Micro-Mindfulness Practices  

A recent study, spearheaded by Harvard and Berkeley researcher Eli Susman, PhD, shows a very promising way of making mindfulness more accessible to all. He calls it micro-practices. His study reveals that daily practices of as little as 20 seconds, when done consistently, were found to improve “self-compassion, stress and psychopathology¹.”

At Illumination we have embraced this concept by developing bite-sized practices, short activities and suggestions for easy transitions in the classroom that give students just enough time to pause and take a mindful moment. We even have an entire, standard-aligned PE curriculum.

Movement Based Mindfulness

According to data compiled by the Yoga in Schools Consortium, an estimated 4,700 schools across the United States had incorporated yoga or mindfulness into their curriculum as of 2026². Like traditional mindfulness practices, movement-based mindfulness approaches — such as walking meditation or yoga — have been shown to reduce stress, enhance mental focus, and strengthen the mind-body connection.

For students who are especially fidgety, have ADHD, or experience shorter attention spans, incorporating movement can provide an accessible pathway to mindfulness, particularly for those who find it challenging to sit still for extended periods of time.

At Illumination Institute, we have integrated movement into many of our mindfulness practices. Each lesson within our curriculum also includes suggestions for incorporating movement, along with additional adaptations such as using tactile objects and making abstract concepts more concrete and accessible for all learners.

Prioritizing Teacher Wellness

Compared to many other professions, teachers experience disproportionately high levels of burnout, particularly in the years following COVID-19. As a result, more recent research has focused on teacher well-being and the impact it has on implementing School-Based Mindfulness Training (SBMT). One study found that “teachers who felt more supported by their principals at baseline were later observed to implement the SBMT with greater quality, whereas teachers who had more positive expectations about the program felt more confident teaching the course in the future. Teachers’ baseline stress moderated the effect of training condition on all measures of implementation quality.”³

At Illumination Institute, prioritizing teacher well-being has always been a central part of our training approach. We believe self-care comes first, which is why we begin with practices that support educators’ own wellness before moving into curriculum implementation. Our trainings include a variety of self-care exercises and mindfulness practices specifically designed for teachers, and we have consistently found that educators deeply value having their own well-being prioritized alongside that of their students.

Citations:

1: Eli S. Susman, Serena Chen, Ann M. Kring, Allison G. Harvey. Daily micropractice can augment single-session interventions: A randomized controlled trial of self-compassionate touch and examining their associations with habit formation in US college students,
Behaviour Research and Therapy, Volume 175, 2024, 104498, ISSN 0005-7967,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2024.104498.

2: Yoga in schools: The Growing Movement bringing mindfulness to children’s classrooms. yogajala. (2026, April 3). https://yogajala.com/yoga-in-schools-children-mindfulness-2026/

3:Braun SS, Greenberg MT, Roeser RW, Taylor LJ, Montero-Marin J, Crane C, Williams JMG, Sonley A, Lord L, Ford T; MYRIAD Team; Kuyken W. Teachers’ stress and training in a school-based mindfulness program: Implementation results from a cluster randomized controlled trial. J Sch Psychol. 2024 Jun;104:101288. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2024.101288. Epub 2024 Feb 28. PMID: 38871412; PMCID: PMC11850297.