It was the first weekend of February, the windchill was in the negatives in Ohio, and the sun hid behind the clouds as we headed to the SKY Campus Happiness Retreat. This event was hosted by Kenyon College for 25 of its undergraduate students, and we were quick enough to snag two spots. After a brief orientation call where we met with a Campus Partnerships Coordinator, we were registered for the first-ever SKY Happiness Retreat at Kenyon.
In the interest of full disclosure, we didn’t know what to expect going into the retreat. Even with the initial orientation call, there was little information about the scope of the program. Normally, when you hear the word “retreat” you think of going somewhere secluded with no technology to focus on whatever topic is relevant (in our case, happiness). But this retreat was held in a reservable space on campus for only four hours a day. Although we were given dietary guidelines, we weren’t watched all day. We happily ate plant-based meals for a couple days, but if we didn’t want to, nobody would stop us. It was a self-motivated practice.
The description we received was as follows:
“The SKY Happiness Retreat introduces SKY Breath Meditation, an evidence-based meditation practice integrated with breath work that can significantly increase one’s well-being and calmness, and significantly reduces anxiety and stress markers. The retreat features interactive group processes, experiential learning, emotional intelligence training, breath-work, yoga, and evidence-based meditation. It’s one of the best places to connect with yourself, make new friends, and most importantly, have fun!”
Who can pass up having fun and making new friends in an environment such as a college campus? With classes, on-campus jobs, and extracurricular activities, it can often be hard to find time for ourselves dedicated solely to our wellbeing. This is why Kenyon brought the SKY Happiness Retreat to campus, with the hope that those who experienced the retreat would spread the word. We were also guinea pigs to test how our campus would respond to starting up a chapter of the The Art of Living organization. Overall, it was an attempt from the administration to prioritize the mental wellbeing of Kenyon students.
We won’t get into the nitty-gritty details, but this weekend was intense. Although the majority of the retreat was focused on the SKY Breath Meditation, we also did activities designed to get us out of our emotional comfort zones. From the first activity, we were forced to break through the social walls that normally surround us. We shed self-consciousness and judgment to embrace whatever the experience had to offer. The group quickly bonded. Even if the exercises felt uncomfortable or offbeat, we came out of it with a shared story. The interpersonal connections were not the only takeaways of the retreat. Put simply, breathwork and breath meditation help to regulate your sympathetic nervous system—this is what gets our heart rate pumping in classic “fight or flight” situations. This goes hand in hand with a concept in psychology called “embodied cognition,” which is the idea that our mind affects our body and vice versa. In other words, by calming our body with breath, we may be able to better calm our mind, too. While we’ve only been doing the SKY breathing technique for two weeks at the time of writing this article, if the results are similar to how we felt at the retreat, then we are looking forward to a mindful (and breathful) future.