Kind Mind

In a day and age where children not only have an exponentially expanded array of electronic methods of distraction compared to less than a generation ago, but are also confronted by a country and world in conflict and torn by divisiveness, the need for mindfulness and meditative practices has never been greater. 

That was the thought process behind the creation barely five years ago of Kind Mind, the Santa Barbara nonprofit co-founded by Vivian Valentin, PhD, then a neuroscience researcher and practicing therapist, who today serves as Kind Mind executive director. Trained by Mindful Heart Programs – the local umbrella organization founded by psychotherapist/meditation teacher Radhule Weininger and her husband, palliative care physician and author Michael Kearney –Valentin and her team came up with a student-and-teacher supportive program. They would deliver to local schools practical instruction and hands-on skills to co-create calm, productive, mindful student bodies, and classrooms. 

Their work derives from evidence-based research whose findings on “perseverence” are unambiguous; self-aware individuals who practice mindfulness are more capable of staying present, calm, and focused in the face of challenges and uncertainty. 

A pilot initiative at Santa Barbara Community Academy has mushroomed into programs throughout Santa Barbara Unified and beyond. These programs take place both during and after school, and have taught self-awareness skills to thousands of elementary through high school students with spectacular results including enhanced focus and attention, improvements in empathy and compassion, as well as resiliency, decreased reactivity, and a reduction in stress. 

Kind Mind has also launched partnerships with other local nonprofits such as FoodBank of SB County and Santa Barbara Museum of Art to foster mindful connection within a specific field. Now Kind Mind is seeking to broaden its reach, both by holding trainings in nature and by drawing in the broader community. 

“The underlying theme is to get as many community members as possible out into nature so they can drop into that sacred inner being, the inner knowing that comes from the natural world,” Valentin said. “The goal is to find a way for people to shift their mindset to a more healthy and flourishing one.”

The most important effort in that direction involves chiefly high school students in an Earth Guardian internship. The program feeds into the graduation requirement for volunteer hours. 

“The idea is to start with nature first so that they can learn mindfulness and even meditation through nature,” Valentin said. “It’s an approach that is more accessible, especially for young people. And it’s tied into environmental stewardship, which is also incredibly important right now. The idea is to ignite people’s passion for being in nature and connecting with nature.”

The concept of the internship is to create a ripple effect where participants hone their own experiences and expand on the skills they learn, then bring them back to their own families and the community at large. 

“It’s very relevant to the school program because we want to engage and ignite the youth so they can become part of this movement,” Valentin said. “Then if they want to, they can become ambassadors for their peers and even younger kids in a way that benefits the schools, too. 

It also ripples upwards into organizations that may employ participants in the future. These students – prospective climate and sustainability workers – can take what they learn about facilitating the connection to nature and leverage those experiences in professional settings. 

“Elementary school children are the most important segment, but we really would love to create a situation where we have all different age groups learning this and then coming back to mentor each other. Peer-to-peer interactions reinforce all the learnings that they’ve had in terms of nature connection and the benefits of mindfulness and compassion. Eventually, it can become not just an esoteric thing that a few people do, but the norm; mental hygiene demystified that can move into all kinds of locations. It’s very possible to wave it into all kinds of different activities.”

Time in nature is the antidote to the worrying hyper-focus on technology, which is growing even stronger with the advent of AI, said Valentin, who is co-coordinating the Earth Guardian internship with Andrew Smyth. 

“There’s a way of listening to the land that informs us how, as humans, we really belong, and what our role is in terms of reciprocity and giving back and taking care. It’s getting lost in our culture, but we have amazing innate capacities that come from being close to nature. It drops you right away into that calm and alert way of being, sets you up for a meditative experience.” 

Kind Mind is also putting together a free one-day Educators in the Garden experience to share what they bring to the schools with all local educators. The May 23 event offers participants an opportunity to ground and revitalize with nature-enhanced mindfulness practices amid a cohort of fellow educators. The goal? Revitalizing teachers’ passion and purpose, and possibly bringing nature experiences to their own students. 

“I’m really passionate about helping educators because they’re with the kids every day, so the impact really gets passed along,” Valentin said. “If they can find that peace within and they know how to drop in, they can also help the kids to do that. Teachers just have so much put on them these days and they’re burning out. So I’m really happy to support them this way.”

A four-day Healing Through Nature Connection retreat slated for April 30 to May 3 is designed for anyone interested in an experiential immersion training to deepen mindfulness practices and improve well-being; improving more extensive nature-based approaches in order to counter our fast-paced, screen-centered world. 

Whatever the program, Kind Mind’s mission all comes down to the same concept. 

“Everything we’re doing is about coming into a setting, a place of learning; and finding ways to infuse learning with mindfulness and self-awareness practices,” Valentin said. “Wherever the place, whether schools, a garden, a museum or anywhere, we find ways to tailor the programming to meet the audience.”  

Visit www.kindmindsantabarbara.org for more information.