Get Grounded By Training The Brain, Day 3- Kilali and Evan

Get Grounded By Training the Brain, Day 3

By Kilali and Evan

Jayla's metta stone
We started off the day by having Dr. Reese join us on the zoom call and walked us through some meditative movements, yoga, and a great group discussion about what it really means to meditate, about last night's reading, and much more. We then as a class got to have our first J-Term seminar! It was super interesting and very enlightening to see all the different points of view from people throughout the class, how they interpreted the reading, their thought process throughout the article, and what it made them think of.
In-Person students in the first seminar

I really enjoyed how the entire class came together to trade ideas we all had about the reading, like how emotions are deserving of validation, to listen to other’s problems, and to have empathy for others. We also learned about what it is to have empathy for others. Dr. Reese told a lot about how to have sympathy in situations where it may be needed. Dr. Reese asked some great questions, and one of my favorite points she made was when comforting someone when being compassionate towards another person, you should not only validate their emotions but also guide them through the rough patch they're in. Instead of saying “don't cry” say something constructive, like “it's okay to cry” or “we’re all new to this” which I really appreciated, and was great to hear, especially from such a supportive voice.

Blake working on his Metta Stone
Right after lunch we started on a super interesting creative project, called Metta-stone arts. This ties into a separate section of creative mindfulness, something that many different people in today's society would benefit greatly from utilizing. We had a chance to draw intricate Mandala designs onto stones, and after everyone put in the hard work needed to get some beautiful outcomes, everyone’s turned out really beautiful, and they were all so different, from the color palettes to the art style. Everyone's different personalities and skills were projected into their pieces, which was very interesting to see! I got the chance to finish up two Metta Stones, both of them with similar techniques, yet different outcomes. I really enjoyed the process because it was super relaxing, and allowed me to do something creative in my day, which I love to try and fit in every day.

After that, the class had one last group meditation for the day, Shavasana, before signing off in the afternoon with great weather at 3:30, a great opportunity to finish a mandala outside. A very productive day for sure!

End of day meditation or Shavasana

Morning yoga practice


Metta Stones

Online students showing their metta stone practice and watching an instructional video


Dr. Reese on zoom call during group discussion

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting grounded J- Term, day 1 Alice and Isabelle

Image
Training the Brain, Day One Today we focused on getting to know what the course is about and what we will spend our time on. We had fun creating an account on the Ten Percent Happier app. This app will guide us throughout these nine days and help us focus on expanding and training the brain. We had fun adding each other on the app to guide us through this journey. In the second hour, we started to move with Dr. Reese. The class had fun learning new yoga poses, some challenging and some very relaxing. Afterward, we learn the real meaning behind the word “namaste.” It means hello so we will not be using it at the end of our yoga sessions. We moved onto the second half of the day where the group learned plenty about mandalas. Not only did we color them, but we also read how important they are to Asian cultures. Ms. Novak then led a very fun activity. The class made Zen Gardens. They consist of a small box filled with sand and different designs created by students. Dr. Reese then taught us
Read more

Blog Day 4: Getting Ground by Training the Brain- Nabeel and Jayla

Image
On this last day of our first week into Getting Grounded by Training the Brain we started off with learning a new grounding technique using only our hands. This is a great way to stay in the present time and to lessen fidgeting by using one hand to trace the other. Keeping your breathing to match the rising and fall of the outline of are fingers. Afterwards doing a basic meditation on the ten percent happier app to get us ready to start off the day. It was called behind the waterfall, the topic of this exercise was mindfulness of thoughts, acknowledging all of the emotions we were feeling during this meditation session and sitting with them.   Around ten thirty we began a yoga movement around the topic of equanimity. This is the process of having a balanced mind with openness and compassion for each other and ourselves. Today we explored many new yoga poses including revisiting a difficult one known as “chair”.  This was a great way to focus on a breathing anchor technique and to ackno
Read more