Mindfulness Moments: Mr. Barikmo’s new seminar sessions aim to reduce stress, relax students

East Instructional Coach Kristoffer Barikmo started Mindfulness Moments — a mindful practice session created as an outlet to relieve stress for students — on Thursday, Nov. 7. 

To participate in Mindfulness Moments, students can pick up a seminar pass from outside Barikmo’s office in the library. 

Barikmo’s idea to start the sessions spurred from his own practice of working with student leaders over the summer through a program called Global Youth Leadership Institute. Within the program, Barikmo works as an Institute Coordinator, helping students and teachers across the country to promote stress relief and mindful meditation.

Through the students he was working with, Barikmo saw trends in the stress that students deal with and realized that simple practices such as breathing and meditation can serve as a helpful break.

Along with the leadership program in the summer, Barikmo’s personal practice comes from the Calm app. He has a reminder sent at 9:30 p.m. to begin a series of guided meditations, breathing exercises and reflections each day.  

“That’s really all mindfulness is about,” Barikmo said. “Being aware of how our body feels, what our mind is thinking and just being in the present moment — not thinking about what happened before, or what’s happening later, but to just be aware and present.”

After assessing how mindfulness practices impacted students from the Global Youth Leadership Institute, Barikmo realized the benefits this could have in the East community.

“These mindful moments allow students to give themselves permission to focus on themselves,” Barikmo said. “We all have so much going on — so much stress — that simple, five-minute practices do a lot to create balance.”

During the first two Mindfulness Moments sessions, Barikmo led the class using practices from the Calm app. He started with simple breathing exercises that don’t take much — other than being aware of your breath and what it is doing to your body. 

After the students became attentive to their breath, they did what Barikmo calls a body scan. The function of this practice is to be aware of sensation in the body, such as how your feet feel on the floor or your hands next to your leg.

“We will go to the doctor if our arm’s broken or if we have an infection — but we have to go somewhere to get that help,” Barikmo said. “With mindfulness, it allows us to say we can do this ourselves and fix our brain and help understand how we can bring our brain into focus, and that’s something that can help everybody.”

Along with running Mindful Moments, Barikmo is working closely and communicating with East’s Student Services to seek out people in need of stress relief or who are simply interested in doing something good for themselves.

East social workers Emily MacNaughton and Elizabeth Kennedy are working with Barikmo to provide an opportunity for students in need of an outlet for managing stress, anxiety, depression or other seasons like finals that are hard to manage. MacNaughton and Kennedy’s jobs, in this regard, are to direct students towards practices like Mindfulness Moments.

After MacNaughton attended the second Mindfulness Moments session on Nov. 14, her main takeaway from Barikmo’s instruction was the reinforcement that mindfulness is not so complicated. 

“One of the things that we talked about today specifically was that being mindful and finding peace is not meant to be this super quiet, still, nobody moves type of thing,” MacNaughton said. “It’s meant to be able to be done anywhere in the midst of everything going on.” 

With students running down the halls outside of the dance studio where Mindfulness Moments is held and the sound of feet stomping toward the weights room, MacNaughton found the location to be a metaphor for what they were learning in the class.

“Real life says that lots of things are going to be happening around you all the time, and you can’t expect it to be completely seamless 24/7,” MacNaughton said. “That’s not what mindfulness is.”

Along with reinforcing the use of mindfulness in real-life situations, MacNaughton sees Mindfulness Moments as an opportunity for students to expand their toolkit of coping mechanisms. 

“Because mental health is a key factor to success as you’re sitting in class doing math, journalism, english and everything else, you can’t fully approach these activities if you’re stressed or panicking,” MacNaughton said. “If we’re working on doing mental health and mindfulness training to help students reach that point of peace and contentedness, then it’s a win-win for everybody.”

Sophomore Vivian Riehl finds Mindfulness Moments as a time during the school day to refocus and reestablish her goals for the week. Riehl attended the two sessions of Mindfulness Moments that have been held and sees it as a vital aspect of East that should have been implemented a long time ago. 

With club and school volleyball, Riehl finds it hard to find time to just breath. 

“I know that I’m not the only one at East who’s stressed — I know we all are,” Riehl said. “Having this opportunity during the day to come to Mindfulness Moments, sit down, be peaceful and breathe is really important.”

MacNaughton, Kennedy and Barikmo hope that Mindfulness Moments will continue to grow and gain members.

Barikmo plans to keep the announcement about Mindfulness Moments on the forefront by sending out emails asking teachers to help facilitate conversation along with keeping in touch with Student Services. 

“It’s really, really helpful for students and it’s so simple,” MacNaughton said. “It’s just a moment once a week that you can get some calm and some peace.”