Mindfulness Summit

The Mindfulness Summit comes to the Blanton Museum of Art on Saturday, November 7, from 11 AM to 2 PM. The main feature this year is Finding Our Whimsy, and the morning is built around guided activities, reflection, and a community picnic and lunch. You don't need any prior experience to join in.

The summit is part of mindful UT, a UT Austin resource that promotes student mental health through mindfulness-based classes, workshops, and trainings. To set the stage, the program quotes Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, who describes mindfulness as "paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally."

There's a bit of history behind that. Mindfulness and meditation draw on many religious and cultural traditions, and in the 1960s, Buddhist mindfulness practices were adapted by U.S. practitioners into psychological interventions to enhance well-being. Yoga, a related practice, developed in the South Asian subcontinent 2,500 to 5,000 years ago and arrived in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At UT Austin, mindfulness programming has run for decades through the Counseling and Mental Health Center, University Health Services, the Integrated Health Program, and faculty across various colleges.

The summit itself is run by the Longhorn Wellness Center, along with the College of Liberal Arts Student Well-Being Center and the Blanton Museum of Art. It runs from 11 AM to 2 PM on Saturday, November 7, at the Blanton.