It has come at last. Finals week. For a college student, this can be one of the most trying and stressful times of the year. Day by day the stress mounts and can seem unbearable at times. It is with this stress in mind that the UMaine Counseling Center along with the Touchstone Project have come up with a “brain-spa” to help students relax during finals week and the week leading up to it.
The brain-spa, as it is being called for the time being, is a small quiet space where students can partake in a number of therapies and relaxation techniques designed specifically to ease stress. The spa opened its doors for the first time on Monday, Dec.9, the week before finals. It is currently located in room 120 of the Memorial Union, which is the Touchstone Projects office.
The Touchstone Project is a campus help center that aims to engage students with their surroundings and help them to relax and center themselves. It also serves as an outreach and prevention center for students who are facing extremely difficult situations in their lives, offering counseling and friendship to students who need it most.
Kelly Shaw is the Touchstone resource coordinator and a resident psychologist at the Counseling Center. Her position as a one-on-one counsellor for students as well as being a figurehead of the Touchstone Project have allowed her to see the stress that students undergo firsthand. This is what led her to create the brain-spa.
“The Touchstone brain-spa as we’re calling it is our effort to raise awareness of the fact that this is a very stressful time for students,” Shaw said. “The week of finals and the week leading up to finals can be incredibly stressful so we offer several different ways students can de-stress.”
The brain-spa uses a number of techniques and tools to reduce stress. Therapy lights that simulate the sun’s peaceful rays as well as a biofeedback machine that measures a number of parameters in the body to indicate stress are a couple of the more popular items in the office.
“Many of the things that we have available are things that our clients benefit from,” Shaw said. “We just kind of, amongst our staff [thought of] what are students using, what are they benefitting from and what can we use.”
If you have not heard of the brain-spa, do not worry. The spa underwent a “soft launch” with no advertising of any kind.
“We wanted to just kind of launch it … and just test out what student response would be,” Shaw said. “We didn’t want to have a massive flood of students before we could support that.”
What Shaw and the team at the Counseling Center does next with the spa will be determined by how well received it is during this trail run. If it goes well, Shaw has some ideas for ways she would like to see the program expand.
“What I would like to see happen is that within a couple weeks of the start of next semester we implement regular hours,” Shaw said. “If students ask we can certainly push and ask around to see what other spaces we can take to make this on a bigger scale.
“I think students who are using it are finding it helpful,” Shaw said. “If we get the response that we would like we would definitely be able to alot more staff time to [the brain-spa].”
This is Shaw’s second year in her position at the university. This program represents something she has wanted to contribute since she arrived.
“I’m really excited,” Shaw said. “I came into the year with some long term plans and short term plans with things I wanted to accomplish with this position … This happened a lot faster than I was expecting. I’m just hoping students will take advantage of it.”
The brain spa is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Every day between 12:15 and 12:45 there is a workshop featuring Shaw or one of the other counselors who will be demonstrating different stress relieving techniques.