It’s Monday, and things are crazy as usual–you accidentally hit the snooze button twice, and as you fly into your 8 a.m. lecture and see the professor collecting everyone’s essays, you reach into your backpack and realize you’ve left yours back at the dorm. And just to cap it off, your only friend in the class is sitting with the guy she met over the weekend, and she didn’t even save you a seat. You sit in the back row and put your head in your hands, wondering how you’ll ever get through the week.
If you’ve ever had a stressful day like this, you’re definitely not alone. College is a breeding ground for every kind of overwhelming emotion, whether it’s anxiety about exams, frustration with your inconsiderate roommate, or sadness from missing home. That’s why many colleges and universities offer a course on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), which aims to help students cope with their stress by developing inner strength. With so many unhealthy, dangerous outlets for stress around every corner of a college campus, we need a way to relax that isn’t detrimental to our health or our grades. That’s where MBSR comes in.
What Is It?
MBSR is built around the idea of mindfulness, which encourages you to live in the moment and accept things as they are. Even when you’re doing something as simple as eating a granola bar, you usually find your mind drifting off to worry about your next exam, your long distance relationship, or the way your hair looks that day. When you’re being mindful, you can concentrate on what’s happening right now in your life rather than obsessing about the past or future. The idea is that mindfulness is inside everyone; you just need to learn how to awaken it.
In order to help minimize stress by being mindful, MBSR uses different relaxation techniques like meditation, stretching, yoga, and group discussions. At the end of the program, which usually meets once a week for six to eight weeks, students will have learned how to effectively cope with the stress and overwhelming emotions that come along with college life.
Melia Robinson, a senior at Syracuse University, enrolled in the class during her sophomore year after seeing a flyer on campus. “When I first read the flyer, I thought it was going to be like group therapy, like sitting around a room and talking about our feelings and kumbaya-ing and holding hands,” she says. “Instead, it was very much about breathing, so you would lie on the ground and focus on listening to your breaths and trying to silence your thoughts.”
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979, and now it’s offered at colleges and universities across the country, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among many others. These classes are typically offered through your school’s health services center rather than the university itself. Even though you probably won’t get credit since it’s not a university course, you’ll walk away with much more—healthy strategies for managing your stress! To see if your school offers MBSR, check out your school’s health services website. No luck? Search the internet to see if there are any classes offered in the local area surrounding your campus.
Why Practice MBSR In College?
William Mellen, president of the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) at Syracuse University, says college students are especially stressed because starting at a new school is such a huge transition. He explains that, for the first time, college students are given way more freedom and independence than they ever had in high school.
“They mostly live far from home, without the friends, family, and known support systems that were so accessible before,” he says. “Add in the career prospects, lifestyle, and social biases that hang in the balance, all while dealing with new temptations and relationships, and the pressure on college students quickly escalates to profound levels.”
Mellen says when the stress becomes too much to handle, many students start indulging in unhealthy amounts of food, drugs, sex and even video games. “Students often find themselves using a crutch,” he says. “Areas that may be fine in moderation may become dangerous when used in excess or in an irresponsible manner.”
Because these habits are so easy to indulge in, we often do so without realizing the consequences. MBSR can help you get to the root of your stress and teach you how to cope in a healthy, worthwhile way.
Everybody’s Doing MBSR!
According to the brochure for UMass’s MBSR program, people with all kinds of health issues can benefit from the program. MBSR can help students cope with stress, high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbances. Though it’s not considered to be a substitute for medical treatment, it’s highly respected within the medical community.
Melia says she enrolled in the class because she was feeling overwhelmed by her classes and extracurricular activities. “I needed an outlet for stress relief that was legal and productive,” she says. “I had seen a flyer for this and thought it might be unconventional enough to work and be a source of stress relief.”
Melia soon realized MBSR wasn’t for her, because she had a hard time focusing on breathing and quieting her thoughts. However, she feels the course could be very beneficial for other participants. “You learn how to focus your thoughts and even out your breathing in a safe environment, and then when you’re in situations that are high-anxiety, you can then use that as a tool and it controls the situation,” she says. “For people who are looking for a holistic way to deal with anxiety, I think it’s definitely worth trying.”
Hannah Orenstein, a sophomore at New York University and high school editor for Her Campus, took a mandatory MBSR course during her senior year of high school. In addition to the course, she was also required to practice yoga and discuss other ways to manage stress. Even though the course was mandatory, she says she really enjoyed it and found it to be beneficial.
“I definitely appreciated having some downtime in the middle of the day to meditate and relax,” she says. “That definitely made a positive difference in my mood.”
Mellen feels the most successful people are those who have found some way to reconcile between mind and body, be it through prayer, yoga, or meditation, so they can focus on their goals without distraction.
“Students are fortunate to be offered a great coping strategy through MBSR,” Mellen says. “Any opportunity for help along the path to success would be wise to learn more about.”
Make sure to check your school’s health services website to see if MBSR is offered. If your school doesn’t have MBSR, try contacting health services or the counseling center and suggest they start a course—they’d probably be glad to hear of a new way to help students! In the meantime, try enrolling in yoga or some other fitness class that can serve as an outlet for stress. Many colleges have inexpensive fitness classes for students and faculty; some are even for school credit!
If you can’t find or make it to a class on campus, you can practice MBSR on your own (wherever, whenever!) by reading about the technique online. Mindful is a bimonthly publication that aims to help Americans apply the mindfulness movement to all aspects of their daily lives, whether it’s cooking, travel, relationships, or business. On their website, you can figure out how to use mindfulness to curb overeating, listen attentively in conversations with your friends, and have a better sex life.
For more tips on how to say goodbye to stress, brush up on our 9 Ways to Have a Less Stressful Semester.