Mindfulness, Literature, and Yoga for Extraordinary Living

June 18-29, 2018, 1-4 pm
Open to students entering grades 9-12
Course Credit: ½ Trimester IDS

Do you feel exhausted from the busy pace of the school year and the many demands it has placed on you? Want to ease into summer by enhancing your self-awareness, reducing stress, and further developing your creativity and emotional growth, all in a supportive environment of your peers?

In this two-week mindfulness-based course, we will engage with literature, philosophy, meditation, and yoga to learn how to better care for ourselves in the midst of a frantic and sometimes chaotic world. Drawing on Kripalu’s Yoga in the Schools curriculum, along with reading and journaling, this course will improve your resilience, help combat negative emotional states, and improve your kinesthetic awareness and self-image. Additionally, you will learn how to better control anger and fatigue, focus better in your future classes, manage test anxiety, and engage more comfortably with your peers.

Each daily three-hour session will consist of reflection, discussion, writing, meditation, and an hour of yoga. No previous experience with yoga is required. Students will be required to do approximately thirty minutes of reading each evening to prepare for class the next day. Come with an open mind, and prepare to connect with your deepest, most authentic self as you develop physical and mental strength and flexibility.

Mary Mertsch, instructor

Mary Mertsch joined the Rivers English Department in 2008 and currently teaches 11th and 12th grade English. Her previous teaching experience includes both private and public schools, along with four years teaching composition and teacher education courses at the University of Michigan where she spent time doing graduate work. She earned her M.A.Ed. from Wake Forest University and her B.A. from Georgetown University. Additionally, she obtained her 200-hour YTT at the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, CA in 2014, and is a certified Kripalu Yoga in the Schools Teacher. She teaches yoga to Rivers students, co-advises the Rivers Gender Sexuality Alliance, and serves on the school committee in her hometown of Maynard.