🧡 The Minds of Elementary Students Who Discarded Studying and Test Taking Stress

📚 From Stress to Peace: How Meditation Helped Children Break Free from Academic Anxiety

Can elementary school students truly be free from studying and test-taking stress?

At Chungnam Hongsung West Elementary School in Korea, the answer is a clear yes. In 2014, students from grades 3 to 6 participated in a yearlong program using the Santa Clara Meditation method of mind subtraction during their “lesson and creative experiential activities” period. The result? These young students learned how to identify and throw away the stressful thoughts that had been suffocating them—many of which they couldn’t express before.

Through drawings and writing, students showed how meditation:

• 🌪 Helped them discard feelings of pressure, anger, and self-doubt
• 🧘 Created a sense of peace and calm where there had been frustration
• 💬 Encouraged emotional clarity and boosted academic confidence

Led by Teacher Oh Nam Lee, this approach became a transformative part of classroom life. Students who once trembled at the thought of a test learned to smile, breathe, and study with joy.

Below, you’ll find heartfelt artwork and quotes from students who experienced this transformation—and proof that even young minds benefit deeply from emotional cleansing through meditation.

Studying and test taking stress…. How much stress do elementary school students get?

Drawing: West Coast Elementary school 4th Grader ___ Lee. Title: Throw away test taking and studying stress. Within the drawing on the left, the student has drawn arrows to indicate lines for tremors, anger, cranky, tangled.

Before discarding
When I study and take a test, I tremor. If I don’t know something, it makes me cranky and angry. And it is a difficult time.

After discarding
The minds that were tangled have all untangled and my mind is clear.

Before discarding the mind, studying and tests caused crankiness, anger, tremors, tangled, and excited minds. But after discarding the mind, the tangled minds became untangled, clean, and organized.

In 2014, they took the entire student population at Chungnam Hongsung West Elementary School to do an assessment with meditation. From grades 3 through 6, for 1 year they spent 1 hour during the class ‘lesson and creative experiential activities’ period to help students throw away the minds they had built up. They looked at the results of throwing away “studying and test taking stress”.

“Even though they may just be elementary school students, being exposed to the competition of scoring and grades, the children’s minds have a huge number of negative minds built up. Children usually have a lot of minds of not doing well, don’t want to do it, annoyed, getting stressed. But they usually put up with it or sometimes suppress it to the extreme until it appears as behavioral disorders.”

Teacher Ohnam Lee who led this meditation project for these children stated that children have a whole lot more stress than what adults think they have.

Let’s take a look at the children’s drawings from the first semester in 2014 for “Studying and test taking stress” and see how much stress they had and how they changed after discarding that stress.

“My mind, tell it through drawings”

[School Story #1] The mind world of the elementary students who discarded studying and test taking stress

Before discarding
Annoyed so feels like fighting with soldiers. Getting stressed.

After discarding
Feeling refreshed.

Drawing: 4th grade ___ Yoo.

This child looks like he has a lot of creativity. He expressed his stress from studying as if he were fighting against a soldier. After throwing away his mind, the soldier who gave him stress died. And since he won, he is laughing out loud while having a winning ceremony. Congratulations! Hahaha!

Drawing: 4th grade ____ Park.

Before discarding
I don’t want to study but since I have to by force, I am stressed, and it makes me angry.

After discarding
Since throwing away the stress from studying and test taking, my mind is at peace.

This child expressed his angry mind with a volcano. Bubbling and not certain when it will explode, this volcano became peaceful after throwing away his stress. Again, congratulations! Haha!

Drawing: 4th grade ____ Lee.

Before discarding
When taking a test and a difficult question comes up, then I don’t know. My heart pounds and shakes worrying about whether or not I will get a good score. When studying, I stop and play and sometimes concentrate.

After discarding
Throwing away my mind about studying and test taking makes my mind peaceful and I can concentrate on studying and taking a test.

It feels like it is expressing the brain waves inside the head. The ‘I don’t know’ wave, ‘I don’t want to’ wave, ‘pounding heart’ wave, ‘shaking’ wave, ‘cut off’ wave… (haha). And then after doing this meditation, all those stressful minds are thrown away and the mind becomes peaceful and can concentrate well now, finding the ‘concentration’ wave. The ‘peaceful’ wave… ‘Concentration’ wave…

Drawing: 5th grade ___ Lee

Before discarding
Annoyed, anxious, restless, strenuous, complicating, bothersome that I don’t want to even look at it, exhausting, difficult, boring, I want to do something else, uncomfortable, hard.

After discarding
After throwing away stress due to studies, the emotions I had prior to discarding disappeared. My mind feels refreshed. Became a bright and calm mind.

This student also put exactly what was in the mind into the drawing. Just like not wanting to even look at studying or a test, it is all severely tangled together. But after clearly throwing away those minds, just like how a lock is opened, it became refreshed and calm. Also, the rising sun in the upper right is quite impressive.

Drawing: 5th grade ___ Bang

Before discarding
Stress from studies is so exhausting and difficult. I didn’t want to study. 

After discarding
After throwing away the stress from studies, my mind feels like it is a tranquil field of grass.

I don’t want to do it…. When will it end? I just want to draw instead. This is so long. Frustrating. Ugh… I don’t like it… Complex inside my head filled with thoughts. After discarding all of it, now it is a tranquil field of grass. Just by looking at the drawing, one feels peace.

Just by looking at the drawings, after discarding the stressful minds, you can see these children’s minds truly became peaceful.

“How can I give confidence to children, so they don’t compare themselves to others? How can I help them get rid of those negative minds and grow positive minds?”

Teacher Oh Nam Lee who put this program together pondered about this question for a long time. Then he realized the outer changes were possible when the basic “mind” changed. Since 2009, Teacher Lee applied this meditation method of “subtracting the mind” in all aspects of the management of the class such as studying in class, creative activities, after school curriculum, coordination with home, etc.

He helped the students to look back on their lived lives and to throw away minds such as “studying, minds about friends”, “fear, horror, scared thoughts”, “stress, minds about parents and teachers”, etc. for about 1 year consistently. Then the children had significant obvious changes. Even the mothers of these children were very surprised. As these results were actually confirmed in 2014, the schools started to make this a part of the curriculum for all the students.

“Today I threw away the negative ‘false pictures’ of the mind. Easy textbooks, good textbooks, difficult textbooks, foods I like, me who dislikes myself, my cons, my pros, family relations, electronics, computer, keyboard, cursing, the characters in all the games I play. I threw these all away.

From now, I am no longer the negative me but I need to become the ‘positive me’. Then ‘stress’, ‘it won’t work for me’, ‘that’s not it’, ‘no’, ‘I can’t do it’, ‘I am annoyed’, these minds become ‘I can do it’, ‘I like it’ – these beliefs will form.”

– One of the students after doing meditation said the above.

P.S. School bullying, being an outcast, elementary students committing suicide… more than any other time, now is the time when school education is in crisis. How can we solve this problem? There are teachers who are looking for the alternative solution for “Humanity education” from the “mind”. Combining meditation method of subtracting the mind with school classes. As much as they have thrown away the minds of difficulty they become brighter. The wider their minds, these children are able to find their way by themselves. These stories will be told individually.

– The results of the studies done >>  Meditation Teacher training http://www.meditationedu.org/

– Using summer and winter vacation to hold Korea’s Personality Camp. If you are interested in Meditation Youth Camp