The University is now offering guided mindfulness sessions online to staff and students to help get through this stressful time. Staff from Student Support and Wellbeing and the Student Learning Advisory Service are working in collaboration to provide 4 sessions of mindfulness practice a week.
This will go on throughout the Easter vacation until the end of summer term. Lorraine Millard (SSW) who is leading the sessions said, “I run regular mindfulness sessions at university, so when social distancing and working from home was imposed I wanted to find a way to continue to provide support to students and colleagues.” So far, the team have hosted 3 mindfulness sessions online; in total 23 students located in 6 different countries have logged-in.
The sessions are 40 minutes long and there is a focus on dealing with anxiety and strategies for remaining focused. This is particularly important for students and staff at the university who are isolated from each other, but are having to continue to study and work. Louise Frith commented that she and her colleagues in SLAS are finding that, “at a time of heightened personal and social stress, many students are understandably worried about their ability to focus and perform well in exams, dissertations and coursework.”
The sessions are live and run using Zoom. Anyone can join at any time by following the links:
For students:
Starting from Wednesday 01 April
Starting from Friday 17 April
For staff
Starting from Thursday 02 April