Mindful meditation helps students de-stress

In the days leading up to finals, some students have found a way to de-stress through Mindfulness@Penn — a new meditation club on campus that provides bi-weekly guided meditations for the Penn community.

“Notice all the sounds. Bring them into the field of your awareness,” said meditation leader and Clinical Practices program manager Mara Wai, referring to noises surrounding the quiet students and community members gathered in an upstairs room of the Penn Women’s Center.

Monday was the fourth meditation session hosted by the club, which provides an opportunity for “training your mind’s ability to attend to experiences in the moment,” according to Kinjal Doshi, a fifth-year School of Arts and Sciences graduate student and Mindfulness@Penn co-director.

While group meditations have existed at Penn before, “they would pop up and die,” Doshi said. However, Mindfulness@Penn has not faced this problem — attendance doubled for its second session.

After two sessions, the club added an additional night to accommodate more members and meet popular demand.

Mindfulness@Penn began when Doshi solicited other directors and members through the positive psychology class she teaches.

“Positive psychology is used to find and nurture your strengths and virtues,” said College junior Aria Campbell-Danesh, an exchange student from Scotland. Mindfulness meditation — a secular type of meditation — is a way this can be achieved.

Learning to focus and free your mind is relevant in any situation, Campbell-Danesh said.

“Attention is how you connect to your fellow students, attention is how you relate to beauty, attention is how you relate to each moment,” he said.

Mindfulness@Penn found support from the School of Medicine’s “Penn Program for Mindfulness,” an organization that helps the club to find professors and community members to lead their meditations. The program hopes to offer a scholarship granting a number of club members free admission to an eight-week stress management course.

“I think this is a particularly high-wired place, where people could use every chance they could get to take a breath and really re-calibrate,” College senior and co-director Anthony Levy said.

But meditation is not as easy as it sounds. “Everyone messes up the first few times they do this,” Levy added.

“Forty-five minutes is a long time to sit still,” College sophomore and co-director Loly Rehder said. “Each time I try to push myself a little more. And I did notice a difference between sessions.”

After a 30-45 minute meditation session, the group ends with questions and discussion — a highlight for some members.

“Whatever I’m feeling in the moment, other people are feeling the same thing,” 2007 School of Social Work graduate and co-director Jacqueline O’Duor said.

“We’re all kind of going through the same stuff ... it’s nice to kind of decompress,” she added.

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