Members of the Texas Tech Meditation Club get comfortable before their guided session on Feb. 18.
Every other Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., the Texas Tech Meditation Club conducts guided sessions in the Escondido Theater located within the Student Union Building on campus. The group’s regularity with their schedule is in contrast to the subject matter of each session, which all vary substantially.
While free yoga sessions have been available at the Robert H. Ewalt Student Recreation Center for some time, similar assemblies for meditation were not available until the inception of the Tech Meditation Club in fall 2019. Bailie Horton, a senior psychology major from Dallas, said the club was formed to underscore the benefits of having meditative study freely available to anyone interested.
Meditation through music, visual meditation and a variant of yoga nidra are just a few of the guided practices convened through Tech Meditation’s sessions, Horton, president of Tech Meditation, said. Yoga nidra, a form of meditation deriving from traditional Indian deep relaxation practice, allows practitioners to employ unique psychological techniques aimed at self-inquiry.
“The idea behind (the club) was just to offer free meditation classes to people on campus,” she said. “And they’re available to people who aren’t a Texas Tech student as well.”
While the practices of yoga and meditation are closely associated together, there was an availability discrepancy between the two on Tech’s campus, Horton said. Tech Meditation was conceived as a way to make additional resources for self-care easily obtainable to the public.
Non-traditional forms of meditation have become a defining characteristic of the club, Joseph Martis – a first-year master’s student in experimental psychology from El Paso – said. Martis, one of the club’s officers, said practitioners can expect a diverse array of meditative forms through Tech Meditation.
Tech Meditation Club members share insights with one another during their guided meditation session in the Escondido Theater of the SUB.
“It’s different every week,” he said. “Even if it’s not your thing, we still encourage people to come back some other time until they find something that resonates with them.”
When it comes to the practice of inner observation, there is no right or wrong, Elena Sanchez-Freeman, safety and wellness program manager for Risk Intervention & Safety Education office at Tech, said. On Feb. 18, Sanchez-Freeman lead the club in a session focused on visual meditation.
One can still freely observe in both conscious and unconscious realms of thought, she said. Many meditative schools of thought predicate themselves on observing individual moments in a way that reinforces knowledge that encapsulates one’s very existence.
Some forms of meditation can take the form of acknowledging which activities present some form of tangible positivity, Sanchez-Freeman said. For her, cooking is an example of a meditative act in which she can perceive her true thoughts and intentions.
“There is no right or wrong in where you want to bring your attention or your focus,” she said. “So that’s the joy and the playfulness of it, is that you get to decide where you want your focus and your intention to be.”
Nearly all meditation sessions take place in the Escondido Theater in the SUB basement at 7:30 every other Tuesday during the semester.
Scientific inquiries have proven that meditative practices offer tangible utility and physical virtues for its practitioners. In May 2010, the Office of the Army Surgeon General released a study which found that yoga nidra meditation was a suitable complementary alternative medicine for chronic pain for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yoga nidra has been utilized by Army medical officials to hinder symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers since 2006, according to The Washington Post. Additionally, a study by The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine showed that regular Yoga nidra meditation improved heart rate variability and increased the release of dopamine in the brains of test subjects.
“(Meditation) can be for everyone and anyone,” Sanchez-Freeman said. “If you’re willing to be a teacher and a student, then you can take something away from this experience. I think that’s the beauty of it, because we’re all here to learn from each other.”
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