Students at the Dean's Seminar on the Mind-Body Connection practice yoga during class.
Students in the College of Education and Health Professions' Spring 2024 Dean's Seminar, “The Mind-Body Connection,” stepped into a fascinating exploration of the important relationship between the mind and body.
Through hands-on exercises, discussions, and readings, Erin Howie Hickey, associate professor of exercise science, and Hung Pham, director of the Center for Children and Youth, will teach students how moving their whole body can help them think and learn. The students helped teach the course as they discovered it.
“Our goal for this course was to help students understand how our mental and physical processes are often connected in powerful and surprising ways,” Pham said. Told. “Physical health and performance often have a large mental component, and similarly, mental processes such as learning and cognition are deeply influenced by our bodies, senses, and the environment around us. .”
Many course activities targeted the integration of the arts as a form of connection and its impact on various disciplines within the university, including exercise science, education, and physical health.
At the beginning of the semester, students ditched their desks, bought yoga mats, and helped Pham lead an introductory ballroom dance class. These practical lessons explained how the mind and body work together to benefit physical and mental health.
“This class was very unique because we were able to not only learn the content through the lessons, but also practice through the activities,” junior Mallory Karpenko said. “I was able to actually experience the lessons and learned a lot from them.”
Each student was given the task of designing a poster for their final project. The students' posters focused on how activities such as sports, mindfulness, and dance can help connect the mind and body. The posters were judged by a team of faculty from the School of Education and Health Professions, and four students received awards for their work.
Junior Haley Terman uses a poster titled “Social Engagement and Cognitive Aging: Exploring the Links” to explore how interpersonal relationships impact mental and physical health, and how loneliness We explained the negative effects it has on mental and physical health.
“The theme of the class allowed us all to make our own inferences about what we wanted to get out of it,” Thurman said. “The fact that we were able to take it in so many unique directions made it that much more beneficial to us personally.”
The Dean's Seminar was created as part of the College of Education and Health Professions' WE CARE strategic plan. Each semester, this seminar will focus on a different complex societal challenge at the intersection of education and health.
In next semester's Dean's Seminar, “Nature and You: Adventure, Growth, Happiness,” the outdoors will serve as an alternative classroom as students explore the relationship between nature, outdoor recreation, and health and wellness.