Dear Anita

Thank you so much for your advice that helps me improve myself each day.  I just started the first day back at Stockton University and I am enjoying it. Looking at the sun shining through the trees that lined the corners of the sidewalk paths that I was walking on to the buildings is very uplifting. I also found the shrubs that had originally been green when I was on campus for the fall semester are now having vibrant red splashes on the shrub branches and it is beautiful. In the early hours, the campus is quiet and listening to the birds is relaxing. I am establishing a daily meditation practice to help me reduce my anxiety and make it easier to appreciate the little things in life. Even though I still have anxiety and sometimes I feel my heart race, I find with meditation practice I feel more energized and can re-center myself when I start to feel stressed. I am looking forward to learning more about meditation from the Meditation class that I am taking and since I get to meditate in class, I hope that the meditation techniques I learn help me de-stress when I am working with more challenging classes like Organic Chemistry. I am thinking of working on building a yoga practice as well, but I am not sure how to approach creating yoga workout routines for myself. I think that yoga helps me relieve tension because there are times when I feel really anxious and I like to be active since exercise helps me shift focus to  the workouts or poses and work on calming my mind. I hope that with a steady yoga practice I can stop the intense workouts that I do that leave me feeling quite sore in my muscles and just enjoy the flow of yoga poses that do not cause so much strain on my body. My Meditation class covers Qi Gong as a technique to help circulate energy flow but that is in later chapters. Currently I am learning how to ground myself and let the energy flow throughout my body by imagining myself as a tree being rooted to the earth and receiving the Earth’s energy as well as imagining the sun’s rays shining through the branches that are my arms. I find this grounding technique quite helpful because there are times when I feel shaky with anxiety and imagining myself as a tree being rooted and absorbing positive energy from the sun helps. I have the Meditation class Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have Organic Chemistry and Genetics so I think that the meditation class helps me keep my stress levels more balanced. There are journal reflections for the Meditation class that ask students about their feelings after the meditation or pose questions that they answer about a meditation technique or ask students to write a short poem that can serve as a mantra for meditation. I like the journal prompts that ask about writing a poem as a mantra for meditation best because it makes me think about what I want to write to help me de-stress when I feel anxious and it helps me tap into my creative self. I feel like I am too focused on parts of my body like my chest and my hips because I worry about them the most and meditation helps me refocus my awareness on acknowledging my feelings and the world around me. I hope to work on yoga as well because instead of trying intense and straining workouts because I feel like I need to work on a specific shape for parts of my body, yoga can help me work on seeing my body as a whole and achieve balance and flexibility with the poses. If you  have any advice on how to build a yoga routine with poses that help with the whole body, I hope for some advice.