Health Center offers meditation sessions

Students can learn to manage stress at Noon-Time Meditation sessions.

By Ettie Berneking

Published Oct. 2, 2007

For many, meditation is a spiritual and religious practice, but it can also be used for stress management, according to Student Health Center psychologist Lynn Rossy.

For students who are weighed down by classes and the heavy college load, Rossy and the Student Health Center's Mindfulness Practice Center offer meditation sessions to reduce stress and increase mental awareness.

The sessions draw three to six students and faculty who, for 30 minutes, set aside their stress and anxiety, focusing instead on the moment before them, Rossy said.

Rossy, director of MU's Mindfulness Practice Center and the coordinator for the Noon-Time Meditation sessions, said these sessions are about becoming more aware of moment-to-moment behavior without judgment.

This is what Lynn calls "bare attention."

For a half hour every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, students are offered a quiet environment to focus on their breathing and develop the ability to be more involved in their day-to-day lives, Rossy said.

Students live with constant stimuli, she said, so they aren't actively conscious.

The noontime meditation sessions are aimed at helping students become more present for their lives instead of acting out of habitual tendencies, Lynn said.

The sessions use sitting meditation, part of what is called concentration meditation. Movement meditation, another class of meditation, includes yoga, dancing and other body in motion activities.

Hannah Bush, president of student-run Mindful Mizzou, started meditating nearly a year ago.

Bush, who said she felt overwhelmingly stressed from the pressures of graduate school, was referred to the Mindfulness Practice Center. There she said she was eventually taken under Rossy's wing. Now she leads some of the meditation at the center, using what she learned from Rossy.

"Meditation is amazingly beneficial for numerous things," Bush said.

Bush helped start Mindful Mizzou in January with the goal of providing students with a program to help them manage and reduce stress.

"There are so many programs available to students here but nothing for stress management," she said.

Mindful Mizzou meets every other Monday at 4 p.m. The next meeting is a 30-minute yoga session on Oct. 8 at the Student Recreation Complex.

Bush, who got her first taste of meditation through noontime sessions, said she continues to practice meditation at least once every day.