Art Heals All Wounds

How Yoga and Mindfulness Can Transform Middle School: Amanda Bush’s Vision

• Pam Uzzell • Season 8 • Episode 3

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Episode Summary:
In this heartfelt episode, I sit down with Amanda Bush, a yoga practitioner in residence with Arts in Medicine at Shands UF Health in Gainesville, Florida. Together, we explore Amanda’s vision of bringing yoga and mindfulness practices into middle schools to help students better cope with stress and challenging situations. Drawing on her extensive experience as a middle school educator, Amanda discusses the emotional landscape of adolescence, the potential benefits of integrating yoga and mindfulness into school curriculums, and the obstacles educators face due to underfunding and overburdened staff. The conversation is deeply personal, with both of us sharing our experiences as parents and educators, and it highlights the transformative power of art and movement in healing and supporting young people.

Topics Discussed:

  • Amanda’s background in yoga, community outreach, and education
  • The unique challenges faced by middle schoolers and the lack of coping resources
  • How yoga and mindfulness can provide critical tools for emotional regulation
  • Amanda’s experiences implementing yoga and movement workshops for youth
  • Barriers to integrating programs like this into schools, including funding and teacher burnout
  • The potential for empowering teachers with mindfulness strategies
  • Personal stories of transformation through yoga and meditation
  • Amanda’s next steps in making her vision a reality

Key Takeaways:

  • Middle schoolers are often in emotional limbo, facing adult-level stress without the necessary tools
  • Mindfulness and movement can help students manage anxiety, increase self-awareness, and improve resilience
  • Making these practices part of the school day (not just after school) would increase accessibility and long-term impact
  • Teachers are overwhelmed and underfunded, but can be a powerful ally in supporting student well-being if given the right resources
  • Amanda’s work is ongoing, and she aims to expand access and education in this vital area

About the Guest:
Amanda Bush is a yoga practitioner, educator, and community outreach facilitator. She is passionate about integrating yoga and mindfulness into education to support the holistic well-being of young people.

Find Amanda:

About the Host:
Pam Uzzell is the creator and host of Art Heals All Wounds, a podcast spotlighting artists whose work brings healing, understanding, and transformation to individuals and communities.

Resources Mentioned:

  • Shands UF Health, Gainesville, Florida
  • Girls Place (summer camp)
  • Breathe for Change (yoga teacher training program focused on educators)

How to Support the Show:

Credits:

  • Music by Ketsa and Lobo Loco
  • Podcast editing by Iva Hristova


Thank you for listening! Be sure to connect with Amanda Bush for updates on her journey and the evolution of mindfulness in education.

 

Amanda Bush [00:00:00]:
You know, middle schoolers often find themselves in limbo. Right? They're in this not quite adults, but they're not quite children. And they're often faced with very adult situations in middle school setting, but they don't necessarily have resources or the abilities to know how to really cope or deal with a lot of those stresses that they have.

Pam Uzzell [00:00:36]:
Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell. I have a question. How was middle school for you? Some of you may have had a great middle school experience for which I congratulate you. When I think about middle school, I can actually feel my chest tightening and my heart starting to race. I was definitely a geek.

Pam Uzzell [00:01:27]:
We didn't have middle school back then. We had junior high. It was a time of braces and pimples and badly applied makeup. I was very lucky. I had good friends who were also geeks. But there was drama, and teasing, and taunting. Each day felt like a battle, then getting up to do it all over again the next day. And not just for me, I'm sure. I think I can safely say it felt like that for a lot of people.

Pam Uzzell [00:02:06]:
Imagine if there was something that could make that experience easier for kids. My guest today, Amanda Bush, has imagined that. Amanda is a yoga practitioner in residence with Arts in Medicine at Shands UF Health in Gainesville, Florida. She's another person I met at the Arts and Health Intensive last year. Her idea is to include yoga and mindfulness for middle school students. Besides my own experience of those school years, I have two daughters who've gone through middle school. After listening to Amanda describe her vision, I thought, wow. Wouldn't that be amazing? On this episode, Amanda and I explore her idea further, and grapple with the challenges in US schools.

Pam Uzzell [00:02:59]:
Poor funding, overburdened, and underpaid teachers. But the benefits of a program like this in middle school feel so easy to imagine. I wish that my daughters had had a program like this, and I wish I had too. You wanna know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy. Right? And if you really wanna give the show a boost, leave me a five star rating or review. Hi, Amanda. Thank you so much for being on Art Heals All Wounds.

Pam Uzzell [00:03:41]:
Can you start by introducing yourself, who you are, and what you do?

Amanda Bush [00:03:46]:
Hi, Pam. Thanks for having me on. My name's Amanda Bush. I am currently a yoga practitioner in residence with Arts in Medicine at Shands UF Health in Gainesville, Florida, and I work at that job a couple of days a week right now where I practice yoga at the bedside with caregivers of pediatric patients currently and giving them a little bit of a break. So that's one of my one of my jobs that I do. And also through arts and medicine, I do some community outreach. Over the summer, I worked a bit at an organization through arts and medicine called Girls' Place where we did yoga and movement with these girls who were at the summer camp, ages five to around 14, I think they were. And then I'm also a yoga teacher at a studio in town called Flow Space, and I also work with private clients one on one with yoga, teaching yoga and breathing and meditation.

Amanda Bush [00:04:52]:
So those are my three primary jobs.

Pam Uzzell [00:04:55]:
So it's interesting. We met at the, arts and medicine intensive this past May. Mhmm. And I did not know that you actually were also a practitioner there.

Amanda Bush [00:05:09]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you remember on I think it was on the first day in person, we were working with Molly, and then we also were working with Tammy Bernard. Well, Tammy wasn't actually there. She had wasn't able to be there, so she joined via video that she had made. And so Tammy has been my mentor through arts in medicine.

Pam Uzzell [00:05:34]:
Okay. Well, that that seems like such a lovely place to work. I really, really have loved everyone that I've met who works there. But the other thing that we all did is that we created these presentations of programs that we would like to work on. I really loved yours. So can you just talk about what your presentation was about?

Amanda Bush [00:06:03]:
Yeah. Definitely. Thank you. The summer intensive was amazing. It was such a great experience, and I was so glad to be able to participate in that, and met so many great people, and that's where we met. And so my presentation was to based on yoga and mindfulness. And I created an idea, I guess, where I want to help middle school aged children, maybe girls, maybe I you know, I've kind of played around with it a little bit, use yoga and meditation practices to use as coping skills. So, you know, middle schoolers often find themselves in limbo.

Amanda Bush [00:06:44]:
Right? They're in this not quite adults, but they're not quite children, and they're often faced with very adult situations in middle school setting, but they don't necessarily have resources or the abilities to know how to really cope or deal with a lot of those stresses that they have. So they might have anxiety based on that, and they just maybe just don't know what to do. What I would like to do is to bring yoga practices and, mindfulness and meditation practices into schools or after school programs or, you know, things like that where these young people can learn different ways to deal with these difficult things in their lives. I guess maybe just have a more thoughtful way of being able to calm themselves down or to deal with a stressful situation because we don't always know how to do that when we're young. And even as adults, we don't always know how to do that. And so for me, practicing yoga has brought a lot of regulation to my nervous system. It's it's calmed me down immensely. I used to have a lot more anxiety.

Amanda Bush [00:07:54]:
And so, personally, I felt that the way that yoga has helped me in my life, I think that that would translate really well to this age group. And, my background is in school education. And so I've I've taught many many grade levels. The chunk of my teaching time was spent in the middle school age group. And so, you know, watching these kids on a daily basis deal with these things and have all these difficulties. And, you know, they they act out or they get angry and they're sad or they're depressed, and they just they don't know what to do. And school counselors are at max capacity most of the time. They don't have time during the day always to see all of the kids who need who need assistance.

Amanda Bush [00:08:43]:
You know? And there's hundreds of kids in the school and maybe two counselors who are available. And with the state of education the way it is right now, in Florida, you know, counselors are not even those positions aren't even always filled. So I just think that it's important for kids to have some kind of other way of dealing with things.

Pam Uzzell [00:09:05]:
Yeah. And I would really push for it being part of the school day. When you get into after school, it's gonna automatically, like, peel away a lot of kids who have other extracurricular or who have obligations at home or something like that. And I really think also from a mind shift perspective, not of the kids, but of just all of us Mhmm. As a society, having it be part of the school day would be really important as opposed to it being just like an extra maybe. I imagine it like somewhere mid afternoon.

Amanda Bush [00:09:48]:
Right? 

Pam Uzzell [00:09:49]:Yeah. Like after whatever drama has happened at lunchtime that they're sorting out. 

Amanda Bush [00:09:49] Yeah. I, during my nine years teaching middle school, the most difficult class of the day, because we you know, it was, teaching class periods. And so my for every every year, my fourth period class came straight in from lunch and yeah. They were they struggled, man. There was always drama in the lunchroom, and it's just it's hot and it's crowded and it's loud. And there would be some days when my kids would come in and they would just be buzzing and loud and really not able to come down.

Amanda Bush [00:10:35]:
And there were some days we would just turn off the lights, and we would just take a few minutes and breathe. You know, I wasn't doing yoga with them at that point, but we would do some breathing exercises or, you know, just put your head down and just take a few minutes to just close your eyes and reset, relax because coming in from all of that drama is really difficult. But I do. I agree with you that fitting that into the school day would be ideal, and it would be a a great way to to calm down after the chaos of lunch hour and just like it's a nice reset.

Pam Uzzell [00:11:15]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, I have two daughters. And having been a teenage girl myself at one point, I don't really know boy drama, but I know girl drama really well. And it can be so painful, especially if you I mean, even as an adult looking in on some of the drama that my daughters went through, it can be so painful from the outside looking in. But then on the inside, exactly what you're talking about earlier, things that can feel so vicious and cruel, and you just don't know how to deal with it, and it's so crushing. There's not really a perspective of, okay, this is this is not about me. And I even tried once talking to one of my daughters saying, you know, this is gonna pass.

Pam Uzzell [00:12:15]:
You're gonna suddenly find yourself as an adult, and you'll look back and this will have been so small in comparison to your whole life. And that made it worse, you know, because then it was really minimizing what she was going through then. And I'm curious about your thoughts about how this would work if you did work primarily with, you know, young women, but then also maybe not because maybe you've seen drama for, you know, the boys as well. So I'm really curious to get your take on that, especially now that I know you taught middle school.

Amanda Bush [00:12:52]:
Yeah. Well and boys definitely have drama of their own that they that they are dealing with. I think that, ideally, it could reach all people in in that grade level or age level. But yeah. So I I'm also I'm a mother of three daughters. My daughters are adult age at this point. But, yeah, I mean, just watching the drama that they've dealt with throughout their school years. And and it it's just it's a difficult time in their lives.

Amanda Bush [00:13:21]:
They just don't you know, as they're transitioning from depending on mom or dad or, you know, like, thinking they've got everything figured out and then, boom, they're hit with some kind of an adult situation where it's like, oh, wait a minute. Now there's, you know, decisions that have to be made that mom can't make for me or that they wanna do on their own because they are becoming adults. And there's a lot of stress that's involved with that. And so I've watched my own kids, but now and also the middle school students that I have taught, I've watched them go through these situations and just kind of are flailing. They don't they don't know what to do. They really have no idea. And I've seen anxiety attacks happen at school where they just, you know I've had students who just, you know, are crying uncontrollably and and can't they just don't know how to cope with what's going on. And so having, you know, just a few strategies.

Amanda Bush [00:14:25]:
And when you're practicing yoga, you know, the idea is that it's this mindful movement where you're connecting your breath and your body. And so through that, you're really putting in a great deal of focus into what's going on. And so when you step onto your mat and you practice and it and, honestly, it doesn't even have to be a mat. You can do this in a chair. You can do it standing. I've I've taught yoga in a variety of different ways and not just on a mat. You don't have to have special clothes to be able to do it. There's a lot of this is very accessible.

Amanda Bush [00:15:05]:
But when you begin settling your body into this practice and intentionally breathing and intentionally moving your body in some way that's going to that it has this effect where you just it just it just brings this calming effect over your body. And it's not, you know, is the pose perfect or am I doing everything exactly right? It's, you know, am I am I present in my own body? And when you start to practice that regularly over time, it has an effect on your entire well-being. It's a really life changing practice that can provide an outlet, you know, for these stressful situations. And so if you've been practicing yoga, let's say, for three months, and then, you know, you're you're hit with a a stressful situation, you might be able to walk into that and deal with it in a different way. Your body is gonna be potentially calmer. Your mind is gonna slow down and think rather than just react because you can utilize some of those breathing and focus strategies that are used during yoga.

Pam Uzzell [00:16:28]:
I'm glad you're reminding me of that body mind connection because it is true that we're built for fight or flight. I've also heard fight, flight, and freeze, those three. And sometimes the situation we're in, in fact, often in modern times that we're living in, none of those responses really will work. And, you know, trying to figure out like, having the ability to be present in your body and then maybe take a step towards something that is not one of those three, you know, ingrained reactions would be incredibly helpful for all of us, but especially if you're in a place of heightened drama, which I think, I think middle school and high school as well are places of heightened drama.

Amanda Bush [00:17:23]:
For sure. Yeah. I used to be an incredibly anxious person. I've been practicing yoga for a long time, almost around twenty years. But in the last, like, three or four years, I got really intentional about it and also with meditation. I was never really consistent with meditation, but I I really just started studying a lot more and practicing a lot more consistently with both yoga and meditation. And I I guess it was probably about three and a half years now. And I used to take medication for anxiety, and I don't take medication for anxiety anymore because I have, through my yoga practice, I have been able to kinda reverse that fight, flight, freeze reaction that I that I had.

Amanda Bush [00:18:13]:
You know? I used to be a very reactionary person, and now I, you know, I'm presented with some difficult challenge, and I pause. And I, you know, I think about it. And I also think, like, well, there's you know, why am I getting marked up about this? Because making myself upset or, you know, anxious or worrying, you know, beyond worry isn't gonna help anything. It's just really gonna make it worse. And my ability to be able to do that has come from my yoga practice. And just knowing that I'm in control in what's going on inside of my body, And I can regulate that through my breath, through my movement. Meditation has helped with my thoughts. And, you know, we all have that monkey mind.

Amanda Bush [00:19:02]:
Right? It's we're always thinking a million a million things a minute. And, you know, like, I can go down that what if rabbit hole. Like, it's nobody's business. But but, again, like, what purpose is that serving? Like, I can worry about all of the things, but how is that helping me? And so I've learned to calm those thoughts, and they're still there. I mean, they persist, so they're not it's never gonna go away, I don't think entirely. But how I react and how I handle it has become I'm a lot more calm. And I do I attribute that to, my yoga and meditation practice.

Pam Uzzell [00:19:43]:
Wow. Well, that's why I think this idea of having it incorporated as part of the school day would be so important because imagine starting to work on that sort of habit as an adolescent person.

Amanda Bush [00:20:03]:
Yeah. It would be I mean, it was life changing for me, and it can be. It can absolutely be a life changing practice. And so yeah. So that's that is a goal that I have is to be able to make this happen and teach these practices to

Pam Uzzell [00:20:21]:
young people. So what is the process for you to try and make this happen?

Amanda Bush [00:20:28]:
Well, that's what I'm I'm kind of in the planning stages for that. I'm not exactly sure. So I have been a I've been a school teacher up until this past school year, and I was all of the jobs that I mentioned before, I was also doing as a full time school teacher, while I was teaching school full time, which was really challenging. And so I I actually took a leave of absence from my teaching job this year so that I can focus more on my yoga practice because I that that's where my passion is. And I love teaching, and I'm just in a place in my life where I want to teach things other than public education, you know, school. And so now I'm I'm shifting gears, and that's where I'm putting my energy and my focus is to grow my yoga practice and bring it to as many people as I can. And arts in medicine is actually a big part of that because through arts in medicine is that's the that was the connection to the Girls Place program where I was able to work with, one of the other artists in residence. We worked three workshops together where we went in and did movement exercises with these, young people.

Amanda Bush [00:21:47]:
And, again, it wasn't it was a it was a great opportunity, and the kids were really receptive, for the most part. And that was a it was a summer program, and so it was during the regular day, but it also wasn't a regular practice. Like, each time we did the workshops, we had different age groups. So it was never consistent with all of the students. And so I think the next part of that would be to create something that's a little bit more consistent and then try and get getting that into schools somehow.

Pam Uzzell [00:22:22]:
In a certain way, because you have taught in schools for so long, it seems like you have a little bit of an insider's advantage. Like, you know, maybe the best people to reach out to, you know already what the challenges are gonna be, so you can have a response to those. And I would love to hear how this goes once you start doing that. It seems just like an amazing thing. I I just I mean, my middle school was so long ago. It wasn't even middle school. It was junior high.

Amanda Bush [00:22:58]:
Same.

Pam Uzzell [00:22:59]:
But yeah. And I can't even imagine it there, but I could really imagine it in my children's middle school experience. You know, we were in Berkeley at that time, and I almost feel like that there would be a very, welcoming attitude about this, but then I also think about how financially strapped the schools are. I mean, my my youngest daughter's school did not even have an athletics program. There was one coach that was hired by money raised from the PTA. It was not it was not even in the budget for that. So I feel like there might be a lot of places that would love to have this and then say, but the budget, we don't have the budget to do this.

Amanda Bush [00:23:53]:
Yeah. That's definitely one of the obstacles is there's no money in education at this time, and so it's incredibly frustrating. But then there is the, you know, the the potential that reaching out and working with teachers and teaching the teachers some different strategies so that they can teach those to their children in their classrooms. So, you know, like, kind of outsourcing, I guess, is is kind of a a way to to do it. One of the other biggest challenges I know that I always felt as a teacher was time. And the amount of things that they would you know, every every single school year would start with this list of everything we have to do during the school day or aside from the regular teaching standards, you know, in the regular curriculum that they that we are responsible for for teaching. There's all kinds of other things that they want us to do. You know, that has to do with health and safety.

Amanda Bush [00:25:03]:
It has to do with getting along with peers or just I'm you know, I'm even thinking back to, you know, like, having to do, like, the, you know, active shooter drills and things like that. Like, when, you know, there's always every every single school year, there's new things that are included that have to be implemented. And so while this would be absolutely an excellent inclusion into a school day, I would fear overburdening, teachers as well. And so that's kind of, I guess, one of the challenges. But, I mean, when you look at the benefits of of what it is, then I think that it can really be it can be sold that way. And so when I completed my two hundred hour yoga teacher trainings last year, I finished that in July of twenty twenty three. I went through a program called Breathe for Change, and they're actually based out of California, but it was an online program. They they actually focus on teachers bringing, yoga into the classroom.

Amanda Bush [00:26:15]:
And so that's a lot of where this idea, you know, has stemmed from. And so they have resources and and ways, you know, to implement this into schools as well. And so they will be a resource as I move forward and trying to bring it into more teachers and more more students in schools.

Pam Uzzell [00:26:35]:
Well, I hope that you do because just even when you said like health and safety, getting along with peers, it's like, hello. Here's a new way to do some of those things. This is kind of a non sequitur, but maybe not. When I was thinking about talking to you today, one thing I thought to myself was that and I wasn't thinking about teachers, but I'm glad you pointed that out. But kids, at least my, youngest daughter who went through the Berkeley school system are so overburdened. You know, I remember the homework Mhmm. To come home and do all that stuff. And I really wondered, did she actually learn more that way by just all day long, you're in a class, you're taking in information, and then at night, you're back and you're having to produce these different works.

Pam Uzzell [00:27:33]:
And I just thought, did she learn more by doing that? And could there be other ways where it is not such a burden? And I'm glad you're bringing up on teachers as well. It's a grinding job for teachers, and I think it's a grinding period of life for a

Amanda Bush [00:27:53]:
lot of the kids going through that. For sure. Teacher burnout is real. I mean, that's why I you know, it's it's part of why I left and and took my leave of absence and changing my focus. And, yeah, it's just a really it's a difficult profession. Teachers are underappreciated and underpaid in most most cases. Yeah. And the amount of you you know, when you think about it, they are educating every like, that's their job is to produce these young people, you know, and teach them and and create these smart, productive citizens who are going to be taking care of us and leading our world in, you know, in the next generations.

Amanda Bush [00:28:45]:
And

Pam Uzzell [00:28:46]:
It should be one of the highest paid jobs. I think, you know, minimum 6 figures to do that job. And not I'm not saying that as a joke. I think really exactly to your point, it is, we are a country that say we care about kids so much, but our money does not. Our money does not say that at all where we put our money. And, yeah, it's such a hard job for teachers. So I would love if people would like to point them in some direction to at least follow you so that if develops, you know, if anything develops in this, you might share that or something. So where can people find you, Amanda?

Amanda Bush [00:29:37]:
I am, oh, I have a website. It's elevatedyogaandwellness.com. And I am on Instagram at elevated yoga and wellness and also amanda.elevated.yoga. Those are both on Instagram, and you can follow me there to keep up with the progress of what's going on and see all the other yoga happenings. Yeah.

Pam Uzzell [00:30:05]:
Well, thank you. I'm gonna be following, and I'm so glad that you came on the show to talk about this idea. I am 100% for it. It seems like a no brainer. So I really am rooting for you that this happens.

Amanda Bush [00:30:21]:
Thank you. Yeah. It's a it's an uphill battle for sure, but I think that it's a worthy fight, and I will continue, you know, working on it. Thank you so much for your support.

Pam Uzzell [00:30:35]:
You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds. Thank you so much to Amanda Bush for sharing her ideas on ways to bring a fresh breath of mindfulness to middle school kids. I'll share Amanda's website in the show notes so that you can learn more about her work. I'd love for you to keep in touch. I'm not on social media too much anymore, but you can always reach me through my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast.com. Thanks for listening. The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova.