For students who may feel the stresses of daily life, there’s a club that may be able to help. The Mindfulness Club is a meditation club that was started as a place for students to have a youthful place to relax, Jake Musal, president of The Mindfulness Club, said.
“I feel like it’s a cool thing to create a community of peers that are engaging in spiritual practices just on their own. I feel like a space was needed for that to happen,” Musal said.
The Mindfulness Club does one specific form of meditation that usually involves sitting with your legs crossed, eyes closed, focusing on breathing and releasing the thoughts from your mind.
“There’s a million correct ways to meditate,” Musal said, adding that people find running or playing an instrument as a way of meditation.
Fourth year student Hollie Baker joined The Mindfulness Club her freshman year at the University and has been a member since then.
“I joined Mindfulness Club when I was a freshman at Bowling Green and a friend brought me to Mindfulness Club to kinda try it out,” Baker said.
Baker added that the meditation she was familiar with before joining the club was more prayer-based because of her Christian background.
“It was a practice to get into to become relaxed … and explore the inner self. That’s what really appealed to me; the inner exploration and that’s why I’ve continued it for four years,” Baker said.
Tom Vasey, a fourth year student who also is a member of The Mindfulness Club, first heard about the club after hearing about it from friends and has been a member since then.
“I played a show here (The Common Good) and met a couple people who were acquainted with Mindfulness Club and I was experiencing winter semester sort of stress and I needed to go to a place that had familiar faces and friends and said I’ll take up meditation and give it a try. It’s a little hippie for my taste but I enjoyed it and kind of fell in love with the community here,” Vasey said.
The meditation has helped him in more ways than just relaxing if school and work stresses get in the way.
“I have OCD so meditation is the perfect thing for that. It gives me a moment of clarity and the goal of meditation is to make your mind blank. It certainly did help me out with school and relaxing and finding a place to go when I was too stressed out with homework and work in general,” Vasey said.
Baker agrees, saying meditation helps distance herself from the stresses she’s having and problems she’s dealing with.
Musal says the best part about meditation is being able to get away from everything for an hour.
“I think it’s very important to meditate to decompress from all the stimulation. I think we live in an extremely over-stimulated society … but this is just a chance to power down and reconnect pretty groundly with your peers and really just calm down and destress. Even aside from the stimulation of society, school is stressful,” Musal said.
He also added that meditation helps practitioners destress and “fully experience life.”
The Mindfulness Club meets Tuesdays and Fridays at 5:30 p.m. at The Common Good, which is located at 113 Crim Street.
