Results for WELLNESS

The words meditation and mindfulness often conjure images of people sitting quietly in peaceful contemplation. However, as contemplatives and scholars from various fields have argued, though the brain resides in the cranium, the mind functions throughout the body. Students in this class will playfully explore embodied and dynamic forms of meditation and mindfulness through movement in an effort to integrate the mind and body. Examples of modalities include Lisa Nelson's Tuning Scores, Barbara Dilley's Contemplative Dance Practices, and other movement practices including qigong, laughter yoga, and psychogeography. Students will work in teams to develop their own movement-meditation scores inspired by these practices.

Body Maps in various forms have been used for thousands of years by people searching for a better understanding of their bodies and their place in the world. This weekend intensive combines self-reflection, artistic expression, and an anthropological lens in order to help you develop a visual ethnographic 'map' of your life. In its basic form, Body Mapping involves drawing one's body outline onto a large paper or canvas and then working with paint, charcoal, markers, pictures, symbols, and words to visually chart the texture, terrain and topography of our embodied experiences. Body Mapping is a pathway to both understanding and sharing our lived stories.

In the face of social, economic, environmental, and public health upheavals, many of us are experiencing an unprecedented degree of uncertainty, isolation, and stress affecting academic and day-to-day life. Challenging times ask us, in a voice louder than usual, to identify sources of strength and develop practices that sustain and even liberate. In this experiential, project-oriented class: Explore practices to find true ground and enact positive change for self and community; Cultivate natural capacities of presence, courage, and compassion; Develop resources to share with one another and the entire Stanford community.

Engage in meaningful spiritual dialogue and religious encounter with one another, fostering a conversation across differences. Explore ways to nurture meaning and purpose in daily life through experiential learning activities. You will have the opportunity to focus inwards on your own spirituality and write your spiritual autobiography. It is not expected that you will be an adherant of or have expertise in religious practices and traditions or background in religious scholarship. You will gain skills and knowledge enabling you to wrestle with life's ultimate religious and spiritual questions through readings, facilitated discussions, and breakout sessions. All sessions will be held over dinner as communal meals are ways of community building between the students. Dinner is provided.

The wildfires in Maui created significant problems for teachers and their classrooms. Collaborating with three Maui schools, we will use Behavior Design methods to give tools, relief, and hope to educators on the island. Enrollment for this class is by application. Contact bjfogg@stanford.edu for more information.

This interdisciplinary and practice-based course develops foundational life skills that enable students to realize their potential in school, work, and life in the 21st century. Research over the last few decades has shown that one's ability to thrive is highly correlated with growing and developing as a person: emotionally, socially, cognitively, and psychophysically. This course fosters inner growth through a specific form of evidence-based meditation called Transcendental Meditation, shown to enhance awareness, creativity, resilience, and balance. Students will also develop key communication, relationship building, and collaboration skills. The course features recent research on holistic human development, neuroscience of performance, and integrative leadership. Its design is based on a training program utilized by thousands of leaders of larger established organizations, venture backed startups, NGO's, and government agencies. This integrative approach to leadership development can reduce stress and lead to emotional balance, mental clarity, and increased effectiveness in life pursuits.

Do you have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or experience daytime fatigue? Sleep is a basic form of human nourishment that affects every aspect of performance. This course covers rudimentary neuroscience while focusing on techniques to enhance sleep quality, including yoga, breathwork, and meditation. Students will track their sleep, noting the most effective methods, culminating in a personalized, comprehensive sleep strategy.

Learn to cultivate and sustain emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy in relationships. Course takes a sex-positive approach. In addition to scholarly readings on science-based perspectives, the course includes individual, paired, and group exercises in and out of class. Didactic components address the art and science of intimacy through a sociological lens, addressing embodiment, the nuances of consent, needs and boundaries, empathy, safer sex and safer heart conversations, flirting, attunement, escalation and de-escalation, fantasies, pornography, pleasure, selecting partners, repairing relationships, and breaking up.

This course will introduce initiated fraternity and sorority members to the Sexual Citizenship Framework as well as fundamental skills and practices to support creating positive change. Students will be provided opportunities, guidance, and resources to design and implement their own projects to advance a culture of sexual citizenship in their chapters and broader fraternity and sorority communities. This course is limited to initiated fraternity and sorority members only. A permission code is required to register.

Purpose is not a singular thing; it's a way of living with what matters at the center. Investigate and own your unique journey for purpose. Explore the connection between an inner journey for compassionate self-understanding and an outer focus on engaging with the world. In this highly interactive class, we will create a supportive and inclusive community from which you can investigate the contemplative, psychological, social, and communal factors that deepen meaning-making, support authenticity, and encourage living more purposefully. Drawing from disciplines as diverse as art, poetry, design, contemplative practice, sociology, and positive psychology, we will cultivate skills that promote wellbeing and flourishing at Stanford and beyond.

Examine the main factors impacting metabolic rate including stress, sleep, movement, and nutrition. Review the science behind the continual need for nourishment from these factors and how they work together synergistically down to the level of gene expression. Practically apply principles of metabolism to one's unique physiology and lifestyle for optimal wellbeing

Discover a deeper relationship with yourself and the Earth through nature-based contemplative practices that cultivate wonder for this beautiful, diverse world. This experiential course explores how nature connection practices can support wellbeing and flourishing. Develop a more meaningful relationship with the Stanford campus by visiting different locations each week, including the O'Donahue Family Stanford Educational Farm, the Cactus Garden, the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, the Cantor Arts gardens, Windhover, and Frenchman's Park. Drawing on perspectives from Transformative Learning, Indigenous Knowledge, and Contemplative Science, course activities will include place-based mindfulness exercises, walking meditation, Council sharing, journaling, and creative expression.

Introduces diverse forms of meditation practice in both theory (contemplative neuroscience, phenomenological traditions) and practice. Practices in guided imagery, compassion, loving kindness, positive emotion, mindfulness and mantra meditation will be offered to enhance stress management and well-being. While meditation practices emerge from religious traditions, all practice and instruction will be secular.

Compassion meditation is an ancient, much studied practice of cultivating care for all beings, including ourselves. This course introduces the various dimensions of compassion and mindfulness meditation, emphasizing experiential learning of practices to increase awareness, shift negative thought patterns, increase self-compassion, relate more skillfully with difficult others, and connect to common humanity. Students will explore the rigorous current research on compassion and discuss how compassion translates to action.

Discover the power of the breath as a gateway to reach a meditative state of mind. Combine meditative practice with activities that inspire connection and purpose through community building and mindful leadership. Learn through breathwork, meditation, lecture, class discussion, experiential learning, and yoga. Cornerstone of the course is evidence-based SKY Meditation technique that utilizes the breath to quiet the mind, supporting a deep experience of meditation and a practical approach to happiness. Course requirements include attendance at a mini-retreat (see "notes" section). Also note: Wellness 132 was previously offered as MED 130.

Introduces diverse forms of meditation practice in both theory (contemplative neuroscience, phenomenological traditions) and practice. Selected practices in focused attention, mindfulness, guided imagery, compassion, loving kindness, positive emotion, and/or mantra meditation will be offered to enhance focused attention, insight, stress management, and well-being. Takes place in a weekend immersion format (on campus), which allows more immersive exploration of the topic space. While meditation practices emerge from religious traditions, all practice and instruction will be secular.

Explore the intersection of queerness, sexuality and wellbeing. Learn skills and practices to associate queerness with thriving and flourishing. This course integrates empirical psychological and neuroscientific research, community history, and health psychoeducation to provide frameworks for exploration. An interactive structure supports the reflection and development of your relationship with self, community, and queerness.

This class will offer important life skills centering the needs, experiences and challenges of BIPOC students. Skills/topics covered may include communication and relationship skills, interviewing for jobs, self- and community-care, and cooking/meal planning. These topics will all be addressed through the lens of the particular needs and experiences of BIPOC students. Impact of systemic racism & historical trauma will be integrated into the curriculum as well as connection with ancestors/community, cultural pride, and skills for resilience. In connection with this class, students will be offered opportunities and guidance/financial support to design their own projects to enhance the long-term flourishing of BIPOC students on campus.

Learn the fundamentals of grief education. Explore artistic and cultural expressions of grief and psychological meaning-making after loss. Utilize readings from psychology, engage in class discussions, and explore a range of creative modalities across various cultures for grieving. Guest lectures from campus grief response leaders such as the Office for Religious and Spiritual Life, Well-Being, and Counseling and Psychological Services will assist in providing students with skills and knowledge for the expression and understanding of grief, both on individual and societal levels.

What is it like to savor life and build on a positive relationship with food? Explore how mindfulness practice and intuitive eating principles can bring awareness to factors that influence mind-body health and well-being. This experiential class covers topics ranging from inner and outer wisdom, self-assessment of hunger and satiety, critical thinking about food-related media messages, stress, and transitions as they influence eating habits. The art and science of mindful eating emphasizes translating theory and research into lifestyle practices.

We live in a brave new world where technology is integrated into almost every aspect of daily living, which has benefits and drawbacks. A creative approach to designing a mindful, healthy integration of technology with lifestyle can influence flourishing and well-being, as well as provide an avenue for creative self-expression, reflection, community sharing and collaboration. Explore how technology provides opportunities to optimize health, performance, relationships, and purpose. Review current research exploring how to effectively integrate social media, digital media, augmented and virtual reality, messaging, privacy, and personal/professional identity and branding in a way that supports overall life design and values. Design, experiment with, and implement a personalized plan for optimizing your day-to-day technology use with an intention for increasing connection, joy, and flourishing.

Learn about and practice laughter yoga, a unique and playful modality that integrates laughter exercises with yogic breathing (this practice is distinct from traditional movement-based yoga). Explore the growing field of research on laughter yoga and its positive effects on wellbeing and other health outcomes. Examine the various dimensions of laughter yoga as a form of fitness, mindfulness, and play. Use a variety of meditation exercises to leverage the power of performative, healing laughter and to cultivate embodied awareness, creativity, resilience, and joy.

This course will ground you in the knowledge, skills, and habits you need to identify and achieve your financial goals. We will infuse behavior science and psychology into our exploration of personal finance concepts (e.g., credit, debt, saving, and investing) to build your financial capability in the areas of managing money, planning ahead, making choices, and getting help. By the end of the quarter, you will have a personalized toolkit to create and refine actionable plans for increasing your financial well-being now and throughout your healthy, long life.

Presented by the Sexual Health Peer Resource Center (SHPRC) and the Weiland Health Initiative, this class is open to all interested in sex and sexual health and required of students planning to become counselors at the SHPRC. Course addresses sexual and reproductive anatomy, sexually transmitted infections, contraceptive methods, menstruation, pregnancy, abortion, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual assault and abuse, consent and communication, societal stigmas and pressure, kink, toys, and pleasure. Students are equipped to make responsible decisions about their own sexual interactions and to advise others appropriately. Course includes lecture series feupdateaturing guest experts, in-person instruction, and discussion. Discussion, role-play, and peer-education outreach project support application of knowledge and development of counseling skills.

Did you know that you have the right to sexual self-determination? In other words, each person is a sexual citizen with the right to choose their own sexual experience, including not engaging sexually, no matter their gender, race, color, class, age, ability, physical appearance, sexual orientation, past experiences, or other status. Developing our individual sexual citizenship has the potential to directly impact the prevalence of sexual violence on our campus. In this course, students will develop awareness of their own sexual citizenship by reading Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan's (2020) Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus. Critical reflections, collective discussions, and experiential activities will support students to attune to themselves and others. Students will design and implement their own campus community-based projects to advance a culture of sexual citizenship grounded in care, respect, and consent.

Translate theoretical knowledge and acquired skills into actionable wellness projects that enhance an aspect of wellness within the Stanford community. Students work in collaborative groups or individually under the mentorship of the course instructor(s) to design, deliver, and evaluate a wellness initiative at Stanford.

Exploration of a topic (to be determined) not covered by the standard curriculum but of interest to faculty and students in a particular quarter. May be repeated with change of content. For more information regarding specific course titles and topics, please refer to the notes of each course section.

This course is an interactive course focused on developing listening skills essential to health care providers. Integrating 'See One, Do One, Teach One' with practices from the arts and humanities, students will develop tools physicians find useful in daily practice including talking with patients and colleagues and interviewing skills. Students will complete the class with an enhanced sense of what it means to listen, the unique role that letters of lasting import play in the healing process, and ways in which both enhance one's daily and professional practice in the healing arts. Frish Brandt is a Letter Midwife working primarily in Palliative Care and hospice. Since 2015 she has written a wide range of letters with over 300 people.