Mindful Minutes in the Forest Primes

If you’ve ever seen the Forest Primes during morning meetings, changing gear in the hallways, attending All School, or at play in the Forest, you might have noticed that silent they are not! Well these days, the Forest Primes are trying something new. Immy, Oona, Bea, Ruby and Flo are here to report on the vows of silence Forest Primes have been making for the last 15 days!

Immy: What inspired you to be silent in the forest?

Jenny: I think The Forest Primes were really inspired by the life and legacy of John Francis to start a movement that didn’t involve words and instead involved listening very deeply.
Rosa: Um because when we heard the word silent from John Francis we thought we could be silent.
Rebecca: They were learning about…What was his name? 
Oona: John Francis
Rebecca: Right! He was silent for 17 years!
Psilas: We thought if he could go for 17 years without talking, we could go for at least three minutes.
Alicia: I might try to do it for 17 years too. I’m serious, I really want to try.
Val: One of the black environmentalists we focused on was Dr. John Francis the Planetwalker, and part of his journey involved a vow of silence in order to become a better listener. After learning about him, some Forest Primes started being silent in their play and writing to each other on clipboards to communicate. Jenny and I really loved this idea, so we started a new tradition after each day’s morning meeting called Mindful Minutes.

Bea: Why was John Francis silent for 17 years?

Oona: He thought you shouldn’t use vehicles cause he saw an oil spill with two huge boats and a lot of the animals who were around it got very sick, and they died. Then he got into a lot of arguments about not using motor vehicles, and felt like he wasn’t really listening, so he decided to stop talking so that he could listen better.
Immy: He was getting in a bunch of fights.
Alicia: He wanted to listen.
Psilas: Which we barely do!

“From this new place lessons come, or perhaps realizations. The first is that most of my adult life I have not been listening fully. I only listened long enough to determine whether the speaker’s ideas matched my own. If they did not, I would stop listening and my mind would race ahead to compose an argument against what I believed the speaker’s idea or position to be, which I would interject at the first opportunity. Giving myself permission not to speak, not to attack some idea or position, also gives me permission to listen fully. Giving myself this permission gives the speaker permission to speak fully their idea or position without fear of rebuttal in a way that I could not have imagined.”

― John Francis, Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence.

Flo: Can you explain what mindful minutes are?

Oona: Mindful minutes are when one of the teachers says, “We’re starting the mindful minutes.” And then we all don’t talk for 17 minutes. We started from 3 minutes on the first day, and got up to 17 minutes, and every day we added a minute. You can use a chalkboard to communicate.
Rebecca: And you can play in back door woods doing whatever you want as long as you don’t talk. 

Val: We wanted the mindful minutes to be social rather than isolated because that is a major part of John Francis’s mission…blurring the lines between environmental issues, appreciation of nature, and human interaction. 

Ruby: What do you notice people doing during the Mindful Minutes? 

Eligh: Sometimes rolling big snowballs.
Xyla: I noticed people looking at a nest, and Alicia and Psilas were throwing leaves at each other one day. 

Meaghan: I have noticed friends playing together without using words in the woods, climbing trees, navigating taking turns or listening to another person's idea without using words, painting, drawing with chalk, looking around at the wildlife that is visiting The Forest Primes at that time.
Grace: Like today or other days? Today I noticed lots of snow building, but on other days I was climbing a tree.
Jenny: I noticed people are playing without words they’re finding ways to talk without using words.
Flo: People were playing and talking to each other without words.

Ruby: Florence, how do you think they were communicating without words?
Flo: They were using signs with their hands and chalkboards.
Rebecca: People were making nature art and using their hands and body to communicate instead of using words.

Val: I noticed at the beginning when we were being quiet for like three minutes, many friends sat around listening to nature and waiting for the time to be over. Now that we’re at 17 minutes, friends are getting creative and busy doing other things. Today, I watched Ember draw a snow person on a chalkboard with a question mark and show it to Rowan. He smiled and nodded, and together they got to work on rolling big snowballs to build with. 

What have you noticed in your time of not speaking? 

Leo: I heard a crow.

Rowan: I noticed the sun and the trees and the birds.

Noa: I drew hearts on my clipboard to show love to my friends.

Eligh: I saw some people pushing each other on trees. They seemed happy.
Anaya: I saw a shadow of a red tailed hawk.
Bea: I made a heart and I showed it to Oona.
Immy: I heard leaves rustling.
Alicia: I saw a bird up in a tree.

Immy: Is it feeling hard or easy to not talk with words?

Eligh: Easy peasy! Uh it just was very easy for me.
Flo: it was really easy, and it felt like it went really quickly because I was really busy,
Oona: What were you busy doing?
Flo: Just watching people and playing. I’m doing something, and it makes it feel like it goes by really quickly. It makes me feel like it’s only been two minutes!
Val: It feels easy for me because I'm super interested in observing everything that’s going on. I’m interested in the ways you are all sharing ideas and working through conflict without words. It does feel hard when friends ask me questions with words and I don’t want to answer, but I feel like I could help them stop talking faster if I did answer.
Oona: I think it’s easy because I was really busy, and it took most of my talking away.
Jenny: I think it’s easy for some people and hard for others. It’s easy for me to be quiet. I love to be quiet, but it’s hard when somebody asks me something, and it feels hard that I can’t answer.
Rebecca: For me it was easy. It was nice. I think when people stopped using their words they actually paid better attention to each other while they were communicating. 

Meaghan: It feels hard for me sometimes to not talk with words. I have noticed myself wanting to use my words to connect to friends during the Mindful Minutes. I was using signals to support friends during the Mindful Minute last week and realized that I had not shared the signals that I would use beforehand so my friends did not know what I was trying to communicate! 

Flo: How many minutes do you think we can get up to?

Alicia: It would be great if it was 100.
Xyla: maybe 99!

Meaghan: I think 60 minutes would be really cool to try to get up to! 

Flo: Will we get up to an hour in one day?

Alicia: Yeah
Eligh: I think 70 minutes in one day we could do, but not more.
Flo: 70!
Val: In one day?
Flo: Yeah!
Rebecca: All day! I think you could do it all day…most of you.
Oona: Leo thinks we will get up to 75 million. 

Bea: Do you think we have done 100 mindful minutes yet all together?

Oona: No, that would take like a day.
Eligh: No, it wouldn’t take a day because 100 minutes is like one hour and 40 minutes.
Oona: Well, that would take up a lot of our day.
Jenny: I think we will exceed 100 minutes all together. If we add up the minutes from each day.
Anaya: What do all of the minutes equal?

Val: How can we show how many mindful minutes we’ve had so far?

Immy: We created a chart with squares. So on the day that we did 5 minutes, we made those squares green so there’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 green squares. We colored in a square for each minute that we have been silent. We will do 18 squares next time for 18 minutes.

Val: So using these charts you figured out how many minutes we’ve done all together?
Immy: Yeah I already counted all of these, it was really hard. I started at 1 and went all the way to this second one. There’s 100 on the first one and… (counting)...50 here! 150 minutes all together! We’ve spent 150 minutes not speaking. 150 minutes! All of the minutes squished together would be that. 

We encourage you all to take a look at this short video of the Forest Primes during some mindful minutes. What do you hear when there are no voices? What do you notice?