Moments of serenity. Students sit cross-legged, breathing in and out, reflecting on the twists and turns of college life.

MindfulNU offers spaces like that for Northwestern students. The evidence-based program, which teaches techniques of meditation and mindfulness, is set to launch its six-week winter cohort Wednesday. The launch of the new cohort will mark the first anniversary of the founding of MindfulNU, developed by Associate Director for Religious & Spiritual Life Eric Budzynski and Cormac Callanan (SESP ’23). 

This quarterly cohort will include student facilitators to help teach the curriculum. SESP junior Sai Thirunagari, a student facilitator who completed the program last spring, said he looks forward to bringing his experience to the new cohort.

“I learned a variety of mindfulness practices, based on spiritual philosophies of mindfulness, different attitudes for how to approach a meditation, different attitudes for how to approach thoughts and feelings that come about in my daily life,” Thirunagari said. “It’s not about necessarily combating any emotions or experiences that come through, but learning how to embrace and welcome them.”

The curriculum is based on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a standard criterion for meditation practice which teaches students to embrace present emotions and thoughts that arise. Budzynski said the program will employ many of these practices, including sitting, walking, loving-kindness meditation, writing and group sharing.

Weinberg junior Carter Shannon, who will be joining the cohort, said he sees the intensive program as a venue to practice mindfulness and consistently meditate. He said he finds meditation hard to complete on his own time.

“I’ve been going to drop in, getting more into it, seeing the merit of meditation and feeling a lot more relaxed,” Shannon said. “I think knowing more about meditation and learning how to be more consistent will also help me do it more on my own, which I find is my biggest, biggest pitfall.”

Communication sophomore Maggie Munday Odom, the other student facilitator of this winter’s MindfulNU cohort, has participated in many modes of meditation on campus, including Friday drop-in meditation at Parkes Hall. She completed last year’s MindfulNU winter cohort, in which she learned different practices of meditation.

But, the meditation community that she gained from the experience was what brought her back.

“Anyone can benefit from an intentional time for stillness and peace in the middle of collegiate chaos,” she said. “One of the biggest lights in this dark season that meditation has given me is friendship or community of meditation.”

She said she welcomes students to explore any meditation space on campus as a sign of self-compassion while living in the present moment.

Budzynski said a key goal of the six-week intensive program is to leave students with the skill to make a lifelong practice of meditation.

“We try to teach students that there’s an art to meditation, and that maybe by the end of the six- week program, they’ll have a sense of how meditation can first be a practice in their lives and have a sense of integration of this practice,” he said.

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