Mindfulness: Does it work?
Written by Tyra Dreja and Georgia Mackellar
Mindfulness is a process of attending, with awareness, to the present moment. This process of awareness contrasts with our experiences of daily life, where we find our minds unintentionally wonder, running on autopilot, or deviating to unwanted experiences.
Including mindfulness in your university self-care routine can help you to look inside yourself to understand how you’re feeling, whether this be positive or negative, and without judgement. It supports you to be able to understand what you’re feeling and think “what do I do now?”.
As students ourselves, we set out on the ultimate challenge to engage with the services offered by the Student Guild wellbeing portfolio, to evaluate them and determine if they could assist us on our journey as students, and beyond into our professional career. In the video linked below, we discuss our experiences of meditation, breathwork practices, progressive muscle relaxation, and gratitude journaling techniques; all of which are scientifically proven to reduce stress and anxiety and improve sleep, self-awareness, emotional wellbeing and overall wellbeing.
After six weeks of learning and engaging with a range of different mindful strategies to assist us in effectively managing stress, we each took away some key strategies that we have been implementing in our everyday life. This has enhanced our wellbeing and assisted us with our studies.
Our recommendation to you is to give it a go; you will learn so many strategies that will assist you throughout university and beyond!
