WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?
Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.
Mindfulness
The mindfulness community at Hamilton strives to encourage slower and more intentional living on campus. Whether you’re interested in more traditional mindful activities like meditation or yoga, or find mindfulness in other activities in your life such as running, journaling or art, there are numerous groups on campus that allow students to live a more mindful college experience.
Anyone can participate in mindfulness practice, no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are. Mindfulness isn’t something you’re “good” or “bad” at. It only takes a willingness to change parts of your lifestyle in order to fully appreciate and experience the present moment.
Meditation Club
Meditation Club offers sessions of sitting Zazen meditation every week in the Chapel’s upstairs meditation room. The club meets Mondays at 5 p.m., and is led by Sean Conroy ’21 and Sosha Stecher ’22. Togan, a member of the Zen Center of Syracuse typically also joins the sitting meditation on Mondays.
Mindfulness House
Wallace Johnson is a residence hall for twenty first-year students who want to begin their college experience mindfully. A common space for meditation and silent reflection, a kitchen for mindful cooking, and various mindfulness-based programs and activities, – plus a community of like-minded peers who value living with intention – is what makes this residence hall, and first year experience different from any other.
Recoup & Soup
Recoup & Soup is a weekly gathering on Thursdays at noon for any students, faculty and staff, who are seeking mindful community connection, to enjoy 20 minutes of meditative silence, followed by a half-hour of lunch fellowship over homemade soup & bread, lovingly prepared by colleagues who volunteer to do so.
Yoga
Regular yoga options include Restorative Yoga and Hatha Yoga led by Kristy Caruso, as well as Power Yoga is led by Susie Hamilton.
Labyrinth
The senior gift to the campus from the class of 2019 was an outdoor labyrinth to be located and built in the near future. In the meantime, for the last three years, the mindfulness community has constructed a snow labyrinth for the arctic mindfulness meditator.