AUTHOR: Will '18Throughout my growing up, whenever I got too anxious for my mother to handle she would storm out of the room and shout “just go meditate!” in a feeble attempt to calm me down. As one might expect, this didn’t make me very eager to look into the transformative effects the practice could have on my life.
I was certainly not unique in being opposed to – and intimidated by – the concept of setting time aside to sit and do nothing but pay attention to my breath every day. With anxiety being the primary driving force behind productivity in high school, it’s easy for the brain to rationalize that meditation is a “waste of time” and that we have “better stuff to do.” But – if you are someone who spends a good chunk of time every day playing video games or scrolling through Instagram, what makes meditation any more unproductive? Odds are, your resistance to meditation is discomfort disguised as practicality. A meditation session can be however long you want it to be. It can be as short as one minute (during the minute of silence) or as long as ten months (check this out). The most common practice, and easiest to start off with, is just sitting silently and paying full attention to your breath. I find that it helps to mentally say “bu” on the inhale, and “dah” on the exhale to draw my attention in more fully. This is so that my inner voice has less room to jump in and assault me with seemingly urgent thoughts. The primary purpose of meditation is to give us a pause from our neurotic thinking patterns and relax into the simple joy of being present and alive. Once we focus our consciousness on our breath rather than our thoughts, we make room for peace and warmth to come in. As soon as you get comfortable and silent before meditating, your neurotic inner voice will start generating all kinds of thoughts to fight against your practice. “I’m so uncomfortable… this isn’t doing anything… I don’t see any thoughts in here… my time would be much better spent doing my math recycle… I’ll just meditate later.” It can be extremely challenging not to act on these thoughts at first – just know that they are not you. You are the one who observes these thoughts passing before you. You are the silent and knowing awareness of the thoughts who has the ability to choose whether or not to associate with them. You may be thinking, “What do you mean? How can there be a distinction between me and my thoughts? There’s no one but me in here…” That is your internal voice – and if you pay too much attention to it you lose your awareness of who you are. Your being aware is not contingent on the existence of these thoughts. The thought of awareness without these thoughts may be scary, but it is indescribably liberating. Just think: when you are skiing or participating in some sort of fast-paced activity where there is no time for abstract thinking, it is pure bliss and flow. These activities draw you out of your patterns of thoughts and mental abstraction and force you into the reality of the present moment with only awareness. Just imagine if you could live your life with that much presence! If you really watch what your internal voice has to say about the world, you’ll notice that it constantly feels vulnerable and threatened, and therefore lives in a state of fear and want – unless it feels good about itself based on external circumstances. Just think about it – that needy voice has led you around your whole life! What would it be like to be conscious apart from that voice’s demands? Have the courage to just be in your body and bypass your brain. Try to feel what it feels like to be alive and relax into that feeling. The feeling of being you and not your thoughts. Relax into the calming rhythm of your breath. That is the purpose of meditation – to separate us from our panicked brains that seem to have problems with everything, and instead relax into our true being. Our true being accepts all – and therefore has no problems. It helps us see that life is not as complex and cruel as our brains make it out to be. If you are willing to explore this by starting a daily practice, I recommend meditating for five minutes in the morning or evening, and slowly expanding that time as you become more comfortable with longer sits. There is so much more to being alive than pursuing the needs of our neurotic thought patterns. Mentally understanding this does not reveal the truth of it, you have to feel the beauty and warmth in consciousness. Have the courage to experience the joy of being for yourself. Best wishes, Will P.S. If you’d like more resources to delve deeper into becoming more conscious and present, I’ve found that the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is an amazing resource. Additionally, the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland holds a free teen meditation event every Wednesday at 7pm titled Teen Sangha. Feel free to email me if you have any questions, want book recommendations, want to carpool to EBMC on Wednesdays, or just want to talk!
0 Comments
AUTHOR: Margot B ('18)
BONUS: Nighttime snacks to help you sleep: Yogurt Banana Whole-grain, low-sugar cereal Tea Emergen-zzzz drink packets: they are infused with melatonin and will make you sleep through the whole night! Herbal, non-caffeinated tea AUTHOR: Ronan W 18'Oftentimes, it feels as if androgyny is an impossible goal. How can i fit right on that line between the binary genders? How can I look like neither one nor the other? It seems impossible, but in reality, it is way more attainable than you think.
For starters, there’s no one way to look androgynous. You can have curves or a beard and still be andro. No one body type or sense of style is the “epitome of androgyny”, even though it may seem that way. Also, androgyny does not necessarily mean masculine.You can still be andro and wear skirts, dresses, florals, makeup and other traditionally feminine things. No style or object inherently has a gender, either, even though society tells us that “makeup is for women” and “graphic tees are for men” and other such nonsense. But we understand that trying to take certain aspects from society’s definitions of femininity and masculinity can help to alleviate some dysphoria or unhappiness with your body and/or your identity. So below, we’ll provide some tips to help you feel more comfortable and more yourself.
AUTHOR: Hilary R ('19)
Quick activities to do when taking a break from homework. We’ve all been there; struggling to finish the last pages of the math homework or making america reading or cramming our outline for our shakespeare paper. Our brain is slowly shutting down but we tell ourselves to stick with it because we dread the possibility of going to bed later than what we promised ourselves we would earlier. Take a breath and realize, you need to take a break. Breaks are necessary and critical to staying focused and engaged in your work. You should also explore the various distraction free apps that are on every Urban students computer. Here are some activities that you should and should not do when you’re struggling to recalibrate your brain during homework. 1. Have a dance party in your room! This is super easy. Get up from your chair, play a song or two that you can dance around your room to. You could even create a playlist (or follow one on HIPEs’ spotify) that includes all of your fave music that you know will get you out of your chair and onto the dancefloor in your room. If you have a playlist, if you put it on shuffle, anytime you take a break you will listen to a new song so that you don’t get bored with your personal dance party. 2. Get a snack! Even just the process of getting up and walking to the kitchen and back to your study spot is enough time for your brain to calibrate and reboot itself so that you can finish your study session 3. Stretch! So maybe you aren’t in the mood to blast beyonce in the space that you are studying or aren’t able to. Take 2-3 min to just stretch. This will get the blood flowing throughout your body again if you have been sitting for a long time. THINGS TO AVOID DOING: 1. Eat Junk Food When you go for a snack, try to go for something that will keep your energy up instead of giving you a sugar high. The high levels of sugar or caffeine will cause your system to crash throughout your study session. 2. Staying in front of a screen Try to distance yourself from technology when taking your break because the glare from the screen could make it difficult to break away from the cyber world and get back to your work. We hope these tips help you during a future study sesh! ~ HIPE <3 AUTHOR:Clara M ('18)
Finals week is one of the most stressful times of the term. Late-nights spent studying, frantic essay writing, and the complaints emanating from the old library come together to create palpable stress. Although you can never completely get rid of pre-finals anxiety below are some HIPE-approved survival tips to try and reduce aforementioned stress:
Good luck, and go blues, <3 <3 <3 HIPE AUTHOR:Lily N ('18)
It’s four o’clock, and your tummy is grumbling. You want a snack so badly, but you never know what to make because it’s close enough to dinner time that you don’t want to ruin your appetite. You also take so long to decide on a snack, that by the time you’ve actually made one, you’ve already wasted precious minutes of time you could have been spending on your Spanish homework. This is the precise moment when you need a healthy snack from Trader Joe’s to keep your brain cranking. I am OBSESSED with Trader Joe’s bountiful snack collection, so I wanted to share some of my favorites with you. As a cross country runner, I eat about seven meals a day. Well, honestly they’re not all really meals, they’re just larger snacks that keep me running (literally and metaphorically) throughout the day. My vegan diet adds an additional challenge. Therefore, this post will include snack ideas for people with diet restrictions, including gluten, dairy, soy, and nuts. I have divided the snacks into categories based on mood-influenced cravings in order to make the decision a little easier for you. Just Hungry With Moderate Energy Levels
Exhausted And Sad About Something
1. Expectation: You have to have a date. Reality: Plenty of people go alone or with friends. You will still have great time! 2. Expectation: You have to hook up with your date. Reality: Hooking up is not a given. Make sure to communicate well with your date so that if you hook up it is consensual. 3. Expectation: you are going to get faded with all of your friends before. Reality: Breathalyzers work. Every one who attends prom is breathalyzed. Getting caught drunk at an all school event has serious consequences. Is it really worth it? 4. Expectation: Boys have to (prom)pose. Reality: At urban there aren’t any gender expectations about who asks who. It’s very common for girls to ask. 5. Expectation: Your (prom)posal has to be epic. Reality: Although it’s good to ask in person, you don’t have to make a big show of asking someone to prom. 6. Expectation: Your date will pay for your prom ticket. Reality: Tickets are expensive so expect to pay for your own ticket unless your date offers. 7. Expectation: You are going to look AMAZING in all the prom photos. Reality: Between amateur parent photographers at pre prom and very candid dancing photos at prom, you might look sub par in the photos uploaded to Facebook. 8. Expectation: Prom is the most important night of your life. Reality: At urban there are FOUR proms that you can attend. So if you don’t have any other worthwhile nights in your life, it will only be one of four of the most important nights of your life…and if it sucks at least you will have a funny story to tell your kids. 9. Expectation: Everyone rents a limousine. Reality: I got driven to prom my freshman and sophomore year by my friend’s parents. Typically the whole limo and party bus thing is a junior and senior year tradition, but still by no means an expectation. 10. Expectation: Everyone has sex on prom night. Reality: Although prom night sex is promoted by movies like American Pie, this expectation is a MYTH. Having sex on prom night is by no means the norm. Just have fun with your friends and party! If you do happen to have sex, do it responsibly (sophomore year health class everyone) <3 <3 <3 ;) - Hipe AUTHOR: Marisa ’15
Eleven Wesleyan students were sickened this Sunday by “a mixture of several kinds of designer drug chemicals,” Middletown police Chief William McKenna said. All 11 were hospitalized; two are still being treated at Hartford Hospital. McKenna said that because the Molly that students took was a mixture of drugs, it made “the health risks unpredictable and treatment to combat the effects complex and problematic.” Here is an article with more information on what has happened at Wesleyan. Why did this happen if Molly is supposed to be safe? How is it different than ecstasy? The most obvious difference between molly and ecstasy is the two is their physical form: Molly is a white powder or crystal–like substance and ecstasy is used to describe the pill or capsule form of MDMA. Molly is often considered the purer form of MDMA. That is, many users believe that molly contains more MDMA and less filler compared to ecstasy pills. Comparing the two forms of MDMA, however, is very difficult because there are no regulations or quality control over the actual content in these illegal substances. Molly has developed a reputation as being of higher quality and more costly than ecstasy pills — though this is not necessarily a deserved reputation! Molly can be also be cut with fillers or other potential drugs at any time in the process since it is in a powder form. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, only 13% of Molly contains any MDMA whatsoever. The website Ecstasy Data shows this in a scarily concrete way. The website is run by an independent laboratory pill testing program run by Erowid Center. Here, you can see just how very often sold ecstasy is actually made up of completely different substances, such as 100% meth. AUTHOR: Lena (15')
Disclaimer: This piece reflects the opinion of the author and may not be in line with your own viewpoints. Senate Bill No. 967! As you have all probably heard, a new senate bill was passed that put in place the slogan: “Yes means Yes.” Although we might say “well of course yes means yes,” the previous law stated that “no meant no.” The difference in wording may seem insignificant but in fact this change makes a huge difference. Now verbal affirmative consent is required when engaging in sexual action. This little change makes quite an impact on many men and women all over the country because silence is no longer an acceptable form of consent. This bill is especially impactful in the lives of college students because 1 in 5 women will be raped or sexually abused in college, and men too are often taken advantage of or sexually abused as well. When it comes to the legal aspects of the cases in which a victim accuses another of sexual assault or rape, a largely used response is “but with your body you were saying yes” or “but you never said no…” This new bill will clear up the confusion in these cases, which will protect many victims in college and in daily life as well. In addition to initial verbal consent, affirmative consent is required every time you move on or “ advance” to another sexual act. This bill helps make it easier to self advocate because the silence that one might be stuck in can no longer count as “okay, go ahead.” Due to pressure or fear some people can respond to discomfort by not being responsive, but this bill says that that is no longer an acceptable form of consent. Sex is supposed to be a positive experience for whoever is involved, and this new senate bill can maintain the security of your own boundaries or desires. You always have the right to say no, however now you also have the right not to say yes. |
AuthorDylan M Archives
December 2023
Categories |