We caught up with the brilliant and insightful JG Larochette a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

JG, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

“The first mindful sit: 2012, Room 18 at Coronado Elementary”

After a long battle with anxiety and depression that was a combination of vicarious trauma from seeing my youth and families go through so much, burnout and some personal stress, I found mindfulness and it altered my life in life saving ways. So after the winter break, I went back to my 3rd grade classroom and said, “Boys and girls, it’s so good to see you. A new year, and I’m feeling like my best me.” I shared how mindfulness had helped me and said that I’d love to share the practice as they also had so much trauma and stress. I had them get in a mindful position and said, “We’re going to work on listening to sound and focusing on breath for two minutes.”

These 25 third graders looked at me like, “What? This is what you left for? Just so we could focus on sounds and breathing?” But when I rang the bell and they got really still and silent I could tell something special was happening, and we focused on sound for a minute. Then we focused on breath for a minute, and I rang the bell again.

The kids didn’t open their eyes, like I asked them to. They were so still, and the energy in the room started getting lighter. By the fourth minute, I thought they were messing with me. The fifth minute went by, and at the sixth minute, some eyes started gently opening.

By the seventh minute, no one was talking; I said, “I want to hear your voice. What did that feel like?” They all then started raising their hands and said things like, “I felt the safest I’ve ever felt,” “I felt peace that I’ve never felt before,” “I felt so connected.” The most beautiful things. That’s when we started it — Mindful Life Project.

With support of his 3rd Graders in Room 18 at Coronado Elementary School, as well as former students and families, JG Larochette was able to bring the vision of MLP to its founding moment. In addition to the students being very engaged in the collaboration of deciding on name for MLP, they also approved the logo that was inspired by the journey. Yael Lurie-Larochette, JG’s mom, a world renowned artist, created the logo of the dove flying from the hand. This image symbolizes how the students and JG spent 5 months using mindfulness and other transformative skills to create both inner and outer peace and wellness. This allowed them to “rise up” to build a powerful nonprofit organization from the ground up. MLP continues this legacy of being rooted in community, connection, student centered, and always innovating based on our students’ voice and agency!

JG, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My life’s work is transforming educational systems. As a white latino, son of immigrants, whose first language is Spanish, growing up in the Bay Area, I have had race, identity, and the need for social justice instilled in my heart early. Growing into adulthood what became clear was that I had a deep passion for social justice and youth empowerment.

In 2002, I started in education at PlayWorks. The next two years I had the honor of learning, growing, collaborating and serving my youth and their families in Richmond, CA. I learned when I came from an authentic place of unconditional care and love paired with consistency and structure, youth trusted me and wanted to engage in my activities. This led to us transforming the playground from a place of harm and violence to inclusivity and fun. Unfortunately, far too many of the youth didn’t feel safe in school. Wanting to transform this I decided to become a teacher.

Over the next decade I dedicated myself to being a teacher, coach, community advocate and organizer. Unfortunately, many of my former students who thrived in my classroom would come visit or call saying they were struggling. They would share not feeling valued, heard and pushed away by the school system. As I continued to do my best as a teacher, their experiences and the continued systemic problems started to take a toll on my mental health. In 2011, after losing one of my former youth to gun violence, anxiety and depression started engulfing my life. Through this experience I came across mindfulness and it saved my life. Within a couple weeks of practicing I brought it to my class and what followed was the most life changing six months. We started to dream, vision and create what we wanted schools to be. We involved parents and former students and created Mindful Life Project. By 2012, my students told me that I needed to leave the classroom to make sure the organization grew and brought mindfulness to as many students as possible. The last eight years I have helped create a very innovative nonprofit that is a leader in mindfulness in education and specifically one of the few that serves vulnerable communities. Our impact has led to growing and scaling our work with deep integrity and we are poised to become a key part of transforming education not only locally but nationally.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Founder and Director JG Larochette created Mindful Life Project on May 1, 2012 after working with South Richmond, CA youth and their families for a decade as a coach, community advocate, leader and teacher. As a highly regarded and successful elementary school teacher, JG cared deeply for his students, and like many teachers, absorbed their trauma as he struggled to provide a healthy learning environment.

In the Fall of 2011, he encountered a challenging time where depression and anxiety overtook his life. JG attempted to push through the sleepless nights and deep suffering, but was not able to be fully present for his students. In December, he realized that he needed to prioritize his health, and after months of trying what all the doctors recommended, he learned about mindfulness. For one month, he dedicated himself to the practice, discovering its ability to rewire the brain into optimal mental health.

He returned to school and introduced mindfulness to his class, noticing an immediate change in the self-awareness, self-regulation and behavior of his students. This group of students, who had significant trauma, would often spend an hour or more each day dealing with conflicts, lack of attention, and emotional dysregulation. Within six weeks, this same group and JG created a much healthier learning environment where those problems became infrequent.

From January to May of 2012, JG and his class piloted and created Mindful Life Project, with daily mindfulness and weekly yoga, expressive arts and performing arts. The students and JG decided that Mindful Life Project needed to reach a much larger population, leading to community transformation and the founding of the organization.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When we first started Mindful Life Project we were delivering one program, Rise-Up, where we support the most “high need” students in our deeper intervention and prevention pullout program, Rise-Up. In Rise-Up, we support eight students per grade level to deepen their mindfulness practice using expressive arts, yoga and performing arts to release stress and trauma so that they can thrive in the whole school community. Rise Up specifically focuses on the inner exploration of past lived experiences. This helps students learn emotional regulation tools so that they can respond thoughtfully instead of react. Rise Up’s small group cohort acts an emotionally safe space where students can build community through mindfulness and understanding. While we saw the great impact the program was having during the sessions we realized every kid and teacher needed to also be a part of the community of practice so we created our second program Mindful Community where every class gets a mindfulness session once per week.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mindfullifeproject.org
• Instagram: @mindfullife_project
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MindfulLifeProject
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mindful-life-project/
• Twitter: @mindful_project
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@MindfulLifeProjectTV

Image Credits
Amir Abdul-Shakur, headshot