On Friday, M-A hosted the Mission Be Mindful Mentor Program. All Bears were invited to the PAC Cafe to participate in a mindfulness workshop.
The Mission Be Program has visited over 150 schools with the purpose of providing peer leadership training to help students cultivate their own personal mindfulness practices to relieve stress.
The day began with a 15-minute nap time followed by a yoga workout. After yoga, the students participated in relaxing breathing exercises to lower stress and anxiety levels. During lunch, Mission Be provided free pizza for all students to enjoy. Students went on to lead each other through brea thing exercises in small groups. In another de-stressing activity, students participated in mindful walking in the E-wing courtyard, during which students practiced very slow and in sync movements. After that, the students were split into two groups until the end of the day: The Mindfulness Monkeys and the Mindful Marmosets. Each group crafted their own short breathing exercises before sharing them with the other group.
When asked about what she learned, senior Shani Amzallag said, “It’s so important to recenter yourself in moments of stress because our minds have 60,000 thoughts per day and 40,000 of them are negative, so it’s very important to think of things that you are grateful for and that bring you happiness.”
Carin Winter, Founder of Mission Be and former high school social worker said, “After realizing only 10% of the students at my school were receiving counseling, I felt like we really weren’t meeting the students’ mental health needs, so I created a scalable solution to mental health by teaching students to practice breathing and reducing stress in a classroom setting.”
Senior Max Balogh said, “I really enjoyed it. At the end of the day, I felt very calm and centered.”
Senior Tejus Narayan said, “I thought it helped a lot with relaxing. I realized I should slow down my activities in life and take more meaning from them.”
