Men­tal Health Mind­ful­ness Dur­ing Fi­nals Week

 Wel­come Sain­t’s stu­dents and staff. Hope fi­nals and wrap­ping up the spring se­mes­ter is go­ing well for you.

Mind­ful­ness is some­thing you should prac­tice all the time, but it can be in­cred­i­bly help­ful in times of stress, such as fi­nals week. I know fi­nals week is some­thing we all dread. Mind­ful­ness is some­thing that we of­ten for­get to do. This is so im­por­tant to or­ches­trate into our lives be­cause stay­ing in the pre­sent can elim­i­nate your fears and anx­i­ety for what is on your plate and for what’s to come.

 
“Stop try­ing to calm the storm, calm your­self. The Storm will Pass.”

Photo Cred: Rod­nae Pro­duc­tions

One way to prac­tice mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion is to close your eyes and pick a part of your body to fo­cus on and ground your­self. This will be your con­stant re­turn­ing point if you find your­self dis­tracted or your mind is won­der­ing off. You can find a guided me­di­a­tion on­line whether it be a healthy psy­chol­o­gist or even a video on YouTube. It en­hances em­pa­thy, self-com­pas­sion, and hap­pi­ness, de­creases the de­sire for binge drink­ing, and boosts cre­ativ­ity and con­fi­dence. I asked stu­dents at Maryville what they thought of mind­ful­ness. Jes­sica said “I have found that when I have prac­ticed mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion with guided lis­ten­ing that my body be­comes re­laxed. Af­ter I have com­pleted the guide me­di­a­tion, I open my eye to find that I am more lev­el­headed and aware of my sur­round­ings. “


The ben­e­fits from mind­ful­ness in­clude bet­ter sleep, re­duces anx­i­ety, low­ers your stress lev­els, de­creases lone­li­ness in se­niors, and ban­ishes tem­po­rary neg­a­tive feel­ings. The prac­tice of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion is a non­judg­men­tal, pur­pose­ful aware­ness of the pre­sent mo­ment. It can help you im­prove your mem­ory, learn­ing, at­ten­tion, and self-aware­ness by strength­en­ing the mem­ory, learn­ing, and at­ten­tion parts of your brain. The tech­nique can also aid in the re­lax­ation of your sym­pa­thetic ner­vous sys­tem. Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion can im­prove cog­ni­tion, mem­ory, and at­ten­tion over time. I met with a stu­dent Bradley and wanted to hear his thoughts on the mat­ter. He said” un­der­stand­ing why you’re up­set and find­ing the true rea­sons for those emo­tions is a key to suc­cess in life and mind­ful­ness can help you achieve that. “

Photo Cred: Pix­abay

Do what you need to do to bring con­tent­ment, clar­ity, and peace into your life. In­hale. Ex­hale.

Whether you have or haven’t tried this prac­tice it’s some­thing to at least in­ves­ti­gate and find out if it could help you in any­way. I have found that for me, I am more en­gaged in school, I have greater lev­els of self-con­trol, stronger emo­tional aware­ness, and an over­all bet­ter at­ti­tude. Mind­ful­ness is some­thing that helps my breath­ing, calms my nerves, helps me fo­cus more and over­all gives me bal­ance. I hope you were able to take­away some help­ful tips for your­self.

Take care.