best strategies for dealing with disruption in the classroom and emotions that are out of hand.


The book is structured around six themes built upon the acronym BREATHE, and each theme has a core message, The program allows for themes to be delivered inlonger orshorter sessions, depending upon time and needs of students, Thecore lessons are: Body, Reflection, Emotions, Attention, Tenderness, and Healthy Mind Habits,

Learning to Breathe is the perfect tool for empowering students as they grapple with the psychological tasks of adolescence, Patricia C. Broderick's "Learing to BREATHE" is an excellent resource on mindfulness, intended for educators of preadolescent and adolescent students, The emphasis of the book centers around teaching students the important nature of cultivating emotional intelligence and mindfulness not only as a function to perform better in the classroom and the overall learning environment, but also to take those measures with them in the outside realm to reduce stress, pay attention to their thoughts and emotions, and be able to develop better coping strategies.
The book expresses the benefits of incorporating mindfulness in this age group based on the challenges that adolescents have at this stage of life,

The concept of BREATHE is divided into paying attention to the following factors:
B Body
R Reflections
E Emotions
A Attention/Attentiveness
T Tenderness/Take it as it is
H Habits for a healthy Mind
E Empowerment which is the overarching program goal.


I really liked the plotting of both the six session and eighteen session course plans, There are similar dimensions to each, with the latter being more steadily progressive to each of the different dimensions, while the former is more an abbreviated form that could apply to older students versus younger.
Still, the author recommends to examine the type of class you have, not so much age, to determine which methodology is best, The text includes online and print resources for

educators as well as students, and provides worksheets and handouts for students and teachers to use in the activities generated in each of the dimensions of the BREATHE concept.
I highly recommend it, as someone passionate about health and wellness, this is an invaluable resource for not only adolescents to deal with present day challenges, but also to develop habits for wellness in a lifelong spectrum in any dimension.


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Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley, from the publisher New Harbinger Publications, can't wait to use this in the classroom This book is a great resource for instruction on teaching mindfulness, It is geared towards adolescents but really it could be called a Beginner's guide to Mindfulness as I can see where I can apply the techniques to my own life! It is very organized and has great worksheets, visuals and other teaching tools to make it easy to provide instructions to others.
I highly recommend it! This curriculum is beautifully put together, and it looks like the lessons would be very engaging for young people, That said, I should point out that there's a dearth of good research on schoolbased mindfulness programs, and I personally wouldn't implement this program at my school either as a classwide or small group intervention without more quality research.


Consider the following four research studies, which can found at sitelinkthe Learning to BREATHE site, Broderick and Metzfound positive posttest results among LB participants, but the study was underpowered, with juststudents in the intervention group, Moreover, the researchers used a selfreport measure, and the control group was simply waitlisted, meaning that the results could easily be explained as placebo effect, The same critique applies to Potek, who had juststudents in the intervention group, Metz et al.had an impressivestudents, but that study too had a passive control group, and the study wasn't even randomized, Bluth et al.improved upon previous studies by having an active control group, but at posttest, the groups differed in only one of several measured areas, and the researchers conceded that "given the small sample size and the wideconfidence intervals," even this result "should be interpreted with caution.
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Broderick, P. C. , amp Metz, S Learning to BREATHE: A pilot trial of a mindfulness curriculum for adolescents, Advances in school mental health promotion,,,

Bluth, K. , Campo, R. A. , PruteanuMalinici, S. , Reams, A. , Mullarkey, M. , amp Broderick, P. C A schoolbased mindfulness pilot study for ethnically diverse atrisk adolescents, Mindfulness,,.

Metz, S. M. , Frank, J. L. , Reibel, D. , Cantrell, T. , Sanders, R. , amp Broderick, P. C The effectiveness of the learning to BREATHE program on adolescent emotion regulation, Research in Human Development,,.

Potek, R Mindfulness as a schoolbased prevention program and its effect on adolescent stress, anxiety and emotion regulation, New York University. Patricia C. Broderick, PhD, is a research associate at the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State University and founder of the Stress Reduction Center at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
A graduate of the mindfulness based stress reduction advanced practicum at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Broderick is a licensed clinical psychologist as well as a certified school psychologist and counselor for grades K through.
In addition, she is the author of The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, a textbook for graduate level students and mental health professionals, .