The Kitchener Natural Areas Program will host an online nature meditation on Monday, Oct. 18, from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. The Zoom event will be free and is open to anyone who wants to join. You can register at any time before the event.
Meditation helps ease stress and can leave you feeling refreshed. The high amount of stress among students can actually decrease their cognitive function.
Meditation can help with stress-induced cognitive decline, according to a study from the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine called, Effect of Meditation on Stress-Induced Changes in Cognitive Functions: “Practice of meditation produced a relaxation response even in the young adult subjects who had never practiced meditation before. The practice of meditation reduced the physiologic stress responses without taking away the beneficial effect of stress, namely, improved memory scores,” the study concluded.
Leia Carroll graduated with a certificate from the Human Services Foundations course at Fanshawe College. Carroll is now a yoga student at Karma Yoga in London. She is currently starting a medicinal candle business that contains herbs and other essential oils.
“I believe that meditation is a great solution to stress especially because in our western culture we are always on the move and people have very busy schedules,” Carroll said.
“Especially in Colleges with a lot of classes, people are very stressed out often and people forget to relax. It’s not very good for the body and the mind. Meditation is a great way to sit with your thoughts and really relax, think about the situation and really evaluate on a rational level instead of being in a constant fight or flight mode,” she said.
Carroll explained how emotions can be dealt with through meditation.
“I believe meditation is a great way to handle emotion because a lot of the time people bottle up emotions especially in public places. We can’t fully show how we feel and if we do it’s not necessarily okay and accepted. When we meditate we let in all that we are,” Carroll said.
A former Fanshawe Hotel Management student Josh Juha, showed interest in the online guided meditation.
“I would definitely go to this. I am out of school now but students could definitely benefit from this. Growing up, my Grandma always introduced me to meditation with the idea that it will relax you and take things off your chest and just be clear with yourself,” Juha said.
“Growing up things started to get more stressful and everyone has their own way of coping with things. I never liked talking to people about my problems so finding a way to understand myself and deal with my problems helped me so much. I am 23 years old now and still do yoga and meditation,” he said.
The guided nature meditation Zoom meeting, hosted by the Kitchener Natural Areas Program is still open for registration to anyone needing to ease their stress or refresh their mind.
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