Mindfulness Meditation

This video resource is aimed at college students, particularly those from immigrant and first-generation backgrounds, who are experiencing stress/anxiety. The video will provide an introduction to mindfulness meditation, explaining what it is, its potential benefits, as well as how it can help manage stress/anxiety. It will focus on the fundamentals of mindfulness and how it is able to help with anxious feelings. The resource will include a brief, guided mindfulness meditation session, allowing students to experience the practice directly. This session will be short and accessible, giving students a simple and manageable introduction to meditation that is more appealing to people who are not already familiar with meditation practices. Counselors can use this resource as a part of a multicultural counseling approach. Many students face unique stressors due to academic pressures and cultural expectations, and mindfulness can be an effective way to mitigate anxiety related to those circumstances. By introducing students to mindfulness with the help of this resource, counselors could be able to offer help to students to better manage the stress they experience from daily life and their unique experiences. The content of this video is informed by peer-reviewed research, which shows that even sessions of just 5-12 minutes of mindfulness meditation can be effective at reducing the stress and anxiety of students. Based on these findings,  this resource emphasizes the importance of consistency over the length of sessions and encourages students to engage with meditation in a way that is sustainable and realistic.

Burgstahler, M. S., & Stenson, M. C. (2020). Effects of guided mindfulness meditation on anxiety

and stress in a pre-healthcare college student population: a pilot study. Journal of

American college health : J of ACH, 68(6), 666–672.

https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2019.1590371