Hearing the "Mindfulness Bells" in our work:
On Tuesday, March 10th, just 4 days before the scheduled start of our Spring Break, the Housing & Residence Life team at the University of Dayton gathered in an emergency meeting at 5pm. These types of gatherings are typically in response to crises impacting our highly-residential community. Unfortunately, we’ve experienced a number of them at Dayon in the past year for situations including tornados and a mass-shooting mere miles from campus, as well as two unrelated student deaths. Upon reflection, it is clear to me (Jivanto) that the full power and trauma of these experiences was sitting with us (me) as we gathered once again to discuss our response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. During that meeting, we learned that our institutional leadership decided to begin break early and close residence halls at 6pm the following day (yes, just over 24-hours from the moment we learned about it-- an added challenge but well-founded given our specific institutional context). Immediately, the various impacts and action steps began to swirl in my mind-- I called a meeting of our area-specific leadership team, began redrafting our building closing protocols, rescheduling staff coverage, and thinking about how this would impact plans to celebrate our anniversary with my partner that evening, all as we continued to process and finalize details as a department. I walked out of that meeting, mind buzzing, and directly into a meeting of my leadership team which 
was already assembled. One or two sentences into sharing these developments with my team, and one of them (thank you, Adam Schwartz!) stopped me and said “You know, it’s okay-- you can take a breath!” and I did-- I took a breath, a sip of water, briefly checked in with myself about the anxiety that I was clearly feeling, and then was empowered to continue our work in a more collected and effective way. This was my “Mindfulness Bell” a technique that Laura van Dernoot Lipsky describes as “Allowing ourselves to hear the bells that can bring us back to this present moment will greatly influence our ability to practice trauma stewardship.” Lipsky introduces this idea in a story of her daughter literally yelling “gong” and asserts “we can also ring those bells ourselves” in Trauma Stewardship (2009, p. 232).
- Describe a campus crisis/traumatic situation that you have worked through on your campus, this does not have to be in response to COVID-19.
- During the situation, did you have a moment when you heard the mindfulness bells (figuratively and possibly literally)? What was that experience like? How did that moment to pause impact your leadership in that moment? Did you adjust your response to the trauma?
- If you did not experience the mindfulness bell(s), reflect on the action steps you practice when you are working through a crisis/traumatic experience.
- Jot down all or some of these elements you are willing to share and invite your colleagues to join us using the hashtag #OCPAchat
- We’ve found some of these tools to be helpful in hearing our bells more clearly-- we encourage you to explore several methods to identify which work well for you:
- Sometimes it’s as simple as a reminder to breathe (and guidance on how to do so) through an app link iBreathe for iOS or Android.
- There are lots of short in-the-moment mindfulness activities that can help you return to the present moment.
- With this, as with most things, practice builds capacity-- consider adopting a mediation practice, or join one of several free courses like this or this.
- Consider installing some physical reminders such as a desk rock (pictured right) or a rubber band around your wrist.
Jivanto van Hemert and Leah Ward serve as an Area Coordinator and a Community Coordinator, respectively, at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio.
Leah was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio and attended Ohio University for her undergraduate and graduate experience. She is an active member in Alpha Kappa Alpha, Sorority Inc. Beta Eta Omega Chapter. You can usually find her in her office or relaxing at home watching her favorite shows!
Jivanto serves as the OCPA Communications Chair and Careers in Student Affairs Conference Chair on the Executive Board of the Ohio College Personnel Association (OCPA). Prior to joining the Flyer Family, Jivanto worked with Student Government at Ohio University (Athens) where he completed a Master's of Education focusing on College Student Personnel. In his free time, Jivanto enjoys volunteering in the greater Dayton area, exploring new restaurants, and traveling but has transitioned to take out, Netflix, and virtual happy hours in the era of COVID-19.
Continue Reading with the August Issue of COVID Corner at this link!