Inward Bound Mindfulness Education

“What a great endeavor! Our research demonstrates that mindfulness based programs can change brain structure and function, so a program like iBme can make a true, long-lasting impact on these students.” — Sara Lazar, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
“Mindfulness has great power to reduce stress and promote a deep sense of wellness. For adolescents today, this is an urgent need. Supporting their inner work through thoughtful and effective mindfulness programs, as they are doing at iBme, can have far-reaching consequences for the good of adolescents at this stage of their development and beyond.” — Trish Broderick, PhD, Penn State Prevention Research Center
"Heartfelt gratitude to you for a wonderful workshop!! Folks really enjoyed and got much out of the morning with you." — Candace Coffin / Director of Specialty Services, Mount Rogers Community Services Board
“As a psychology professor who teaches inner-city college students, I have lost count of the number of students who told me after my lecture on mindfulness and meditation, that they wished they knew how to do that. The iBme program has incredible potential to give students the boost they need to handle some of the challenges they face.” — Orin Davis, Quality of Life Laboratory, New York
“As a psychiatrist I have had the opportunity to see the huge benefit that a basic introduction to mindfulness practices can bring to people suffering from a wide variety of mood and anxiety disorders. What a wonderful plan iBme has to bring education in mindfulness to youths, who so often struggle to manage and tolerate their intense emotions.” — Jennifer Pasternack, MD, PhD, Erie, PA
“The work that this organization does is definitely cutting edge and a most successful program. The adolescents that we have sent to the retreats and workshops have ALL had transformations and have been able to take on self-healing and have had tremendous changes in self-esteem and confidence.” — Candace Coffin, Director of Specialty Services, Mount Rogers Community Services Board
“I have been teaching mindfulness techniques for almost 38 years, in the US and around the world. I recognize this (iBme) as an exciting program, with integrity, compassion and intelligence.” — Sharon Salzberg, Insight Meditation Society (Barre, Ma)
“As Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA MARC and as a long-time teacher of mindfulness for youth, on behalf of MARC I wholly endorse iBme’s work. They are on the forefront of a movement to revolutionize inner development for teens and those who serve them, something desperately needed for our youth who are increasingly stressed and lost.” — Diana Winston, UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC)
“I am excited about this growing movement and pledge 100% support to this organization, its mission and team. I have been working with youth and individuals dealing with PTSD – utilizing meditation and yoga to open pathways to awareness and mindfulness. It works. It is working, and it needs to keep working.” — Niyati Shah, Tranquil Space, Washington, DC

Our Teaching Model

Our Unique Model

Our classes combine mindfulness practices, interactive group activities and social-emotional skills development. We engage students in fun, multisensory activities for focusing attention, calming the mind and relaxing the body. Our unique program also includes activities for improving interpersonal skills through group sharing, games, and movement that cultivate connection and empathy between students, their peers and the world around them.

Benefits

A growing body of scientific research demonstrates that mindfulness and social-emotional programs in schools improves students’:

Concentration, learning retention and standardized test scores
Inner resiliency and self-esteem
Attitudes about others, empathy, social interactions and classroom behavior
Decreases their stress and conduct problems.

Concentration

The foundational skill for practicing mindfulness is the ability to focus one’s attention in the direction of one’s own intention. We guide participants in learning to direct and redirect their focus of attention to simple objects in their immediate environment (internal & external).

By returning attention again and again to ordinary everyday objects one can develop an extra-ordinary faculty of concentration and train the brain to follow one’s internal command. This engages volition and will-power and systematically lays down stronger neuronal pathways in the brain for aiming and sustaining attention in the future.

Self-Awareness

Along with stabilizing attention the Inward Bound journey guides people to tune into the habit patterns of their mind. Participants are taught to become aware of the physical, mental and emotional filters through which they have learned to perceive and react to what life brings them. As they come to understand themselves and the habits of their mind more fully, they begin to see how the qualities of mind they create and inhabit have direct and consequential influence on the quality of their lived experience.

Brain Science

Students are taught the basics of brain science and how mindfulness training and social emotional skills develop new neuronal pathways to improve mental wellbeing. Students are guided to understand through their own direct experience how the amygdala and hippocampus (limbic structures) influence their emotional, behavioral, and motivational states of arousal in any given situation. iBme teaches teens how to calm and soothe the limbic brain regions as well as how to strengthen the higher cortical regions involved in generating compassion for self and others.

Compassion, Insight and Wisdom

Participants learn that habits of reactivity and resistance to life’s ups and downs increase stress, anxiety, and mental distress. Meanwhile, mindful attitudes and practices of being open, receptive and even curious about the same ups and downs reduces stress hormone levels, lowers blood pressure and increases emotional resilience and immune system functioning. Teens often become more discerning in the states of mind they choose to inhabit as they discover that they can begin to choose more beneficial mind states in each and every moment.