Mindful Interconnectedness: Seeing Beyond Personal Stress

In this episode, Amy Edelstein explains why she included the lessons on systems thinking in the Inner Strength Teen Mindfulness Program. 

Teaching students how to understand their experiences within larger systems, helps them manage stress by seeing interconnections across time and society rather than taking challenges personally.

You'll learn why:
• Teaching teens to think in context allows them to see how their current stressors connect to broader historical developments
• Systems thinking serves as powerful self-care by revealing our interdependence and reducing feelings of isolation
• Understanding interdependence helps students not overpersonalize challenges, reducing depression and reactivity
• First graders successfully used systems diagrams to solve playground conflicts by identifying intervention points
• Looking at friend dynamics as systems rather than just individual personalities creates new solutions
• Focusing on what makes whole systems work well naturally leads to better outcomes for individuals
• Mindfulness creates space to acknowledge personal feelings while still seeing the bigger picture
• Systems thinking helps students identify upstream leverage points for positive change rather than just trying to "fix" themselves

As always, Amy invites you to experiment with systems thinking in your own life and practice. See what happens and whether you can internalize this profound shift in perspective! 

Chapters

• 0:10 Introduction to Conscious Classroom
• 0:55 Teaching Teens to Think in Context
• 3:44 Systems Thinking for Self-Care
• 8:32 Mindfulness Without Personalizing Everything
• 14:02 Creating Warm School Communities
• 20:33 Gratitude and Episode Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast, where we're exploring tools and perspectives that support educators and anyone who works with teens to create more conscious, supportive and enriching learning environments. I'm your host, amy Edelstein, and I'll be sharing transformative insights and easy-to-implement classroom supports that are all drawn from mindful awareness and systems thinking. The themes we'll discuss are designed to improve your own joy and fulfillment in your work and increase your impact on the world we share. Let's get on with this next episode. Share let's get on with this next episode.

Speaker 1: 0:55

One of the unusual things we do in Inner Strength's Teen Mindfulness Program is teach students how to think in context, how to set their experience in a larger framework and to see how interdependencies and linkages over vast amounts of time really influence their experience. Now their stress isn't just the result of something that happened last period or when they left home in the morning, or because of the test tomorrow. It has to do with the fact that they're even in school, that the transportation system is what it is to get them to school, that they live in an urban environment that didn't exist a millennia or two ago, and once students start to see how many of the individual stressors that they experience right now are the result of so many changes across hundreds and hundreds of years, movements over time, movements that impact people locally and globally, they stop feeling as stressed, they feel a little curious about how they got there and they also feel a sense of appreciation for the conditions, many of which they benefit from, that give rise to those experiences of overwhelm. And when we take a guided visualization back in all the time that I've been teaching, there's only been one student who really longed to go back to an earlier age. What was unique about that student was he was an immigrant from Paschung. The village that he goes to in the summers to visit his relatives are exactly like the guided visualizations that we do in the class, where we travel back a thousand years to a small village and we experience the close-knit families. And we experience the close-knit families. We experience how the foods you eat are all the same from household to household and you look forward to particular months when the apricots are ripe or the peaches, or the cherries or your favorite greens that only grow in a short period during the summer in those high mountain areas.

Speaker 1: 3:28

He said I miss my home so much because everybody knows me and I know everybody and I know what's coming next and we celebrate together. It's less complicated. There aren't so many choices here in America. He said I live in a big neighborhood but I don't know anybody and they don't know me. And when I go to school I see different people every day on the bus as I go, every day on the bus as I go, and I'll probably never meet them and they'll probably never meet me. That's not what it's like in my village.

Speaker 1: 4:13

And as he brought his own personal experience to light, the rest of the class living in a one of the ten largest cities in America, in Philadelphia, could all relate to each other, but not to his experience. They couldn't feel what that was. They couldn't feel the warmth and simplicity. They didn't even really feel a longing for that. They liked their busy lives. They liked the hustle and bustle of the city. They liked the choice of being different than everyone they know. They liked having so many options for breakfast, for snacks after school, for what they wore. They love that sense of they could find their own unique expression in this world.

Speaker 1: 5:13

I could relate very much to that young fellow who preferred the earlier time frame. I could relate to the feeling of the world speeding up, inexorably, of the way that we're crowding the world, and yet the more people there are, the further away we feel from one another. So that's why we teach systems thinking in the classroom. Why we teach systems thinking in the classroom we teach a way of seeing the world that looks at the details, looks at the personal and human impact and where the mindfulness allows space to drop into the depth and dimensionality, to feel the way history, technology, communication, political, governmental systems, transportation, all impact our experience, to feel it in a personal way and yet to feel it as the march of history, the march of time, the march of complexification. Mindfulness allows that ability to hold all of that without becoming immune to what's right in front of us or what is impacting us, and it simultaneously allows the space to see, to zoom out. I believe that systems thinking is a huge part of self-care, of stress management, of self-care of stress management.

Speaker 1: 7:05

I think when we realize that everything is interconnected, that we don't exist in bubbles and in isolation, that we don't just emerge fully formed from a vacuum, right, the interconnectedness, which is another way of talking about systems thinking, starts as far back as we can go, if you say well, I am me and I'm independent. But where do you come from? You don't come from a vacuum. You come from a sperm and an egg united. You come from your parents. Where do they come? They come from their parents. They're supported by the foods they eat. They're nourished by the atoms that they breathe in. Where those atoms come from? They come from star explosions billions of light years away. We're literally kept alive by things that happened so long ago in time. We can't even possibly get our minds around it.

Speaker 1: 8:10

So when we lean into that interconnectedness, that dependency, that co-origination, both in very practical ways and also in social, emotional ways, one thing that happens is we feel so not alone, not isolated, and we also realize that we are made up of so many parts that in some way it's somewhat arbitrary how we draw the line around what defines me and my existence. Where did I start? How far back do I want to go? Maybe that's not me, as I know myself since I was born, but if those things hadn't existed, I wouldn't be here now. So in some sense they're part of me.

Speaker 1: 9:07

And when we start reflecting on that with a very open mind, in the way that mindfulness allows us to, we start to feel that experience of being shaped by things that are always in motion. And when we're shaped by things that are always in motion and when we're shaped by things that are always in motion, we also realize that the pain we may be feeling today, the sadness and grief at the recognition of suffering, is also moving and changing. It can be ameliorated or it can be worsened. How can we lean into it? We see things as living, living and changing. And that sense of living and changing, of the moving current, allows us to not feel so stuck, so stuck in problems and hardships, knowing that in one year, five years, ten years, everything is going to be literally made up of different cells. We're going to be made up of different cells. Our bodies have gonna, will have turned over, and so we're not stuck.

Speaker 1: 10:31

When we're not stuck and we're willing to sit with an open mind, without a judgmentalist attitude, we can allow for new possibilities to emerge. And when we can sit like that, as students who might be in a fight maybe there's a big group of kids who are against another group of kids. If they just focus on being stuck in their position, it's going to be hard to find a way through. But when they can take a step back, see all the things that have led up to this, all the things that will come out of this. See all the things that have led up to this, all the things that will come out of this. It gives room for dialogue, discussion, exploration, empathy, changing places.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Just being mindful without a real understanding of our interconnectedness and of how so many pieces are dependent on so many other pieces, doesn't seem to be quite enough to really help young people understand themselves and their world in a way that's empowering and kind, that brings connection. That's ultimately what school mindfulness well-being programs need to do. They need to bring a sense of connectedness, insight, curiosity, ability to sit with discomfort, ability to question and ability to understand the moving pieces without overly personalizing everything. And what I mean by not overly personalizing everything? When we don't see things more objectively and in context, everything feels like a personal affront, and then it's very hard to dial back kids from depression, anger, frustration, resentment, victimization, discouragement when they can be a little more objective and start unpacking their feelings and their experience in a larger context, it puts tools and strength in their hands.

Speaker 1: 12:58

So when students can appreciate, for example, a school ecosystem and sometimes we have the map the whole school ecosystem, all the different things that come into play around a school. And then what happens if something affects one part of it? What if the janitors go on strike? What if the principal gets sick? What if the basketball team wins? How do those independent things that you might not be directly involved with affect a whole school system and how does that change in the system affect your experience? Then students can start to see little systems and big systems. Friend dynamics become systems, not just this friend versus that friend, and the confident one and the selfish one, and the loud talker and the shy one. You see the dynamics, but you see the system and you see how, oh, when this friend gets around that friend, they're different because there's a certain dynamic there. So how can we change that dynamic?

Speaker 1: 14:26

I once saw a great little clip of a, a great little clip of a video that a classroom teacher took from her phone of first graders discussing systems thinking, because the teacher had learned from the great systems master, peter Senge, about systems, and these first graders were drawing a diagram and trying to figure out where they could interrupt the system, because they always fought on recess in the playground and they diagrammed it. They said mean words, hurt feelings, fights and drew a circle around it with those three inflection points. And then they tried it. The three friends who always had these mean words, hurt feelings and fights tried to come up with ways to change the system. So the three of them were working on it together rather than looking at the one. You know whoever had said the mean words and whoever had the hurt feelings that day. Fascinating Systems, thinking feels very complex, but if first graders can do it to solve playground problems, I think we can put it to good use.

Speaker 1: 15:47

One of the kind of downstream aspects of understanding our interdependence, interrelationship, is to really help students shift from only being concerned about how they feel about their getting ahead to how to make the whole work. When whole systems work well, people can flourish. When their system break down, people suffer in different ways. So instead of directly pointing to, don't just think about yourself, think about other people. Helping students, inquire what makes the system work as a whole and then what are the downstream effects for us? When schools work well, when things run on time, when there's good communication, when the lunch is good, when there are snacks, when recess is a little longer, when the bathrooms are clean. All those things make us happier, and when we're happier we get along with each other better and we do better in school. How can we think about what serves the whole with a friend group? How can we think about how to make our time at home with our families happier, make things a little easier, work more together than against each other? So systems thinking can be profoundly philosophical, scientific, cosmological.

Speaker 1: 17:23

We can go into the 13.8 billion year history of the universe or the 300 million year evolution of the human brain or the system of a school and a friend group, all the time using mindful awareness and specific mindfulness practices to keep letting go of the fixed way we see things, keep letting go of what, the customary ways that we lock in to a specific viewpoint, which usually has us in the center of the stage, even if we're angry about something global that's happening. Usually what's pushing that intensity is our emotional feelings at the center and when we don't recognize that, it skews our ability to see clearly With mindfulness, when we can step back and say I feel grief around the suffering of the animals and the seas and the planet, I feel sadness and powerlessness about the pollution and the toxins in the air and the water, and the earth and the foods. Once we can use mindful awareness to see how we feel, we no longer need to take the center stage when those feelings are unacknowledged. They color and shape our awareness much more than we mightokes what their memories are, what their desires are. As all part, not separate from the system, allows it to remain just a part and then to see things freshly. And that's really part of the key of the Inner Strength Program and, I think, of any successful mindfulness in schools program is to help students see things freshly.

Speaker 1: 19:51

How can we look at a mental health issue in a new way? Where can we seek for help in a new way? In a new way? Where can we seek for help in a new way? How can seeing our connectedness reduce that sense of loneliness? How can recognizing the universality, the globalness of many of our experiences reduce our anxiety? How can, ultimately, we work with mindful awareness so that our schools become warm and caring and wholesome and healthy communities, rather than somewhat cold and frightening buildings that are focused on trying to keep violence out and push kids to conform to some kind of arbitrary or maybe not arbitrary, but imposed standardized way of memorization In a time where that way of relating to knowledge is becoming more and more obscure, outdated and not very useful.

Speaker 1: 21:06

My hope is that, in this time of increased fragmentation and of short-term decisions with long-term downstream negative impact, that teaching our students how to see in systems, look for upstream levers of change and recognize that their personal experience is very important and that it gives clues about how the system is working or not, and that improving their personal experience sometimes means looking outside of oneself to the system as a whole, rather than trying to fix oneself. When we see these vast interconnected pieces and we see the small groups and the large groups, even the global groups, that are experiencing the same pressures we are, we can look to systems-level change and that systems-level change will bring us a sense of connectedness, well-being, kindness, wisdom and vision. So I hope that you can, in your own life, in your own frustrations, incorporate and practice this level of systems thinking, experiment with it, apply it. It's easy to understand, but there will come a point when there's a kind of an awakening, whether you're used. All of a sudden everything falls into place and instead of just an intellectual understanding, it becomes very real and you look around you and things all of a sudden look different without effort and when they look different without effort. In that way, there's much more flow, much more possibility, much more lightness of being and much more energy to care for everyone around us and for the system as a whole of ways to develop, ways to see, ways to interpret, ways to question and ways to understand.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Conscious Classroom. I'm your host, amy Edelstein. Please check out the show notes on innerstrengthfoundationnet for links and more information and if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and pass the love on. See you next time.