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The purpose of this paper is to describe the emergence of school-based, secular, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for educators and students that aim to cultivate mindfulness and its putative benefits for teaching, learning, and well-being.

The paper has four sections: (a) a description of indicators of increased interest in mindfulness generally and in education; (b) substantive and functional definitions of mindfulness; (c) rationales for the potential value of mindfulness for teaching, learning, and well-being; and (d) a review of extant research on MBIs for teachers and students in schools.

On the basis of this review, it is concluded that school-based MBIs represent a promising emerging approach to enhancing teaching, learning, and well-being in schools; but that more research, with more rigorous study designs and measures, need to be done to establish the scientific validity of the effects of school-based MBIs for teachers and students alike.

Over the last few decades, the formal school curriculum in many countries has become increasingly prescribed and attainment orientated with an insistent pressure to measure progress in the name of ‘raising standards’. This form of constraint on educational practice has provoked counter trends in a desire to enrich the curriculum. Situating learning activities in the open air have become increasingly popular as a counter to formalised schooling. The UK, for example, has seen legislated outside spaces for early years and a growing interest in Forest Schools. The long tradition of activity centres, outside school visits and field trips—offering a valuable way to augment formal learning—has survived in many school settings. The claims for the benefit of taking learning outside are extensive. They range across claiming value for both individual and societal well-being, improving mental and physical health, as well as a way of sustaining inclusion, social cohesion and democratic practice (Nichol, Higgins, Ross, & Mannion, 2007). This article explores how aesthetics and the body may be seen to feature in outside educational experience. By drawing on the work of Richard Shusterman and his extensive work on somaesthetics, the purpose of the article is to augment or ground claims for the worth of ‘outside’ learning in embodied aesthetic experience and therefore help illuminate what is distinctively educational about moving learning beyond the walls of the school.

The authors explore self-identity construction as a mechanism of institution­aliz­ation at the individual level. Building on in-depth analysis of life stories of yoga practitioners who are at different stages of practice, the authors found that as yoga practitioners are more exposed to the yogic institution, yogic meanings gradually infuse their general worldview and self-concept. The authors follow the line of research which focuses on professional identity construction as institutional work, yet, opening the “black box,” the authors argue that institutional meanings take root at the individual level beyond the institutional context and beneath the explicit level of identity.

Sociological research on transgender and gender nonconforming (t/gnc) people has emphasized the interplay between identity and institutional contexts as constraining through dominant ideologies on sex and gender. In contrast, feminist research focused on embodied trauma has demonstrated numerous prospects for healing. In bridging these two fields of study through a socio-phenomenological lens, this research shows how consciousness emerges, facilitating the development of bodily agency. Empirically, the paper examines whether t/gnc people can use movement-based activities for healing, and how that healing occurs in particular spaces. In reflection of the impacts of insidious traumas on both the body and mind, this paper radically re-centers the body to consider the potential for healing through movement. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with t/gnc people on their engagement with movement-based activities, I argue that participation in movement, on one’s own terms, enables a practice of bodily freedom. Moving beyond constraint and regulation, bodily agency requires a degree of bodily awareness (consciousness) that can emerge through participation in movement-based activities in t/gnc-centered and “personally-public” spaces. These results show that movement-based activities support t/gnc people in healing from the impacts of insidious traumas. These findings have empirical importance, exemplifying the power of fostering intentionality through movement practices, as well as theoretical implications for understanding the role of the body when exercising agency in processes of healing from embodied oppression outside of formal therapeutic landscapes.

The view that physical education (PE) positively affects students’ perception of their own body efficacy and self-esteem is not often seen as related to issues of gender equality. Nevertheless, PE classes leave many girls with a negative physical experience, of weakness, clumsiness and heaviness. Although the ways in which the beauty myth undermines girls’ self-esteem and body image are quite known, until recently researchers in the field of PE have not focused on the possibility that PE teachers also play a role in disciplining girls’ bodies and subjectivities. Consequently, studies in this area tend to marginalize the covert exclusionary mechanism potentially exerted on girls who find their bodies unsuitable for PE. This study is the first to examine PE in Israel from a gender perspective. Some PE teachers in Israel are already aware to a certain extent of their educational role in legitimizing diversity in girls’ body shapes. How then do PE teachers negotiate this awareness with regard to the dominant discourses related to girls’ bodies? To explore this question, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 PE teachers. The analysis revealed two key features of PE teachers’ talk about girls’ bodies: acceptance of body shape diversity, and awareness of girls’ issues about their bodies. Our findings suggest that these progressive aspects of teachers’ perspectives on girls’ bodies are negotiated against older forms of girls’ body disciplining.

This study focuses upon the importance of group narrative work by ill and injured individuals who are participants/listeners/viewers in the reciprocity of testifying and witnessing one another’s stories. Their creative collaboration addresses a transformation of self that is engendered by illness and injury. An emphasis on narrative within a group setting offers tools to validate individual autonomy, build collective strength, and assist those in the group to gather momentum for the journeys that await each of them. The rationale and exercises described serve to complement and enhance traditional modes of healing.

To examine the relationship that athletes establish with their bodies within sport and through their transitions out of sport, with a special focus on risk, injury and pain.

This chapter is an explanatory review of the literature focusing on the embodied and sensory experiences of athletes as they depart sport.

This chapter explores definitions and conceptualizations of the retirement process, highlights how the body is experienced during the sporting exit (as fragile and out of control) and makes connections between how bodily breakdown during sporting exits impacts an athlete’s sense of self and identity.

Through practical recommendations, this chapter highlights some of the ways in which psycho-education and an expanded focus on the body could be useful to athletes as they attempt to reconcile their new lives and bodies post-sport.