How Terriers can “keep calm & be mindful” 

Wofford Wellness Center’s Thrive series, which aims to provide students with more opportunities to gain information about relevant topics, continued in November with an event on meditation and mindfulness given by Wofford’s own Perry Henson, director of counseling and accessibility services.  Aside from being a counselor and resource for Wofford’s students, Ms. Henson is also a certified instructor for meditation and mindfulness for emerging adults. 

Henson said, “Meditation and mindfulness refers to anything that fully brings us to the present moment. It has been around for thousands of years, but over recent years, a lot of concrete research has backed up that meditation and mindfulness can help our holistic well-being.” 

For most people, when they hear the words “meditation and mindfulness” they think of yoga and breathing exercises, but the terms refer to many more activities that the average person may find surprising. Henson said, “Sitting and meditating is a very intentional way of bringing oneself to the present, but, for example, coloring can be a grounding activity as well. Aromatherapy and ambient music is also a grounding tool, that is, something that your mind can focus on to bring us in the present.” 

Another popular misconception is that meditation and mindfulness may be silly or pointless, but research has shown that this is far from the truth. Henson elaborated, “We know that it is good for us because studies have been done that show how people who meditate regularly have a growing number of benefits that can be far-reaching—not just depression and anxiety, but higher productivity levels and better sleep, decreased irritability and overall better mental stability.”  One of the goals of meditation and mindfulness is to create a therapeutic setting for yourself, that is, a place to calm our brains and relax our bodies.  It is safe to say that this goal is not trivial or meaningless. 

Henson said, “Culturally we are trained not to slow down or be still.” And as college students, this is definitely the case. Juggling academics, jobs, extracurricular activities, a social life and me-time, all while maintaining a healthy physical and mental lifestyle can be exhausting. Henson offers a trick for bringing us back to the present when all of these things build up and become overwhelming. She said, “You can do the “five finger sense trick.”  Think, ‘what am I seeing, what do I hear, etc.’ Collecting all of this information truly brings you into the moment and calms you down. This is being mindful.” 

Following this, Henson further explained what a real and valuable mediation looks like and what it can do for our bodies. She said, “Traditional meditation is not the absence of thought, but the controlling and maintaining of wondering thoughts. We are trying to keep ourselves from getting “swept away” in that thought. We do not want to get engulfed in the river of thoughts, but sit on the banks of this river and acknowledge that the thoughts are there, but not taking us away and controlling us.” Whether this is simply sitting and breathing, or conforming our bodies to yoga poses, finding a balance within ourselves and maintaining it is meditating.  

So as college students, what should we do? Henson said, “We want to practice meditation the same way we did multiplication tables – so that someday we can do it instantaneously – the way we can do multiplication now.”