The Highline Counseling Center invites community members to attend their weekly mindfulness sessions on Zoom every Tuesday night from 7 to 7:30 p.m. this quarter. 

Every week, a member of the counseling faculty guides meeting attendees though meditations, readings, breathing techniques, and more to help unwind the feelings of anxiety and depression that affect so many of us. 

Many may be struggling to find ways to keep up with their education when their minds are full of unrest, and this is especially true for people doing remote learning during the pandemic. The counseling center faculty wants to help them find some peace of mind through mindfulness.

“Mindfulness appeals to me because it is a way of slowing down, noticing what is going on, and considering my options to respond, including not responding,” said Highline counselor Dr. Gloria Koepping. “It doesn’t have the stigma associated with it that mental health interventions sometimes do. It helps everyone.”

“[Mindfulness] is something that can enhance your life as well as your performance in school or work,” Dr. Koepping said. “It is something easy and free you can do to manage your anxiety and depression.”

There is a focus during these sessions on “unlocking from your thoughts” in order to help people understand these difficult feelings from an objective point of view. 

For example, during the session on Feb. 9, Dr. Koepping talked Zoom attendees through a guided meditation using a snowglobe for imagery, inspired by the upcoming weather forecast.

The basic idea of this meditation was to look at your own thoughts as if they were the snowflakes in a snowglobe. Each snowflake represents a passing thought you might have; assignments you’re working on, chores you need to do, the movie you watched last night– whatever crosses your mind. 

“Mindfulness is really the nonjudgmental, noticing of what you are feeling, thinking, and taking in through your senses,” Dr. Koepping said.

Through this exercise, she had attendees practice focusing on observing their thoughts from an outside perspective as a way to separate them, in order to pay attention instead to the sensation of breathing and relax the mind.

After the snowglobe meditation, Dr. Koepping moved on to a short reading from the book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Gumbs. The reading was a peaceful trip away from the present and offered perspective on the stressful confines of daily life; Gumbs writes about “how strong we grow sometimes swimming upstream” and how a person might find a way to “live free in an un-free space.”

The final mindfulness exercise was inspired by the Milky Way, asking attendees to close their eyes and think of the night sky above them, far enough away from Seattle’s light pollution that the faint band of our very own galaxy is visible to the naked eye, stretching across the sky. This was a way to help you put your life into perspective; to consider the large vastness of the universe and what lies beyond, and to find peace in your place here within those infinite reaches.

The counseling center sends out weekly emails that include a link to the Zoom meeting room. For anyone who is interested in attending the meetings but has not received a link, the counseling center is available to contact though their contact page on Highline’s website for questions and counseling appointments at https://counseling.highline.edu/contact-us/ .

For Highline community members who are interested in mindfulness and meditation practice outside of the weekly sessions, Dr. Koepping said that she recommends they can “Google mindfulness, check out online resources, get a book from Amazon (used are fine and more affordable), take a yoga class, or consult with one of the counselors for specific recommendations.”

The counseling center plans to continue “offering these evening programs into the near future, in the Spring and Fall Quarters,” said Dr. Koepping. “I am still learning about mindfulness too, so it is something we can all do together.”