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	Early morning in Darndale&#39;s Our Lady Immaculate Junior School and Ms Lynch leads senior infants to their meditation room.</h2>
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		Eyes closed, complete calmness and deep breathing. They are meditating.</p>
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		Benefits of meditation include attaining a mental, physical and emotional balance. It is used to treat depression, stress and anxiety and can lead to higher self-esteem.</p>
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		Meditation initially &quot;gave teachers the tools&quot; to deal with classroom management issues. The school&#39;s principal, Breda Murray, believes meditation helps students &quot;consider and appreciate each other and be conscious they are making choices&quot;.</p>
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		Students use it in the playground during moments of conflict, which now subsides with a call to &quot;stop and take a breath&quot;.</p>
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		Teachers at Darndale Junior School have said students are learning an &quot;anger-management strategy&quot;. They learn how to &quot;make the transition from tension to relaxation&quot;.</p>
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		Educate Together, in Kildare town, offers&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/yoga" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">yoga</a>&nbsp;and meditation to its students.</p>
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		Principal Gerry Breslin said it was introduced as part of the Educate Together &#39;Learn Together Curriculum&#39;, a programme that builds self-awareness through guided meditation.</p>
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		While the school only opened in 2012, they are already noticing the benefits. Principal Breslin says &quot;it has been very useful in getting kids to make the transition from the playground to the classroom&quot;.</p>
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		It encourages them to &quot;use their imagination and improved their concentration abilities&quot;. Performance and behaviour in the classroom improved as young children learned &quot;to be reflective, think inward and work in silence&quot;.</p>
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		Meditation is a key feature at John Scottus School in Dublin, where they believe &quot;it gives peace and simple happiness by dissolving anxiety, cares and anger&quot; as well as teaching &quot;how to give attention and how to concentrate&quot; &ndash; a quality much needed by today&#39;s school-goers.</p>
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		Principal Mary Telford, who meditates regularly, felt education &quot;was missing something&quot; so she was attracted to meditation in education. Ms Telford wanted to &quot;arm students with a practice that would sustain them&quot; and give them a &quot;friend there when you are in need&quot;. She recalls how it benefited one student who felt he was poor at mathematics. Through meditation, he realised mathematics was not the problem &ndash; the problem was his restless mind. Meditation quietened the mind and improved his focus.</p>
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		Parent Liz Kirby finds meditation helps students &quot;finish one thing, begin another with freshness and give things your full attention&quot;. Past pupil Ellen Mullen &quot;found it useful during exam time or whenever I felt nervous&quot;.</p>
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		It seems the phenomenon of meditation is the norm in Irish primary schools. With benefits for teachers, parents and, of course, the most important part of any school &ndash; the students.</p>
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		How better to summarise this phenomenon of meditation and its benefits than through the words of six to eight-year-old children at Darndale&#39;s Our Lady Immaculate Junior School: &quot;After meditating I felt so relaxed. When someone cheated in a game, I stayed calm.&quot;</p>
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		<a href="http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/education/mind-over-matter-in-the-classroom-as-pupils-enjoy-benefits-of-meditation-29645366.html">http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/education/mind-over-matter-in-the-classroom-as-pupils-enjoy-benefits-of-meditation-29645366.html</a></p>
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