Coming Up in ELC:

Final Reception: TALENT SHOW

• Friday, December 1
• 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
• Texas Union – Santa Rita Suite (UNB 3.502)
• Winners of the Spring 2024 scholarships will be announced!
• Dinner will be served.
• Each semester, our final reception features a talent show.
• Past shows have included:
  • • songs- Karaoke style or musical instruments! 
    • dances
    • martial arts demonstrations
    • poems in many languages
    • international fashion shows
• Don’t feel shy! Grab your friends and classmates to help you out!
• We will also put together a slide show of photos from throughout the spring. Please share your pictures here to add them to the show!
• When you’ve decided what you’ll perform, send Jack an email so that we can add you to the program and coordinate your audio and video needs.
• The deadline to let Jack know if you will be performing is Monday, November 27 by 5:00 pm.
• We can’t wait to hear what you have planned! 

Continuing Student Applications

• For Spring 2024
• Application available online HERE
• We would love to see you again!

Upcoming Social Events:

Talk Time

• Practice your English conversation skills with native English speakers!
• Tuesday, November 7
• 4:30 – 5:30 pm
• MEZ 1.122

Bingo Social

• Join your friends in the ELC to play this fun and traditional American party game!
• Thursday, November 9
• 4:30 – 5:30 pm
• CBA 3.304, Events Room by the Atrium

Stress Relief:

Stress is our body’s reaction to a challenging situation. Stress can be helpful in the short term. It can help us meet a deadline or avoid danger. As humans, we all experience this occasionally. But, longterm stress can get in the way of us meeting our goals and can even contribute to physical or mental health problems.

Now as we are approaching the end of the semester, we are all trying to manage our stress and anxiety. Here are some helpful ways manage it.

 

Yoga:

“Yoga is a discipline with spiritual origins that has motivated many in the United States to attend to their mental and physical health, often as part of a larger motivation to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Yoga [can be] an inclusive and individualized practice of attunement of the mind with the body in a way that fosters health and wellness. The science behind cognitive behavioral therapy, the relaxation response, meditation, exercises, etc., all support yoga practices that are part of a more than 2,000-year-old wisdom tradition.” – Dr. Darshan Shah and Dr. David Ring. Read more about “Health Benefits of Yoga.”

Yoga with Adriene

• Adriene’s mission is “to connect as many people as possible through high-quality free yoga videos.”
• Her videos are “designed to give you the tools to build a happy, healthy at-home yoga practice.”
• She encourages her students to “do your best, be authentic, and find what feels good.”
• It can be healing to acknowledge whatever emotion and feeling we are having. The videos below are a good example of that.

Yoga For Vulnerability:

Yoga for Anxiety and Stress:

Yoga for When You’re Angry:

Yoga for Bedtime:

Longhorn Yoga

• This UT student organization is “dedicated to promoting mindfulness and well-being through weekly yoga sessions!”
• The student organization describes their yoga sessions as perfect for both beginners and experienced yogis.
• This group has a few extra mats available, but they encourage you to bring a mat if you already have one.
• They do not charge any dues or fees. “There is no required commitment – simply join whenever you like!”
• They hold free yoga classes every week during the Fall and Spring semesters. Sign up for their weekly newsletter to stay updated.

Mindfulness & Meditation:

3-Minute Body Scan to Cultivate Mindfulness

• You can do anything for 3 minutes, right? I like to start small with anything. If I bite off more than I can chew, sometimes I’ll become disheartened and give up. But 3 minutes is nothing, right?! That’s about how long you spend brushing your teeth!
• So spend 3 minutes on yourself, just 3 minutes!
• If you liked that, even a little bit, go to this website to find out more about Mindfulness!
• I’ll even tell you the biggest secret! It’s not about emptying your mind! Not at all. It’s about paying attention to the present!

CMHC Resources

• Managing Stress
  • Learn about sources of stress and tips for managing them. “The key to stress reduction is identifying strategies that work for you. As you begin to understand more about how stress affects you, you will develop your own ideas to help relieve tension.”
• Mindfulness and Stress Reduction Activities
  • “Use this guide to find a list of mindfulness and stress reduction activities you can do at home to help manage your emotional well-being. Please note that some of these techniques may work better for you than others and that’s okay. Explore and find what mindfulness and relaxation techniques work best for you.”
• Self Care Activities
  • “Self-care is more than an occasional treat, but a way of living each day that incorporates practices and behaviors that help you feel refreshed, re-energized, and rested. Self-care helps you deal with the daily stresses in your life—from academic pressures, to interpersonal relationships, to future plans, and others. Everyone deals with stress differently, and everyone’s preference for practicing self-care is different as well.”

MindBody Labs

• “MindBody Labs are self-paced environments designed to help UT students explore resources for improving their emotional and physical health. The labs currently feature audio and video instruction on a variety of topics. Most material is experiential, enabling students to follow along and practice skills as they are being discussed.”
• MindBody Labs currently contain information and guided exercises on: breathing exercises, muscle relaxation, meditation, relaxation imagery/relaxation sounds, guided imagery, health and well being, sleep issues, food and eating issues.
• They also offer these tools for biofeedback: RESPeRATE, and Galvanic Skin Resistance 2 (GSR2) – only at the SSB location.
  • According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Biofeedback is a mind-body therapy that can improve physical and mental health. During a biofeedback session, a practitioner will use painless sensors to measure certain bodily functions. You will see the results on a screen, then test ways to change the results. With practice, you will be able to make adjustments without the equipment.”
• Campus Locations:
  • McCombs Wellness Center (CBA 3.204)
    • Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm
    • Check in at front desk to use mindfulness materials including RESPeRATE.
  • Student Services Building (SSB), 5th floor
    • Monday – Friday, 8 am – 4:30 pm
    • Check in at reception desk
  • Nursing School (NUR), Room 5.10D
    • Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm
    • Check out equipment in NUR 5.196
  • William C. Powers, Jr. Student Activity Center (WCP), 2nd floor
    • Monday – Friday, 7 am – 8 pm, Saturday, 10 am – 8 pm, and Sunday, 12 pm – 8 pm
    • Check-in is at the hospitality desk on the first floor.
• You can try a few guided exercises online from your home. Exercises include deep breathing, muscle relaxation, meditations, and more!

Sleep:

• Many of us experience trouble sleeping.
• Try these Healthy Sleep Tips for a good night’s rest.
• Learn about sleep hygiene and many other sleep related topics online.

University Health Services Sleep Resources

• UHS website has a section devoted to help you understand and improve your sleep. “Getting an average of eight hours of quality sleep per night is an important part of overall health and academic success. The benefits of sufficient sleep are numerous, especially for students, as sleep is essential for increased memory consolidation, learning, decision making and critical thinking. Studies show that students who receive seven to nine hours of sleep had higher grade point averages than students who didn’t get seven to nine hours of sleep regularly (Yu & Arendt, 2017).”
• Check out these resources:
  • Get a free sleep kit!
  • Sleep benefits & myths
  • Take a sleep assessment
  • Track your sleep by using a sleep diary
  • Learn how to set up your room for success
  • Find apps to help you sleep
  • Fill out a sleep strategies worksheet
  • Find out about the benefits of napping and good napping spots on campus!

The Study Cycle:

• Study Smart, Not Hard
• “Spend two to three hours studying outside of class for every hour in class. Listen to the lectures and read the texts, but balance those activities by finding ways to write, speak about, and graph or draw the content you are learning.”
• Check out UT’s Sanger Learning Center’s study strategies page.