The benefits of meditation to education

College students get some relief from end-of-semester rigours

It’s the end of another school year and that means it’s also a time of intense assignment deadlines and final exams.

While most young people have resigned themselves to a month of caffeine consumption and all-nighters, things have been a little different at Centennial College’s East York campus on Carlaw Avenue. Here, some stressed-out students — and their teachers — have been attending meditation sessions that have been running every Tuesday from 3:30-4 p.m. at the campus’s fitness centre.

The program was the brainchild of campus counsellor Svetlana Lilova, who hopes it’s provided a means for students and faculty to de-stress and calm their minds.

“This activity is a means for students and staff to have a brief moment in the week to put everything down and re-focus on a bigger perspective instead of being hooked on to our individual concerns,” she said.

According to Lilova, research shows that regular meditation — especially when done for 45 days consecutively — actually changes the structure of the brain.

“Meditation is a practice. We are teaching ourselves a different stance in life, a different way of perceiving our issues and ourselves,” she said. “It is a practice in the sense of gaining a better perspective of understanding how we function and observing what happens for us, rather than getting caught up in a particular issue.”

In addition to meditating on a regular basis, doing so in a group can also be of benefit. The usual meditation session starts with everybody gathering together at the gym, sitting on mats and closing their eyes. Lilova, who hosts the sessions, brings a Tibetan bowl that she sometimes invites students to tap with a handle.

“This sound can become a focal point,” she explained. “The benefit to this is that we are collectively together and it can become a more focused experience, whereas when a person is alone… he can be easily distracted.”

Apart from the drop-in meditation sessions, the campus has been hosting a “Tea with the Counsellor” event on Wednesdays from 12:30 until 1:15 p.m., when Lilova serves tea in the hallways or the lobby. The sessions allow students and staff to take a mini-break and chat with the counsellors, while raising awareness about the counselling services that are available on campus.

“Somehow, that kind of brief tea and moment of chit-chat becomes a prompt for students to make an appointment,” Lilova said. “They have been sitting on issues that are difficult or encountering me in the hall and the tea finally serves as a way of prompting them to make an appointment.”

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Posted: Apr 22 2016 4:06 pm
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Filed under: Arts & Life Education