Category of Workshop: Personal Enrichment
Date/time of workshop: 11/10/09, 1-2pm
This workshop was about how to reduce stress and anxiety in one’s life and finding out ways to relax and train the body to be more mindful of its surroundings. I chose this workshop in hopes of dealing with stress in school and even outside of school, whatever the situation may be. I didn’t really know what to expect from this workshop except that we might get tips on how to lessen stress. However, I didn’t expect us to do some exercises like examining a raisin or doing muscle relaxation. The speakers taught us how to be more mindful of our surroundings in order make the environment or situation less stressful. By looking at things ‘non-judgmentally’ we have the ability to become more relaxed and less worrisome.
This workshop did take me out of my comfort zone because sometimes the exercises we did were a little uncomfortable. When we had to listen to a 10-min recording on how to ease our mind, it was hard to concentrate with some people giggling or not taking the listening serious. With that kind of environment, I was wary of just relaxing and listening the CD. Also, the muscle relaxation segment had us do some funny poses in order to relax our entire body. Although some students opted out of doing it, it was enlightening experience. Because I took this workshop, I’m able to have a different mindset on ways of dealing with stress and my environments as a whole. Even after the exercise, I felt surprisingly relaxed, more so than the did the entire day. I would recommend this workshop to anyone willing to try out new ways and ideas of how to deal with anxiety and stress.