Zen meditation class provides opportunity for escape
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The SUNY Oswego Counseling Services Center offers students and people in the community a sweet escape from everyday stress. Weekly meditation sessions, offered on the Oswego campus, can improve quality of life.
Stress can get to everyone, and left unchecked it can even lead to health problems. An instructor from the Zen Center of Syracuse, Samuel Gordon, describes how Zen meditation can lead to stress relief through a sense of peacefulness.
“We do that by beginning practices by counting out breathing. We count, one, two to calm our minds and be focused,” Gordon said.
A recent study from Harvard University has shown mediation increases brain activities associated with memory, sense of self, and empathy.
An Oswego graduate student, Maggie Fitzsimmons, says meditation has stopped her mind from wandering while studying.
“It helps me focus because when you are really trying to focus on a breathing like that it transfers into other areas on your life so you just better at turning things off,” Fitzsimmons said.
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The steps of Zen meditation start with taking off your shoes, crossing your legs in a comfortable manner, dimming the light down and relaxing.
The meditation classes are offered on campus every Tuesday night in the Campus Center, room 205 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.