Mindfulness - A Way to Cope with Back to School Stress

School is starting back up again along with many students’ stress and anxieties. The stress and sleepless nights from deadlines, tests, and quizzes are all already creeping their way back as the new school year begins again. What if there was a way to change all that and make this school year even better than the rest? What if you could go through the school year really living in the moment and enjoying the experiences of high school, rather than dwelling on a failed test or an upcoming project? Well, perhaps, now you can.

A simple solution to some of your school-related stresses and anxieties is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a type of meditation that focuses on being intensely aware of how one is feeling in the present, without any interruption of past or future thoughts. With mindfulness, students, parents, and teachers can have a school year with minimal amounts of stress and anxiety. The benefits of mindfulness include an improvement in attention, a decreased risk of burnout, a reduction of stress, and improvement of sleep. Mindfulness has also been known to improve depression, anxiety, stress, and eating disorders. Furthermore, if any of these pertain to you or someone you know, I encourage you to continue reading on how mindfulness can help you this school year.

Mindfulness is really simple to practice because all you really need is a comfortable setting and a clear mind. It is easy to remember the steps to conducting mindfulness with the mnemonic FLAP.

Focus on your breathing, and you should always start by sitting with your eyes shut.
Live in the moment by finding joy in the little things around you.
Accept yourself by appreciating your flaws and by treating yourself like a good friend.
Pay attention to your senses, such as touch, sight, taste, and smell.

By doing this, you will be able to detach yourself from the busy world around you and focus on yourself. After completing the final step, you should feel so immersed in the moment that all additional thoughts are cast aside. For some, this meditation is better done with a voice that guides them through the steps. Free apps like Calm, Headspace, and Simple Habit, are great tools for people who prefer guided meditation.

If simple meditations are not enough for you, there are also more structured meditations that can be done, such as body scan, sitting, and walking meditations. Body scan meditation is a form of meditation that is done lying on your back and is meant to gain full awareness in all the parts of your body, including in your emotions. Similar to the unstructured meditation, sitting meditation is done sitting in a chair and focusing on your breath moving in and out of your body. Finally, the walking meditation is done in a quiet place where there is room to walk back and forth. The walking meditation allows you to be aware of the sensations of standing and walking. It is important to practice such meditations everyday for at least six months. After six months, such practices should become an innate part of your day.

These practices have proven to have such great results that several teachers in Cliffside Park High School are incorporating them into their classes. Over an email conversation that I had with Mrs. Volynskaya, a math teacher at Cliffside Park High School, she mentioned that she incorporates three to five minutes of mindfulness meditation in the beginning of her classes. She believes that meditation is a great habit that can be formed to relieve stress. Mrs. Volynskaya believes that it teaches concentration and how to be present in the moment. Furthermore, she hopes that a majority of her students can take away valuable life skills and use this practice to deal with daily stress and overwhelming events outside of school.

There is nothing more important than taking care of your well being and mental health. Many times during the day we spend our time doing things for others that we simply forget about ourselves, so allow mindfulness to take a few minutes out of your day to do something for you.

Resources:Youtube Mayo Clinic