The Moorpark College Student Health Center offers Mindfulness Training as a way for students to lower pre-test anxiety as the finals season approaches.

The everyday demands of maintaining positive performance in classes, sustaining a good work environment, and keeping up with a social agenda can be difficult for students.

For those students, Mindfulness Training can be a solution.

“Students who participate and practice what they learn in the Mindfulness Training will see benefits,” said Cassidy Gebhardt, Psy.D. Post-Doctoral Fellow in Psychology at the Student Health Center. “So far the students that have attended have reported benefits from the trainings offered here.”

The purpose of Mindfulness Training is to train students to focus for improved capacity to pay attention, to notice when the mind is wandering and refocus, and to strengthen capacity to become calm.

“Training implies that this is an activity to be practiced, rather than just information to be learned,” said psychologist Laura Forsyth, Supervisor of Psychological Services for Moorpark College Student Health Services.

The goal of this bi-weekly group is to improve focus, concentration, and test performance, while helping lower unhealthy feelings of stress and anxiety. This is accomplished by releasing negative thoughts that clutter the minds of students in academic settings.

Mindfulness Training roots itself in exploring concepts of awareness in present time, while maneuvering the body to help temper the mind.

Students in the group re-train themselves to eliminate unproductive worrying and instead transform the experience into one of awareness.

Mindfulness Training teaches students to recognize negative thoughts and gives them the tools to fend off unproductive stress.

This semester, the Mindfulness Training will be hosting “Math Test Anxiety Workshops” on Dec. 2 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Dec. 3 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. in Fountain Hall room 213.

Although the workshop title is targeting students in math classes, it is open to all to attend.

For more information visit the Health Center at the Administration Building,Room 111.