Final Reception: TALENT SHOW

• Monday, December 9
• 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
• WCP Student Activity Center – Ballroom (WCP 2.410/2.412) 
• Winners of the Spring 2025 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
• We also have a RAFFLE and put together a slideshow of your photos from throughout the semester. 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, December 2 by 5:00 pm.
• We can’t wait to hear what you have planned! 

Continuing Student Applications

• For Spring 2025
• Application available online HERE
• We would love to see you again!

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 that we have reached the end of the semester, we all need to relieve 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, “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, click here 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!

Healthyhorns Resources:

Longhorn Wellness Center

• mindful UT is a resource for mindfulness-related opportunities and programs at UT Austin. mindful UT promotes student mental health through mindfulness-based classes, workshops and trainings.
• Mindful Moments: Integrating mindfulness into your day is a great way to build more mindful habits that support your life in college. Use any of these suggestions during different parts of your day depending on how much time you have, whether it’s 1, 5 or 10 minutes. These activities will be updated regularly.
• View a variety of mindfulness resources and ways to get involved.

CMHC Resources

• Self-Care: Practicing self-care can help you manage the ups and downs of college life. Self-care refers to activities and practices that can help you to reduce your stress and enhance your overall well-being: essentially, proactively taking care of yourself. Research shows that self-care helps to keep you healthy, helps you recharge and helps to improve your overall well-being.
  • • Self-care is more than an occasional treat, but a tool that incorporates practices and behaviors to 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 more.
    • There are lots of ways to practice self-care. What works for you may not work for someone else. The important thing is to find time to support your well-being. This could mean blocking off time on your calendar, finding small windows of time in your schedule or making self-care part of your daily routine. View some ideas for self-care.
• 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:
    • Student Services Building (SSB), 5th floor
      • Monday – Friday, 8 am – 4:30 pm
      • Check in at 5th floor CMHC reception desk.
    • William C. Powers, Jr. Student Activity Center (WCP), 2nd floor
      • Monday – Friday, 7 am – 8 pm
      • Saturday 10 am – 8 pm
      • Sunday 12 pm – 8 pm
      • Check-in is at the hospitality desk on the first floor.
    • McCombs Wellness Center (CBA, 3.204)
      • Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm
      • Check in at front desk to use mindfulness materials including RESPeRATE.
    • Nursing School (NUR), Room 5.10D
      • Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm
      • Check out equipment in NUR 5.196
    • 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.
• Healthyhorns Sleep offers a variety of resources, education and programs that help you explore your sleep habits, rest and napping.

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.