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Day 8

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  On our final day of the Get Grounded by Training the Brain A-Term, we started the day off by naming our favorite anchors that we use to get grounded when we are practicing meditation or just in need of getting out of our head. We then proceeded to meditate with our anchors in mind, using them so that we don’t get swept away by our racing thoughts. After we had discussed how this meditation was for us, Emilio presented his final project to the class, which was a helpful meditation that focused on love and compassion regarding racism and bias. Next, we moved into our art section, where we reflected on our mandalas and the meaning of them and their different parts before having the dissolution ceremony for them. While destroying something you spent time and energy on might sound odd, this practice is a way to show that everything is temporary and that anything you get attached to will eventually come to pass and you need to learn to let things that you love go. The dissolution ceremony
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day 7

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  As we begin to come to a close to our Getting Grounded by Training the Brain course, our days remain insightful and full of vast knowledge. Of course our day started out with meditation being led by Dr. Reese and continued with the introduction of a new form of meditation led by one of our peers, Eleanor Carter. She walked us through sun salutations. As we worked through our exercises we continued to better our yoga and meditations skills remaining mindful of our surroundings and peers. Of course this wasn’t the only student led practice today. We also had Kenzie Frazier present on the importance of connecting with nature and Charles McGill present on RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) meditation.  Following these exciting meditation sessions, Dr. Reese led us on a very intensive yoga session. Although our backs and legs ended up soar to some degree, we thoroughly enjoyed the both physical and mental workouts our bodies endured.  Later that afternoon, we began ag
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Day 6

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Eleanor beginning her sand mandala      Today was the first day of our mindfulness final projects, which made it a very nerve-racking day for some! For these projects, we lead a meditation on a specific topic while also presenting research and reflecting on that topic. Today, three students presented their topics, with Everest presenting first. The class wrote down their reflections in their journals after Everests guided meditation Everest’s aimed to teach us about the importance of acceptance when it comes to dealing with our emotions and within mindfulness. We learned about how accepting an emotion and simply sitting with it can be an incredibly effective way of dealing with it. Although it may seem counterintuitive, when we accept what we’re feeling and allow ourselves to feel it, we manage emotions much better. Personally, I find this to be very true, and Everest’s presentation further convinced me to keep acceptance at the forefront of how I manage emotion. The students place
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Day 5: Mindful Walking and Sand Mandals

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Day 5 of our Getting Grounded by Training the Brain course, like every other day of the course thus far, was productive, insightful, and exciting! Eleanor meditating on her yoga mat Like every other day of this A-term course, we meditated. We engaged in a 20-minute meditation which was difficult for the majority of us, not only for its length but because it asked us to focus on hindrances. We as a group found that this was something our minds didn't always want to focus on since they in a way are negative and we like to avoid thinking about the negatives in our lives sometimes. While difficult at times, Friday's meditation was personally one of the best for me because I came out of it feeling very relaxed.  Practicing restorative yoga poses On Friday, we also practiced some restorative yoga! Many of us were feeling sore from the previous days of our yoga practice, so instead of continuing with poses such as downward dog and cobra, we took more relaxed poses such as supported fi
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Padlet of Creative Mindful Projects

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 Feel free to visit the Padlet where you will find all the great creative projects done by the students.
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Day 4: Branching Out!

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                                           Emily, Jack, and Liam showing off their yoga skills in the park!  On the fourth day of the Get Grounded by Training the Brain A-term, we started off with getting a journal that contained writing prompts and picked which ones we wanted to fill out. These prompts got us thinking about ourselves and allowed us to write about different things, whether it was what is your favorite place or what do you get out of a relationship with someone that you really value. We then had a nice breathing practice where we touched all of our fingers to our thumb in time to our breathing. After this, we listed to our daily talk from the basics course in the app Ten Percent Happier and practiced the meditation that followed the talk. The meditation and the talk were focused on looking at what you are feeling and thinking and just taking note of them, but not being carried away and being controlled by them, which allows for more calculated reactions.  After this pr
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Day 3

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  Blog for the day 3 During the third day of this amazing journey of mindfulness and meditation, we started by continuing talking about self compassion, where we were discussing and trying to understand how to deal with people that need help for leaving behind their negative and racist thoughts. We spent a lot of time discussing whether to give love to these people or just to comprehend their suffering but not giving love.  Emily painting her rock The next activity that we did during the second part of the morning was about dot painting. We started by learning and watching videos of different techniques of dot painting for then to work on rocks to do magnificent and beautiful pieces of art. This practice helped to fully immerse in art and really connect with yourself and go to your creative place to expand it more.  The class practiced their dots on paper before moving on to the rocks After we came back from lunch and break, we started to work on our next activity that was a semi
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