Over the past decade, the mindfulness and youth field has grown from a handful of isolated teachers to a national movement working to integrate mindfulness practices into school-based settings, youth and family services agencies and other sites. The vast majority of books and curriculum materials produced on teaching mindfulness to young people focus on younger, pre-adolescent populations. Many also focus disproportionately on the benefits of the practice without addressing the often significant challenges of implementing mindfulness programs in diverse school and community environments. This workshop will focus on the real world implementation of mindfulness with urban, adolescent populations. It will provide an overview of the core skills and qualities needed to make mindfulness practices accessible to youth in a contemporary, urban, public school and/or community context. The goal will be to move beyond cooker-cutter curriculum and scripting and discuss real world approaches to making mindfulness practice relevant to youth using language and metaphors they can understand and connect with. Significant attention will also be paid to the roll of the facilitator in the delivery of successful mindfulness interventions to this population. Research support and theoretical underpinnings will be presented briefly, and time will be allotted towards the end for participants to bring candid, real-world problems from their own teaching to the facilitators.

This is the download of the audio - video is available here: http://www.morethansound.com/blog/bridging-videos/