Mental Health and Mindfulness Day 3 (Mads Klopp)

Morning Yoga

    Starting off the third day of the Mental Health and Mindfulness J-Term, we started the day off right with Yoga with Dr. Reese. Up until 10 AM, we refreshed our memory with going over and trying out some of the poses we had done previously on Tuesday, such as Downward Dog, Child’s Pose, Windshield Wipers, etc… and built upon them with a few more new poses, among some more adventurous ones, such as Wild Thing pose, which was a fun challenge for those who attempted. I personally was unable to do some of the harder poses, however by the end of our yoga session, I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we felt refreshed and ready for the day!

JFS Mental Health Workshop

    Afterwards, we cleaned up and quickly reset the space, as we had a guest speaker coming to speak with us! We had a mental health workshop from the Alexander Jewish Family Service, which is a Houston-Based non profit that offers diverse support services to the entire community, (including mental health!) not just limited to Jewish community in Houston, but rather is guided by Jewish values. Our speaker being the very kind Noa Ben-Yehuda. She started out with handing us each sheets to each person, which was questionnaire asking several anonymous questions on whether or not the taker related to the listed mental health struggles, and to check the boxes you did relate to. Afterwards she picked them up, shuffled them up, and handed them to each person randomly, asking that you see what boxes were checked on their new sheet. This was for the purpose of showing that no one is alone in their struggles, and that everyone experiences some level of insecurity. I found this really interesting to see everything laid out, as everyone knows on some level that we all face some mental troubles and insecurity, however don’t often have confirmation. 

    Afterwards, during her presentation we learned a variety of useful information on mental health, such as the factors that cause and deter mental illness in people, helpful resources and people to turn to when in need of support. Another activity was that everyone was asked to write down on the sticky notes they were given to write down the positive and then the negative terms associated to mental health, and then to share back what you wrote down, and if you able to write down more positive or negative associated words. I found that I was unable to write many words relating to mental health, however I was able to write more negative words in total, which was also the general consensus for the rest of the group. My personal opinion is that this alludes to the face that conversations surrounding mental health can be taboo, and lead to negative conversations and perception surrounding people with mental health issues, if any. Our final activity was a game, where we picked a partner and had had to unravel ourselves from strings we wrapped around each other. I was paired with with Veronica, and we really enjoyed this game, even if we ultimately needed help to figure out how to unravel our string. 

Oral Presentations

And with that, (after filling out a brief survey on our experience), it was time to present our slides on our selected topics from yesterday!

Here are some photos I took of some of 

the many presentations given:

Image #1

Cora’s presentation on Conduct Disorders was very informative! Cora covered what are Conduct Disorders, Symptoms, etc. I had personally never heard of this, so I was very interested to learn about this condition. It isn’t as well known as a lot of the other mental illnesses talked about (BPD, Body Dysphoria, Personality Split…), so I felt like I had really learnt something.

Image #1: Cora presenting on Conduct Disorders

Image #2

Madeleine’s presentation on PTSD was also very informative! Madeleine covered what is PTSD, what causes PTSD, symptoms and remedies, etc… PTSD is a well known mental illness, but it’s often portrayed incorrectly in media and public perception, etc, so this presentation was super helpful I thought because it could help clarify myth vs fact.

 

Image #2: Madeleine presenting on PTSD

Zentangles

    Our next activity was a creative art project, which was creating Zentangles. We were given an article to read and videos to watch on what Zentangles are, how drawing them can be a meditative experience, etc. Everyone was given some paper and a sharpie, and everyone followed a tutorial on different types and ways to draw Zentangles, before being cut loose to draw their own. I found this activity to be super easy and fun to do, as well as relaxing. Here are some images from our activity:

Image #3:

    Image #4:

    Image #4: Finished Zentangle

Image #3: Finished Zentangle tutorial 

sheet

Breathing Techniques Ms. Shivan

    Finally, we ended the day off with practicing breathing techniques with Ms. Bhatia, where we got to go over some of our previously gone over breathing techniques, their names in Sanskrit and English, the translations in English, etc… And if you had answered the questions correctly, you’d get to have candy, which was pretty nice. We also learned some new breathing techniques too, such as Bhastrika Pranayama, or the Breath of Fire, as well as the benefit’s it holds. And after practicing some breathing techniques, we ended the day with cleaning up the room, preforming our end of day chores, and heading home for a restful and peaceful day!