Contemplative neuroscience, self-awareness, and education

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Contemplative neuroscience, self-awareness, and education Aviva Berkovich-Ohanaa,*, Patricia A. Jenningsb, Shiri Lavyc a

Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel b Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States c Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel *Corresponding author: Tel.: +972-50-3681889, e-mail address: [email protected]

Abstract Accumulating research in education shows that contemplative practices contribute to and foster well-being of individuals in sustainable ways. This bears special importance for teachers, as it affects not only them but also their students. Based on accumulating behavioral and neuroscientific findings, it has been suggested that a key process by which mindfulness meditation enhances self-regulation is the altering of self-awareness. Indeed, accumulated work shows that the underlying networks supporting various types of self-awareness are malleable following meditative practice. However, the field of education has developed independently from the study of the self and its relation to contemplative neuroscience thus far, and to date there is no systematic account linking this accumulating body of knowledge to the field of education or discussing how it might be relevant to teachers. Here we show how incorporating insights from contemplative neuroscience—which are built on the conceptualization and neuroscience of the self—into contemplative pedagogy can inform the field and might even serve as a core underlying mechanism tying together different empirical evidence. This review points to potential neural mechanisms by which mindfulness meditation helps teachers manage stress and promote supportive learning environments, resulting in improved educational outcomes, and thus it has significant implications for educational policy regarding teachers.

Keywords Self, Contemplative neuroscience, Meditation, Mindfulness, Education, Teachers

Progress in Brain Research, ISSN 0079-6123, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.015 © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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1 Introduction Contemplative practices, especially various forms of meditative training, have been adapted from Eastern traditions into Western contexts in the last three decades. One of the fields increasingly adopting meditative practices is education (e.g., Brady, 2007; Coburn et al., 2011; Davidson et al., 2012; Waters et al., 2015; Zajonc, 2006), where contemplative pedagogy has been labeled “the quiet revolution in higher education” (Zajonc, 2013). Accumulating research in education shows that contemplative practices contribute to and foster well-being of individuals in sustainable ways (reviewed by Schonert-Reichl and Roeser, 2016). The movement to introduce contemplative practices to teachers bears special importance, as it affects not only the practicing individuals (i.e., teachers) but also seems to have notable effects on shaping the “mental habits” of their students (Davidson et al., 2012; Jennings, 2015; Roeser, 2016). At the same time, in the last two decades there has been growing scientific investigation into the possible underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms of the salutary effects of contemplative practices (e.g., Bærentsen et al., 2010; Davidson and Lutz, 2008; Desbordes and Negi, 2013; Falcone and Jerram, 2018; Fox and Cahn, 2018; Young et al., 2018). The most investigated form of contemplative practices is mindfulness meditation, derived mainly from the Theravada Buddhist practice Vipassana (Gunaratana and Gunaratana, 2011; Olendzki, 2003). In current clinical and research contexts, mindfulness meditation is typically described as nonjudgmental attention to experiences in the present moment (Baer, 2003; Chiesa and Serretti, 2010; Hart, 1987; Ivanovski and Malhi, 2007; Kabat-Zinn, 2003).a This definition describes practices that require both the cognitive regulation of attention (in order to maintain focus on immediate experiences, such as thoughts, emotions, body posture, and sensations) as well as the emotional ability to approach one’s experiences with openness and acceptance (H€ olzel et al., 2011; Lippelt et al., 2014; Lutz et al., 2008). Based on accumulating behavioral and neuroscientific findings, it has been suggested that mindfulness meditation includes at least three components that interact closely to constitute a process of enhanced self-regulation (Tang et al., 2015): enhanced attention control (Farb et al., 2013; Jha et al., 2007; Malinowski, 2013; Morrison and Jha, 2015), improved emotion regulation (Chambers et al., 2009; Farb et al., 2010; Goldin and Gross, 2010; Lutz et al., 2013), and altered self-awareness (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2012; Dor-Ziderman et al., 2013; H€olzel et al., 2011). The main claim to be developed here is that the mindfulness-training induced shift in self-awareness is plausibly the key mechanism in play that should be considered when studying the salutary effects of contemplative practices in the educational a Note that the term mindfulness has been used to describe deliberate (intentional) mindfulness meditation (i.e., a form of practice), but also dispositional mindfulness (also known as trait mindfulness, but see (Falcone and Jerram, 2018) for an opposing view), and indeed recent publications attracted attention to the need to better differentiate between these two (Tang, 2017; Tang and Posner, 2013; Wheeler et al., 2016).

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setup. However, the field of education has developed independently thus far, and to date there is no systematic account linking this accumulating body of knowledge of the self-awareness shifts within contemplative neuroscience to the field of education or discussing how it might be relevant to students, teachers, and teacher education. This is the case, for example, in current models of the effects of mindfulness training on teachers, including the influential prosocial classroom model (Jennings, 2015; Jennings and Greenberg, 2009) as well as the developmental model of the stress and coping process (Skinner and Beers, 2016). Specifically, while the prosocial classroom model emphasizes various related psychological processes, such as recognizing one’s emotions, habits of mind, and patterns of behavior (e.g., Jennings and Greenberg, 2009; and CASEL.org), it excludes the understanding of selfawareness as a key factor altogether. Here we aim to show how incorporating insights from contemplative neuroscience—which are built on insights and accumulating findings from the neuroscientific study of the self—into contemplative pedagogy can inform the field and might even serve as a core underlying mechanism, tying together different empirical evidence. To this end, we focus on teachers and teacher education, as most neuroscientific studies to date in this emerging field have been conducted with adults, and the implications for children are less direct and warrant further research. Furthermore, teachers have been consistently shown to be the single most dominant factor that promotes students’ development and achievement (Barber and Mourshed, 2007; Hattie, 2008).

2 Self-awareness: Possible underlying neural mechanisms, relation to well-being, and meditation-induced malleability 2.1 Two different modes of self-awareness In recent years, there has been rapidly growing research into the notion of “the self,” a core aspect of consciousness. The concept of self is highly ambiguous and wideranging, involving different aspects of the self across a large number of disciplines, including embodied, experiential, affective, intersubjective, cognitive, narrative, and extended aspects (Gallagher, 2013; Strawson, 2000). Thus it may be best construed as a multidimensional construct including somatosensory, agentive, narrative, and social components (Gallagher, 2000, 2011, 2013; Klein and Nelson, 2014; Siderits et al., 2011; Strawson, 2000). In an attempt to clarify this discussion, Legrand and Ruby (2009), as well as Christoff et al. (2011), have introduced a distinction between self-related and self-specifying processes. While self-related processes are suggested to underlie tasks in which subjects process information about themselves (such as recognizing themselves or assessing their own personality, physical appearance, attitude, or feelings), self-specifying processes are suggested to implement an implicit self/non-self distinction in perception, action, and emotion through sensorimotor feedback loops.

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Self-related and self-specific processes invoke James’s (1890) classic distinction between the “Me”—the self as known through its physical and mental attributes—and the “I”—the self as subjective knower and agent. A related influential framework within cognitive philosophy distinguishes between the “narrative self” and the “minimal self,” respectively (Gallagher, 2000). The narrative self involves personal identity and continuity across time, i.e., construction of one’s own personal identity shaped by social and cultural factors as well as conceptual thought, and is associated with high-level cognitive functions such as selfrelated processing, beliefs, and autobiographic memory retrieval. In contrast, the minimal self (also called the “embodied self”) is devoid of temporal extension; is endowed with a sense of agency, ownership, and nonconceptual first-person content (Gallagher, 2000); and refers to the basic experience of being a self, rooted in bodily sensorimotor processes (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009). Although different authors and disciplines might specify these distinctions slightly differently, there seems to be a rough convergence “towards a general dichotomy between: (a) a basic notion of the self as the first-personal aspect of normal conscious experience implemented by low-level bodily processes; and (b) a more sophisticated conception of the self as constituted by high-level reflective processes involving introspection, self-evaluation and autobiographic memory retrieval” (Millie`re, 2017, pp. 10–11). The brain regions that appear most consistently activated in self-related paradigms are the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) (Bar, 2009; Gusnard et al., 2001; Kim, 2012; Northoff and Bermpohl, 2004; Northoff et al., 2006; Qin and Northoff, 2011, p. 2001), both key cortical nodes of the default mode network (DMN), a large-scale intrinsic network that is habitually highly active at rest but less active during goal-directed tasks (Buckner et al., 2008; Greicius et al., 2003; Raichle et al., 2001). In contrast to self-related processes, selfspecifying processes specify the self as an embodied subject and agent. The cortical regions suggested to be involved include those related with sensorimotor integration, such as motor and supplementary motor areas, the temporo-parietal junction and inferior parietal lobule (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009; Chaminade and Decety, 2002), and interoception—i.e., the insula (Craig, 2009; Seth, 2013), as well as higher-level regulatory regions, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Christoff et al., 2011; Legrand, 2006; Legrand and Ruby, 2009). The two modes of self-processing are interrelated. Self-specific processing is a simpler, pre-reflective and embodied form of processing, manifested in both preverbal infants (Zahavi, 2004) and animals, especially mammals (Panksepp and Northoff, 2009), and thus is thought to underlie any experience and constitute a prerequisite for any type of self-related processing to take place (Damasio, 1999, 2012). At the same time, self-related processing acts as a form of integrative glue, affecting the binding of memory to source, the integration of parts into perceptual wholes, linking attention to decision making and to the environment (Lane et al., 2016; Northoff, 2016; Sui and Humphreys, 2015).

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2.2 The two modes of self-processing are related to well-being and social emotion The two modes of self-processing are strongly linked to mood, well-being, and social emotion. In order to explain this, some elaboration on the concept of “self” in psychology is warranted. In self-theories of clinical and social psychology, the concept of self is typically used to describe individuals’ inner representations or schemas of themselves (Deci and Ryan, 2000; Mischel and Shoda, 1995) and thus is thought to rely on self-related processing (Swann and Buhrmester, 2012). People’s self-concept can affect their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and behavior in adaptive or maladaptive ways, with the main goal of maintaining a coherent, and often positive, self-concept (Baumeister et al., 1996; Deci and Ryan, 2000). For example, the self-determination theory postulates that humans are naturally inclined toward integration of their psychic elements into a unified sense of self and integration of themselves into larger social structures (Deci and Ryan, 2000). Importantly, latent beliefs and conceptions about the self-underlie thoughts and emotions, and thus negative self-related beliefs confer vulnerability for depression (Beck, 2005; Disner et al., 2011). Similarly, low selfesteem is considered the root of violence and antisocial behavior (Baumeister et al., 1996), and exaggerated self-verification motivations can develop into narcissism and destructive relationships (Swann and Buhrmester, 2012). Thus it has been proposed, using different conceptualizations, that a lower emphasis on the self, also referred to as hypo-egoic functioning, contributes to enhanced well-being (Dambrun and Ricard, 2011; Leary et al., 2006; Shiah, 2016). Here we refer to the influential conceptualization of Dambrun and Ricard (2011), differentiating between self-centeredness and selflessness. Self-centeredness means that “the self takes on a central point of reference with regard to many psychological activities (i.e., conation, motivation, attention, cognition, affect/emotion, and behavior). The exaggerated importance given to the self … refers to the increased degree with which the individual considers that his own condition is more important than that of others and this takes unquestionable priority. Self-centered psychological functioning includes characteristics such as biased self-interest, egoism, egocentrism, and egotism” (p. 140). In contrast, the term selflessness qualifies the self’s alternative psychological functioning. It is characterized by “low levels of self-centeredness and a low degree of importance given to the self (i.e., not exaggerated) … based on a weak distinction between self and others, and self and the environment as a whole” (p. 140). Dambrun and Ricard (2011) further suggested that a shift from self-centered to selfless functioning is, in turn, “closely related to characteristics such as altruism, kindness, respect, empathy, compassion and the search for harmony” and is suggested to constitute “a source of authentic and durable happiness” (p. 140). Ample empirical data support this link, including that on the detrimental effects of selffocused rumination in depression (Beck, 2005; Berman et al., 2011; Disner et al., 2011) and the beneficial effects of hypo-egoic processing, or an increase in concrete and present-focus awareness, on self-regulation (Leary et al., 2006).

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An important concept in this context is decentering—the capacity to shift experiential perspective—from within one’s subjective experience onto the experience itself, as a mediator of therapy treatment gains (Bernstein et al., 2015). Decentering resembles what has been described as “reperceiving,” “cognitive insight,” or “cognitive defusion” (Chambers et al., 2009; Grabovac et al., 2011; Shapiro et al., 2006), and it reflects the meta-cognitive awareness that one’s thoughts and experiences are in essence no more than mental events, where one can observe them arise and dissipate without having to act on them in any way (Bernstein et al., 2015; Papies, 2016). Indeed, this is similar to reducing self-related processing, which is the process of associating external and internal stimuli and events with one’s self, causing stimuli to no longer be experienced as simply “objective” events, but as related to the self (Northoff et al., 2006), a process related to the activation of the midline structures of the DMN (Gusnard et al., 2001; Northoff, 2016; Northoff and Bermpohl, 2004; Qin and Northoff, 2011). Importantly, decentering is considered to be highly important in the cultivation of mental health (Hayes et al., 1999), while reduced ability to decenter has been related to anxiety and depression (HayesSkelton and Graham, 2013). The above clarifies how a healthy self-image, as well as reduced focus on selfrelated processing, contributes to enhanced well-being. However, the relationship between embodied self-specific processing, mood, and social emotion might be less self-evident, albeit it is even more fundamental. Self-specific processing defines the self-world relationship and, therefore, is at the core of pre-reflective affective experience (Colombetti, 2011; Gerrans, 2013; Seth, 2013; Seth and Tsakiris, 2018). A major self-specific process is the sense of self-boundaries, a fundamental experience enacted by the human consciousness, distinguishing “me” from “not me” (the world). Self-boundaries always exist, wordlessly, pre-reflectively. It is actually the self, the world, or the self–world relation that is described as “feeling” a certain way or having a “mood” (Ratcliffe, 2005, 2008, 2009). There are many ways in which self-boundaries are described in daily life, and references to them are commonplace. Some are quite mundane, such as feeling “settled,” “at home,” or “part of things,” whereas others, such as “feeling estranged from everything” or “feeling disconnected from the world,” convey less frequent and sometimes pathological forms of experience. Thus, self-boundaries are described by Ratcliffe (2009) as existential feeling: “a sense of relatedness between self and world, which shapes all experience” (p. 180). Healthy self-boundaries can be modulated and adjusted to constant changes, thus flexible self-boundaries are related to well-being (de Haan and Fuchs, 2010). In contrast, in some psychopathologies, self-boundaries appear to be radically disrupted or altogether missing. In particular, some psychopathologies have lost the possibility of modulation and are characterized by rigid self-boundaries, where a middle way of flexible switching from doing to deliberating and vice versa is lacking, and one experiences either complete automatism or complete control (de Haan and Fuchs, 2010; Fuchs and Schlimme, 2009). Specifically, self-boundaries have been shown to be disturbed in schizophrenia (Sass, 2004, 2013), complex post-traumatic stress

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disorder, psychosis and depersonalization disorder (Ataria, 2013, 2015; Nelson et al., 2009), and neurological disorders such as somatoparaphrenia and autoscopy (reviewed by de Vignemont, 2011). Moreover, flexible self-boundaries are not only fundamental for mental wellbeing but also for the socio-affective capacities of empathy. While empathy is a complex phenomenon to define (Preston and de Waal, 2001), here empathy refers to the ability to share and understand the emotional experience of another person and is considered a central capacity required for social interactions (Lamm et al., 2016; Preston and de Waal, 2001; Singer and Klimecki, 2014). Early on, the importance of self-boundary flexibility to empathic attunement has been noted (Jordan, 1991). This is reflected in more recent views in social neuroscience that assume empathy to rely on shared embodied representations of affective states, where “the self represents the other” (Ciaunica, 2017; Decety and Chaminade, 2003), especially highlighting the role of the insula, involved in interoceptive bodily awareness (Craig, 2009; Seth, 2013). Indeed, it requires a blurring of self-boundaries to identify the self with another—such a modulating role of self-boundaries is empirically demonstrated in recent studies that experimentally reduced self-boundaries with multisensory stimulation techniques, resulting in enhanced emotion recognition, prosocial affect, and reduced outgroup biases (Maister and Tsakiris, 2015; Maister et al., 2013a,b). At the same time, healthy and effective empathic engagement also requires self– other distinction (Lamm and Majdandzic, 2015; Lamm et al., 2016; Singer and Klimecki, 2014). While shared positive affect can be a very pleasant state, the sharing of suffering can at times be difficult, especially when the self–other distinction becomes blurred. Such a form of shared distress, referred to as empathic distress (Klimecki and Singer, 2012), can be especially challenging for persons working in helping professions, such as therapists, but also for teachers. In order to prevent an excessive sharing of suffering that may turn into distress, one may respond to the suffering of others with compassion (Singer and Klimecki, 2014), which relies more on the cognitive abilities and emotion-regulation mechanisms previously specified (Dahl et al., 2015, 2016). Thus, it can be concluded that a healthy (i.e., integrated) psychological self, as well as reduced self-centeredness, is crucial for emotional well-being and compassionate engagement. At the same time, flexible self-boundaries, i.e., modulated switching between the two modes of self-processing in response to changing circumstances, are crucial for emotional well-being and healthy empathic engagement.

2.3 Meditation alters the function of neural networks supporting self-awareness There is growing agreement in contemplative neuroscience that a key mechanism of meditation practice, in particular various forms of mindfulness training, is alteration in the function of neural networks supporting self-awareness (H€olzel et al., 2011; Tang et al., 2015; Vago and Silbersweig, 2012). Indeed, accumulated work shows

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that the underlying networks of various types of self-awareness are malleable following meditative practice (e.g., Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2012; Dahl et al., 2015; Dorjee, 2016; Dor-Ziderman et al., 2013; Farb et al., 2007; Trautwein et al., 2014; Vago and Silbersweig, 2012). In what follows, we provide evidence for meditation-related reduced self-related processing, as well as meditation-induced enhanced engagement in “present-moment,” self-specific, embodied self-awareness. Two mechanisms by which meditation can reduce self-related processing have been proposed, the first being decentering (Dahl et al., 2015). Mindfulness training teaches participants the capacity to decenter, i.e., shift their experiential perspective—from within their mental subjective experience onto the embodied experience itself (Papies, 2016). Meditators acquire this perspective with regard to emotional and physical states they may experience during meditation practice and in daily life, which facilitates acceptance and non-reactivity to both pleasant and unpleasant experiences (Grabovac et al., 2011). The second mechanism is self-inquiry, conceptualized as the process of investigating the dynamics and nature of conscious experience, particularly in relation to thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that pertain to one’s sense of self (Dahl et al., 2015). Self-inquiry leads to reduced cognitive reification, defined as experiencing thoughts, emotions, and perceptions as being accurate depictions of reality, and in particular the implicit belief that the self and objects of consciousness are inherently enduring, unitary, and independent of their surrounding conditions and circumstances (Dahl et al., 2015, p. 9). Such a reduction in cognitive reification reduces self-related processing, which is a primary target of classical Buddhist meditations. The two processes, decentering and self-inquiry, can be attributed to two different categories of meditation, constructive and destructive (Dahl et al., 2015), the latter related to a more advanced meditation practice and that can be assumed to occur in later stages. Importantly, this meditation-related, reduced self-related processing has been proposed to be a key mechanism of the salutary effect of meditation (Brewer and Garrison, 2014; Tang et al., 2015). For example, Bernstein and colleagues (Hadash et al., 2016) propose that Experiential Selfless Processing—conceptualized as processing of present-moment subjective experience without self-relatedness—is a principal mechanism responsible for several salutary effects of mindfulness practice and, more broadly, an important mechanism underlying mental health. Aligned with that, since the pioneering study of Farb et al. (2007), growing neuroscientific evidence shows that mindfulness-related practice lowers activity in various nodes of the DMN. More specifically, various mindfulness-related techniques showed decreased blood oxygenated level dependent (BOLD) fMRI activation in several areas of the DMN during practice, including the precuneus (Ives-Deliperi et al., 2011; Tang and Posner, 2009), mPFC (Brewer et al., 2011; Farb et al., 2007; Ives-Deliperi et al., 2011), PCC (Brewer et al., 2011; Pagnoni, 2012; Tang and Posner, 2009), and lateral temporal cortex (Pagnoni et al., 2008). Even more interesting, it was shown that these effects can become permanent, thus a trait and not only a state effect, as similar BOLD fMRI reductions in DMN activity were shown during task or rest (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2016a,b; Garrison et al., 2015), as well as

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reduced DMN functional-connectivity during spontaneous resting-state fluctuations in long-term meditators (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2016b; Taylor et al., 2013). Others reported increased functional-connectivity among various DMN nodes (Jang et al., 2011; Taylor et al., 2013), as well as altered functional-connectivity between DMN nodes and other networks (Brewer et al., 2011; Hasenkamp and Barsalou, 2012; Jang et al., 2011; Kilpatrick et al., 2011). In other studies, using electrophysiology, a similar lower trait DMN activity—compared to controls—was indicated by lower resting-state frontal-midline gamma power (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2012) or lower resting-state overall gamma functional-connectivity (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2013). Not only functional, but even structural, reduction in the DMN nodes were shown (recently reviewed by Fox et al., 2014), especially reduction in PCC gray matter thickness relative to controls (Kang et al., 2013). Consistent with the notion that a primary mechanism of mindfulness interventions is to enhance engagement in present-moment awareness, two recent metaanalyses of fMRI studies (Falcone and Jerram, 2018; Young et al., 2018), as well as a meta-analysis of structural MRI (Fox et al., 2014), point to a central role for the insula. The insula has been ascribed a number of roles in higher-order cognitive functioning, including bodily self-awareness and interoception (Craig, 2009; Karnath and Baier, 2010; Seth, 2013). Importantly, enhanced insula activity has been reported following short mindfulness-based interventions (Falcone and Jerram, 2018; Farb et al., 2007; but see Gotink et al., 2016 for conflicting evidence), thus it seems to be a key underlying mechanism in the shift in self-awareness, starting from the early stages of the mindfulness practice. These findings suggest that mindfulness interventions plausibly impact awareness of internal reactions “in-themoment” associated with changes in functioning of the insula (Young et al., 2018). All of the above strongly suggest that meditation, specifically mindfulness, induces a shift in self-awareness away from focusing on self-related processing into a more embodied self-specific mode of processing. Several predictions from such a shift would be: (a) a stronger emphasis on the experience of “now” rather than time-traveling or mind-wandering; (b) heightened perceptual awareness; (c) enhanced decentering and reduced self-bias in various domains; and (d) enhanced positive emotions. Indeed, all of these predictions are supported by empirical evidence, as we will now show.

2.3.1 A stronger emphasis on the experience of “now” rather than time-traveling or mind-wandering Studies concerning the time-experience of meditators show that meditation induces a change in subjective temporal experience toward emphasizing the “now,” or being less aware of the passage of time (Berkovich-Ohana and Wittmann, 2017; Brown et al., 1984). In agreement with that, longer time production was shown in mindfulness practitioners compared to controls (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2011, 2012), and a slower internal timer was indicated in another study (Kramer et al., 2013). At the same time, a reduction in mind-wandering along the timeline was shown for meditators (Mrazek et al., 2012; Sood and Jones, 2013).

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2.3.2 Heightened perceptual awareness Due to the antagonistic relationship between the task-negative DMN and the taskpositive system, a reduction in DMN activation should enhance sensory-motor networks, supporting the momentary embodied self. In support of that, in several studies meditation practice was related to enhanced visual sensory processing (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2016a; Brefczynski-Lewis et al., 2007; Xu et al., 2014). Similarly, subjective reports on the effects of meditation have included heightened perceptual awareness (Baruss, 2003; Brown, 1977; Carter et al., 2005). This is supported by physiological studies (Kerr et al., 2013) and neuroimaging studies (Farb et al., 2013; Krygier et al., 2015; Melloni et al., 2013) showing enhanced interoceptive sensitivity and neural activation in cortical regions supporting interoception.

2.3.3 Enhanced decentering and reduced self-bias Decentering is a key component of any mindfulness-based program (Crain et al., 2017; Papies, 2016). In support of that, it has been shown that change in decentering significantly mediated the effect of a mindfulness-based intervention on anxiety (Hoge et al., 2015) and that only following a mindfulness-based intervention for prevention of depressive relapse, vs. antidepressant medication or placebo, were there changes in decentering (Bieling et al., 2012). There have been similar findings in relation to the treatment of addiction (Brewer et al., 2013). A pioneering neuroscientific study using an event-related electrophysiological paradigm provided preliminary evidence that prolonged meditation practice modulates implicit selfvs. other-related processing, i.e., reducing the regularly observed self-bias, accompanied by an increase in compassion (Trautwein et al., 2016).

2.3.4 Enhanced positive emotions Enhanced emotion-regulation capacity, including reappraisal and perspectivetaking, is considered a main outcome of meditative practice (Chambers et al., 2009; Dahl et al., 2015; Tang et al., 2015). In support of that notion, meditation practice was shown to result in trait reduction in anxiety and negative affect and an increase in positive affect (Davidson et al., 2003). Mindfulness was also shown to increase tolerance of negative affect (Chambers et al., 2009; Farb et al., 2010), possibly by restoring balance between affective and sensory neural networks—supporting conceptual and embodied representations of emotion (Farb et al., 2013). Moreover, mindfulness training was related to enhanced empathy (Barbosa, 2013; Berry, 2017; Laneri et al., 2017; Raab, 2014). In summary, accumulating evidence shows that mindfulness meditation practice can reduce narrative self-awareness and its underlying DMN function, as well as provide support for the predicted consequences of such a shift, including enhanced momentary presence, embodied awareness, decentering, and emotion regulation. Another line of research provides initial evidence that the embodied self can become more flexible with prolonged mindfulness meditation training. A set of pilot studies employing neuro-phenomenology (Varela, 1996) demonstrated a marked

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volitional reduction in embodied self in a small number of highly adept meditation practitioners. In one study (Dor-Ziderman et al., 2013), long-term meditators shifted volitionally between three modes of self-awareness: narrative self, embodied self, and selflessness. Results showed that the different modes of self-awareness carry dissociable frequency-dependent networks and that the selflessness mode was characterized by a volitional beta activity reduction in the right inferior parietal lobule, a region related to a subjective sense of agency. In a continuing project, a uniquely trained participant volitionally reduced his self-boundaries, from normal to reduced and then totally dissolved boundaries (Ataria et al., 2015), which was significantly related to reduced beta oscillations in the right TPJ and PCC, both regions known to mediate the experiential unity of self and body and involved in multisensory integration, agency, and ownership, as well as self-location, as also corroborated in a larger group of meditators (Dor-Ziderman et al., 2016). These studies show that the embodied self’s flexibility can be malleable to meditative training. Thus, it can be concluded that not only is there a meditation-induced shift away from the narrative self but also that meditative training can enhance embodied-self flexibility, both processes crucial for emotional well-being.

2.4 Possible implications for teachers The understandings stemming from this section may hold important implications for education and teachers but also for various life arenas such as psychotherapy (Dimaggio, 2011; Singer et al., 2013), art (Vessel et al., 2012, 2013), religion (Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, 2009; Newberg and d’Aquili, 2008), and political science (Fowler and Kam, 2007). Yet, we suggest that they may be especially important for education in three aspects: (a) the role of education processes in shaping the two modes of self-awareness: education explicitly and implicitly shapes both the narrative self and the embodied self of students; (b) the crucial role of relationships (e.g., teacher–student relationships and peer relationships) in core development and learning processes; and (c) understanding the underlying mechanisms of the beneficial outcomes of the increasingly growing number of mindfulness-based interventions in educational contexts.

3 Teachers’ self-processing and mindfulness practice In the last two decades there has been a burgeoning interest in mindfulness-based interventions for teachers (Schonert-Reichl and Roeser, 2016). A recent review postulated that teachers’ well-being is a construct involving teachers’ models of the quality of their personal, professional, and relational selves (Hwang et al., 2017). This underscores the benefits that teachers may gain from various forms of meditative training, resulting in alterations in self-awareness. That is the focus of this section.

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3.1 Teachers’ self-awareness, well-being, and relationships Teachers’ social and emotional competence and well-being are critical to their capacity to create and maintain effective learning environments (Jennings and Greenberg, 2009). Learning involves taking risks and engaging in executive functions such as working memory, planning, and problem-solving. Therefore, the learning environment must be an emotionally safe and supportive space where students feel motivated to tackle the challenges inherent in learning. However, the classroom is an incredibly challenging context to work in, both cognitively and emotionally. Teachers must flexibly manage their attention as they notice their students’ engagement and understanding, hold and manipulate the memory of the content and sequence of a lesson, and repeatedly shift attention from focusing on one student to broadened awareness of the entire class. The classroom context also involves multiple social interactions and relationships that can provoke both positive and negative emotions. Often teachers are instructed to control their students’ behavior, when technically this is impossible, resulting in ongoing feelings of frustration and failure. To top it off, everyone in the classroom is confined—they cannot leave without permission or a negative consequence will ensue. All of these factors contribute to the stress inherent in the classroom context. Teachers experience additional school and community-level stressors such as poor salaries, the demands of high-stakes accountability, unhappy parents, and unsupportive administrators. It is no wonder that teaching is now ranked as one of the most stressful professions (Greenberg et al., 2016). The stress responseb has been shown to impair the learning process (Lupien et al., 2007). Under feelings of threat, focused attention, inhibition, and working memory can be affected, all functions critical to the learning process. This is why a peaceful and emotionally supportive classroom is critical to successful academic achievement. Research is beginning to demonstrate that teachers’ stress and burnout can impact their students’ well-being and performance. A study of a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. first-grade children found that students in classrooms with teachers reporting greater levels of stress had higher rates of internalizing and externalizing disorders (Milkie and Warner, 2011). Similarly, Oberle and Schonert-Reichl (2016) found that teachers’ self-reported burnout was correlated with biomarkers of stress response impairment among their students. Finally, Jennings (2015) found significant negative relationships between teachers’ self-reported depressive symptoms and poor-quality classroom interactions (e.g., less emotionally and instructionally supportive and not well-organized). Thus, it could be hypothesized that the stress response impairs teachers’ perceptions in

b Stress response is the body’s method of reacting to a condition such as a threat, challenge, or physical or psychological barrier. The two major systems that respond to stress include the neuroendocrine (i.e., hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) and autonomic systems and, mediated via largely overlapping circuits in the limbic forebrain, hypothalamus and brainstem, so that their respective contribution is tuned in accordance with stressor modality or intensity (Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009).

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ways that are harmful to their relationships with their students. For example, it is widely understood that under stress, human beings tend to engage in more automatic reactions resulting in biased interpretations of situations (Yu, 2016). Teachers must make quick decisions continuously as they are teaching and when the stress response is triggered, they may make attribution errors. For example, if a teacher is trying to finish an important lesson before the bell rings in 10 min and one of her students keeps interrupting her, she can begin to feel threatened by the student because he is thwarting her goal of finishing the lesson on time. This could be understood by the following scenario: Under the influence of high self-centeredness, self-related processes (i.e., “I must finish the lesson before the bell rings,” “this is not like me not to be able to finish a lesson,” “I’m a bad teacher,” etc.) will attribute self-related meaning to neutral stimuli (recurring questions from the student), thus affecting attention (i.e., enhanced attention to this student’s behavior) and cognition (interpreting the student’s behavior as intentionally hostile, reinforcing the feeling of threat and accompanying frustration, instead of simply struggling to understand the lesson). This, in turn, will trigger the physiological stress response: The teacher may raise her voice and/or admonish the student for the interruption. This reaction can have the unintended effect of triggering a similar stress response in the student. He likely does not understand that the teacher is feeling time urgency and may actually be very engaged in the learning but just not be well-regulated. He may feel that the teacher’s reaction is inappropriate or unfair and may respond with an internalizing behavior (fear, anxiety) or externalizing behavior (hostility, aggression). Either response interferes with the relationship between the teacher and the student because the student’s trust is eroded. If the student responds with hostility, a coercive cycle of overreactivity can ensue whereby the student’s hostility in response to the teacher’s admonishment reinforces the teacher’s perception that the student’s behavior is intentional, thereby increasing the feeling of threat (Patterson, 2016). Once such a cycle has become established between a teacher and her student, she becomes hypervigilant toward the student and tends to perceive threat when there is none. The interaction has an impact on the overall emotional tone of the classroom and the individual students. Altercations between students and teachers send the message that the classroom is not a safe place for taking risks involved in learning. Students who tend to be anxious can shut down and even dissociate as a protective mechanism. Students who tend to act out can become more defiant and aggressive in the face of a teacher who acts in ways that seem unfair. Teachers’ self-schema can develop from these interactions and result in negative self-related beliefs that confer vulnerability for depression (Beck, 2005; Disner et al., 2011). At the same time, students’ negative self-related thoughts can arise from such events (i.e., beginning to think about themselves as a poor student or a “bad” kid or someone teachers don’t like). In contrast, when teachers have social and emotional competence and well-being, they can manage the demands of the classroom. When a situation like the one above occurs, the teacher recognizes that she is feeling stress and understands why. She notices the sensations in her body (arising heat and tension) and the associated thoughts (“he’s doing this to upset me”) and knows they are signals of exaggerated

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self-centeredness that might result in a stress response. She knows that time urgency is a common stressor for her and that when a student interrupts it may trigger anger. So, when the interruption occurs, she can take a moment to calm down and carefully appraise the situation before she overreacts. In this scenario, she can recognize that the student is very engaged and excited about the content and does not intend to upset her. Rather than react with hostility, she can respond with enthusiasm, acknowledging his interest in the subject matter. She can let him know that the class needs to get through the lesson and she can invite him to talk more after class. In this way, she strengthens her relationship with the student and the class as a whole while providing emotional support by encouraging passion and enthusiasm for learning.

3.2 Mindfulness training and teachers’ shifts in self-processing modes Based on the four predictions/insights from the neuroscientific findings related to the self-processing modes enhanced by meditation training (which have been empirically supported), contemplative practices can help teachers cultivate positive, supportive relationships with their students and cultivate a positive class climate in different ways. We will use the above example to explore these ways.

3.2.1 A stronger emphasis on the experience of “now” rather than time-traveling or mind-wandering When a situation like the one above occurs, a stronger emphasis on the experience of “now” will lower the teacher’s time urgency. Time urgency has been related to heart disease and Type A behavior, characteristic to individuals who are engaged in a relatively chronic struggle to obtain an unlimited number of poorly defined things from their environment in the shortest period of time and, if necessary, against the opposing effects of other things or persons in this same environment. In contrast, reduced time urgency is related to Type B behavior, characterized by a much more relaxed and noncompetitive approach to life (Landy et al., 1991).

3.2.2 Heightened perceptual awareness Enhanced embodied awareness enables the teacher to recognize that she is feeling stress by enhancing emotion recognition (Farb et al., 2012). In the above-described situation, the teacher may be experiencing narrative self-related processing, characterized by thoughts like “he’s trying to upset me,” “this is not like me not to finish the material,” or “what would the principal think of me,” leading her to feel stressed and impeding her ability to acknowledge her own feelings and needs at the moment. If she could take a moment to shift from narrative-self processing to embodied selfprocessing, her attunement to her own feelings might increase, as embodied self-processing is characterized by attunement to one’s present feelings and to others’ feelings (Decety and Chaminade, 2003). As a second step, as noted above, embodied self-processing is characterized by a sense of relatedness between the self and the world (Ratcliffe, 2009) and decreased boundaries between the self and the world (Ataria, 2015; Sass, 2004), which promotes empathy (Decety and Chaminade, 2003;

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Jordan, 1991), prosocial behavior, and connection with others (Adair et al., 2018). In the above scenario, the enhanced perceptual awareness would enable the teacher to be more sensitive to the student’s perspective in the situation.

3.2.3 Enhanced decentering and reduced self-bias Decentering and reduced self-bias are expected to be one of the core processes fostered by mindfulness that positively affects teachers’ ability to lead positive, supportive interactions (and relationships) with their students. Decentering refers to the “greater mental separation… between awareness of experience and the perceived self-focus of that experience” (Adair et al., 2018, p. 739) resulting from decreased narrative self-processing. In this mode of processing, emotions and feelings are experienced as they are, with decreased judgment and decreased self-related processing that links with previous experiences, existing self-image/presentations, etc. Thus, decreased activity and effects of self-reservation needs which can inhibit genuine, caring connections with others (Swann, 1990; Swann and Buhrmester, 2012), enables more flexibility in interpretation and response. In the above situation, decentering helps the teacher understand why is she stressed—she knows that time urgency is a common stressor for her and that when a student interrupts it may trigger this automatic feeling and associated bodily sensations. She may also be more aware of the student’s emotions and the stressful context in which the interaction takes place.

3.2.4 Enhanced positive emotions Enhanced emotion regulation is proposed to be one of the core processes fostered by mindfulness that supports teachers’ ability to regulate their behavior in the face of challenging circumstances and cultivate caring teacher–student relationships and secure, supportive classroom learning environments. Cumulative evidence suggests that positive emotions and relationships enhance each other and that experiencing, expressing, and sharing positive emotions contribute to creation and maintenance of satisfying, caring relationships (e.g., Cohn et al., 2009; Fredrickson, 2013; Waugh and Fredrickson, 2006). This process occurs through various paths. One of these includes improved emotion regulation when experiencing more positive emotions (Lavy and Eshet, 2018). This improved processing/regulation is enabled by the broadening effect of positive emotions, which allow more openness to various interpretations of an event/situation and increased psychological resources to explore these interpretations (opposed to limited ability to suggest and consider alternative interpretations when experiencing negative emotions; Fredrickson, 2001; Vacharkulksemsuk and Fredrickson, 2013). Thus, in a classroom, students’ comments, which may initially be interpreted in a way that produces negative emotions (e.g., that they are misbehaving) can be interpreted in alternative ways (e.g., that they are very excited or expressing interest). In the example above, when the interruption occurs, the teacher can take a moment to calm down and regulate her emotions. She could, for example, carefully appraise the situation before she overreacts. She could also employ perspectivetaking, enabling her to recognize that the student is very engaged and excited about the content and does not intend to upset her.

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According to qualitative studies of teachers’ mindfulness (reviewed by Hwang et al., 2017), mindfulness indeed increases teachers’ attunement to students’ needs, as well as teachers’ compassion and kindness to others and to themselves. This kind of attunement, empathy, and compassion is highlighted as core in caring teacher– student relationships (Barnes et al., 2007; Barr, 2011; Bohart et al., 2002), required for cooperative communication that fosters students’ pleasure, confidence, and efforts (Wubbels and Brekelmans, 2005). Furthermore, decentering is also expected to enable improved emotion regulation of teachers, including regulation of stress (as portrayed in the example). This is expected due not only to enhanced connection with students but also to the nonjudgmental nature of the embodied-self processing of emotions. This kind of processing may enable decreasing teachers’ emotional labor, which is one of the main precursors of teacher burnout (Chang, 2009, 2013; Lavy and Eshet, 2018). Teachers are typically expected to express specific positive emotions and suppress negative emotions or transform them (e.g., by reappraising the situation) to neutral or positive emotions. For example, in the United States there is a social norm of friendliness, so teachers suppress their emotions. However, recent research suggests that at some times teachers are “just themselves” (Yin, 2016) and express naturally felt emotion in a way that fits their job goals (also called “automatic emotion regulation”; Zapf, 2002). This is aligned with Chambers et al.’ (2009) mindful emotion regulation instead of suppression and reappraisal. This kind of emotion-regulation strategy was associated with improved instruction efficacy, classroom management, and student engagement, as well as increased interpersonal trust with colleagues (Yin, 2016; Yin and Lee, 2012; Yin et al., 2013, 2017). For example, in the situation described above, the teacher may have taken a moment to shift to embodied self-processing (and away from narrative self-processing) to nonjudgmentally acknowledge that she is feeling pressure to finish teaching the material and reflect/share it with the student, thus explaining her behavior and suggesting that they discuss the material in more depth at a later time. Other processes are also involved in linking positive emotions with creation and maintenance of satisfying, caring relationships. These include, for example, positivity resonance—reflecting the mutual experience of sharing positive emotions, care and concern, and feeling in sync with another person during interaction (Fredrickson, 2016). Other examples are the increased ability to think positively of the other when experiencing positive emotions (i.e., positive disposition) and engaging in more interactions when feeling that they are enjoyable (e.g., vs. avoiding interactions), which in turn promotes intimacy and closeness (Fredrickson, 2013; Reis and Rusbult, 2004). Finally, according to attachment theory, internal working models of relationships contain generalized information about the self, others, and self–other relationships that shape the development of new relationships (Bretherton et al., 1989; Main et al., 1985; Spilt et al., 2011). Importantly, mindfulness was shown to have a beneficial effect on attachment style (DiNoble, 2009; Goodall et al., 2012; Shaver et al., 2007), and it may play an important role in cases of maladaptive attachment, owing to decentering and mentalization, suggesting healing effects in teacher–student relationships (Siegel et al., 2016).

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Taken together, these processes fostering well-being of teachers and enhancing attunement, connectedness, and positive emotions are expected not only to reduce teachers’ stress response and improve teachers’ specific relationships with students but ultimately to contribute to a secure, positive, supportive classroom climate. In such a climate, students can feel that it is not only safe to ask, make mistakes, and experience challenges (all necessary for learning processes) but even enjoy and experience positive emotions—which broaden the mind and foster openness to new knowledge acquisition and other types of knowledge (Fredrickson, 2001; Vacharkulksemsuk and Fredrickson, 2013). A schematic representation of these ideas is outlined in Fig. 1.

FIG. 1 A schematic visualization tying contemplative practice, self-awareness, and education. Teachers’ mindfulness training induces a shift in self-awareness away from focusing on self-related processing, enhancing self-specific processing and a more embodied self-awareness. This, in turn, enhances present-moment perceptual awareness, decentering, and emotion regulation. These processes foster the well-being of teachers and reduce teachers’ stress response, thus improving teachers’ relationships with students.

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There is evidence that mindful awareness practices combined with emotion skills training can help teachers navigate the social, emotional, and cognitive demands of the classroom context. Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) is a 30-h professional learning program that introduces these skills and applies them to the stresses of teaching. In a large cluster randomized controlled trial, Jennings and colleagues (Brown et al., 2017) found that the program significantly improved emotion regulation and increased mindfulness and reduced psychological distress and time urgency. Teachers’ classrooms were observed by researchers blind to the study aims and teachers’ assignment to condition. The observers rated the quality of the classroom interactions using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008), a well-validated observational measure. CARE classroom interactions were rated significantly higher on emotional support. More specifically, teachers were observed to be more sensitive to the needs of their students, and the emotional tone of the interactions was more positive than those in the control group. Furthermore, while the intervention effect on the domain of classroom organization was only marginally significant, the sub-dimension of interaction productivity was significant, indicating that there was more productive use of time in these classrooms than in controls. Students in classrooms with CARE teachers were rated as more engaged by their teachers, and students who were rated low in social skills at baseline improved in reading competence. Finally, students with CARE teachers who were low on mindfulness at baseline improved in motivation and reading competence (Brown et al., 2017).

4 Integration and summary In this account, we provided basic background on the conceptualization and the accumulating neuroscientific evidence concerning the self, in light of novel propositions regarding the beneficial effects of reduced self-related processing, or self-centeredness. From this we proposed four main consequences by which a shift toward less self-related processing can contribute to well-being, including enhanced momentary presence, embodied awareness, decentering, and emotion regulation, and we provided supporting evidence. We then showed how meditation training fosters a reduction in neural activity supporting self-related processing, as well as the described consequences. The main novelty of this conceptualization lies in the bridging neuroscientific evidence concerning the self to education. After elaborating on the importance of well-being to teachers’ work and relationships, we demonstrated how a meditationinduced shift toward reduced self-narrative focus may foster enhanced momentary presence, embodied awareness, decentering, and emotion regulation, altogether contributing to the teachers’ well-being and social emotion competence (Fig. 1). According to a recent review (Hwang et al., 2017, p. 39), as teachers’ capacity to cope strategically with stress and difficult emotions developed, their attunement to students’ needs grew, alongside their compassion and kindness to others and themselves. Thus, reduced narrative self-focus and enhanced embodied self-focus and

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flexibility became instrumental for improving relations with others and for their teaching practice. In turn, all this impacts the learning environment, rendering it an emotionally safe and supportive space where students feel motivated to tackle the challenges inherent in learning. This account opens up new hypotheses that warrant future interdisciplinary scientific attention. Studies in the field of education and psychology can investigate the effect of mindfulness-based interventions on self-centeredness and decentering. Cognitive psychology studies should test the effect of these interventions on the implicit self-bias effect. Physiological studies could test the relationship between self-bias, decentering, and the stress response. And neuroscience studies could test the effect of mindfulness interventions for teachers on the networks underlying the experience of the narrative self and the embodied self. Such research described above has significant implications for educational policy. Given that teacher stress is at an all-time high and that it is associated with rapidly growing teacher shortages, finding ways to support teachers’ well-being and social and emotional competence is critical to maintaining the quality and integrity of our educational systems (Greenberg et al., 2016). This research review points to potential neural mechanisms by which mindfulness meditation helps teachers manage stress and promote supportive learning environments, resulting in improved educational outcomes. This knowledge will contribute to the development and refinement of interventions and policies to support teachers, improve their classroom environments, and promote student learning.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by a grant from the Bial Foundation, awarded to A.B.-O., Joseph Glicksohn, and Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan (228/14). Research on the CARE program was supported by the United States Department of Education, Institute of Educational Sciences R305A140692 to the University of Virginia (P.A.J.).

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