The Making Meditation a Habit program kicks off on Thursday, Jan. 14 at 12:15 p.m. in the Oakland Recreation Center. The program is free to students and staff and will run weekly on Thursdays for seven weeks.

Meditation classes were offered previously at OU as part of a wellness program and due to positive feedback, the rec decided to bring it back as its own program.

“Stress is a huge problem for college students. Some millennials get so stressed that they can’t even sleep,” Jennifer Giordano, psychiatrist and instructor of the program, said. “Meditation is another tool available to them to help relieve everyone’s stress levels and possibly improve academic performance.”

Giordano has been instructing meditation classes since 2011 and has taught over 1,700 people how to mediate.

The form of meditation taught in the class, Isha Kriya, was designed to help individuals deal with the fast pace of modern-day life by pausing the world around them and piecing together their own existence. It’s a form of mediation that is currently gaining a lot of popularity all over the world.

The class is open to all and requires no previous experience with meditation. The first class will illustrate the basics of how to meditate and the following classes will be a place where participants can come together and meditate.

“It’s easier to actively meditate if you have a group to mediate with, just like going to the gym with a friend,” Giordano said.

Participants will also be encouraged to meditate for 15 minutes everyday outside of the class.

Another aspect of the program will consist of a before and after survey to compare stress levels prior to consistent meditation to stress levels after meditating every day for 15 minutes for seven weeks.  The survey hopes to illustrate the effectiveness that meditation has on reducing stress in college students.

So far, 28 people have signed up for the winter semester program and if the feedback continues its positive trend, the class will return for the fall semester. Visit oakland.edu/campusrec/ for more information.