Welcome to the Mindfulness Club!
The purpose of "Mindfulness for Students" is to help students deal with stress skillfully and build self awareness through guided meditations, yoga, and qi gong. The club is non-religious affiliated, and is open to all students of all experience levels.
Each week a local area mindfulness instructor leads the club in meditation, yoga, or qigong. The instruction emphasizes practical techniques for managing stress, lowering anxiety, and increasing concentration. On a deeper level, students are taught how to experience life from moment to moment by becoming more attentive to thoughts and sensations in the mind and body.
Students Finding Balance
Many students inevitably develop imbalanced living habits as a result of the daily demands of being a full time student. Much of the time we unknowingly cultivate habits that lead to sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, lack of fitness, and a high degree of anxiety. The club's primary goal is to provide students with the tools to recognize this latent stress so that it can be effectively managed. The club's ancillary goal is to foster a community of students practicing mindfulness by offering reliable instruction in a safe and supportive environment.
Origins of Mindfulness
Mindfulness historically has been associated with Buddhist and Hindu traditions; however, the benefits of mindfulness and meditation are now relatively mainstream and the scientific community has found data positively correlating mindfulness and meditation to stress reduction and a healthy lifestyle - see Time Magazine (January 17, 2005) and National Geographic (March, 2005) for recent publications regarding the benefits of meditative stress reduction techniques. All of the instructors teach mindfulness from the modern secular understanding and stress the practical techniques and associated benefits of becoming attentive to the moment to moment experiences of life.
