FOR some HSC students, it can be a struggle to find time to catch their breath amid the whirlwind of study, assignments, social commitments, let alone what pressures could be building up at home.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Peel High School teachers have given their 2019 HSC students a chance to come up for air with the addition of breathing classes.
Teachers Lisa Panton and Marnie Watson recognised the stress among final year cohorts at the school and have engaged a new technique to give the students tools to cope better.
READ MORE:
“It’s not just the school life pressure,” PDHPE teacher Ms Panton said.
“A lot of these kids have a lot of home life pressures as well.
“We’re trying to incorporate life long learning to say ‘okay, you’ve got stress now, but you’re going to have that stress in adult life too’, so let’s teach them something at a young age to give them some strategies to cope.”
Ms Watson, a community and family studies teacher, said the pressure felt by Year 12 students wasn’t necessarily linked to a growing workload.
She believed there were more external pressures on students compared to years gone by.
“We didn’t have social media growing up, whereas these guys are on their phones all the time and they are probably not getting as much sleep because the are sitting on their phones when they go to bed, so I think that is having a great impact too,” she said.
While a class on breathing could be seen as something akin to meditation or mindfulness, the workshops, under guidance of local trainer Brady Walker, are steeped in the physiological changes focused breathing have on the body, which kids studying sciences and PE could relate to.
Mr Walker said there also was a growing proportion of children experiencing mental illness.
Research has found that half of all lifetime mental health disorders emerge by age 14.
“[It has] been put in place to help these help these guys get an opportunity to control, self-regulate and have a little bit more body awareness when they are under the pump and stressed,” he said.
He said the six-week program would “break down some of the misconceptions of traditional thoughts of meditation and mindfulness”.
He believed the breathing classes helped people tap into the “parasympathetic nervous system”.
“It is our rest-and-digest state, which is our down-regulated state, as opposed to our up-regulated state which is stimulated, constantly on the go, under pressure, feeling angst and levels of unease,” he said.
Jacob McArthur
Jacob McArthur is opinions editor for The Canberra Times and Australian Community Media. As part of the Canberra Times' production team, he helps the people of Canberra and beyond get the stories they need, when they need them across a range of platforms, while helping maintain a high editorial standard. Before moving to Canberra in 2020, he started with Australian Community Media in 2015 as a journalist for The Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he kept a close eye on Tamworth Regional Council. Jacob was also the co-host of ACM's Water Pressure podcast where he and Jamieson Murphy took a deep dive on issues and key decisions arising during one of the region's worst droughts on record.
Jacob McArthur is opinions editor for The Canberra Times and Australian Community Media. As part of the Canberra Times' production team, he helps the people of Canberra and beyond get the stories they need, when they need them across a range of platforms, while helping maintain a high editorial standard. Before moving to Canberra in 2020, he started with Australian Community Media in 2015 as a journalist for The Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he kept a close eye on Tamworth Regional Council. Jacob was also the co-host of ACM's Water Pressure podcast where he and Jamieson Murphy took a deep dive on issues and key decisions arising during one of the region's worst droughts on record.
