As a current freshman, I decided to enroll in a mindfulness TA training program offered by the Stony Brook University School of Medicine, taught by Rabbi Adam Stein. I knew that despite Stony Brook being comparatively easier than high school, it is by no means a walk in the park and that there will be challenges and pitfalls along the way.

I truly believe in the power of mindfulness — that is, the ability to be self-aware and face adversity head-on without becoming extremely overwhelmed. In other words, the goal of this program is to learn how to simply live in the moment and become capable of teaching the techniques to others.

When I first started learning the seven steps in this mindfulness class, the steps were taken from the Kabbalah, a school of thought in Judaism. While I'm not Jewish, I do believe in the importance of having an open mind such that you're willing to adapt your own beliefs and incorporate any benefits other cultures offer. I have studied mindfulness in the past, in which my parents have taught me the Hindu way of meditating and clearing your mind whilst internally fixating upon a certain deity.

To be honest, learning how to understand how the Kabbalah teaches meditation was one of the hardest spiritual tasks I have undertaken — it required me to adapt my own style of meditation to focus on visual imagery, which is the complete opposite of what I was taught. In Hinduism, meditating slowly and controlling your breathing while fixating on a deity helped clear your mind, whereas, in Judaism, you embrace the mental imagery and help use it to understand how everything is separate, yet connected.

The first technique involved sitting in the morning and visualizing how the universe was propelled to exist by a Godly force that consequently propels everything else to exist, simply unto itself. I learned that everything in the universe can simultaneously be separate, such as a chair and myself being two separate things, but I also learned to embrace the fact that as we all came from the same void of nothingness, the chair and myself are still connected, as with myself to the rest of the universe around me.

For some reason, I found that example of doublethink to be very calming, and my worries gently washed away. Other techniques I learned included simply having faith that circumstances happen for a reason and that everything will resolve itself, as God is the definition of good, and since everything that happens is an act of God, they must all be good. I learned that there really is no future and that I shouldn't worry about something that hasn't happened yet and waste my cognitive processes on it.

I eventually got better and became confident in my own ability to teach the techniques I have learned to other people. In fact, as I want to become a TA in the class, my objective is to teach them to several people and have them understand everything. I truly wish for more people to become involved in mindfulness — it is truly a spiritual awakening and helped me embrace not only the techniques I learned but my own religious beliefs. Even if you aren't religious, you can adapt the procedure to a more secular theme. I thank the class and the instructor for opening my mind and helping me become more capable of living in the moment.