By DMA Senior Dha-Feir Watts-Henry

This class helped me a lot when it comes to my mental health. In class, sometimes we meditate 10 minutes before class. Now I’m not going to lie. I didn’t stick through with it every time. In the beginning I was all in, but then I started to not participate with the rest of the class. It was only due to what I was going through outside of school, but after doing our reflection papers (another topic we do in class), it reminded me that I should’ve participated even when I was going through a rough time. I say this because when I meditated, I felt relaxed and unworried. Meditation helped me relieve stress and realize not everything that’s bad now will be bad forever. 

When we did an exercise rewirement where we had to do something active for 30 minutes, it helped me physically. I would take these 30 minutes to just stretch. As an athlete in season it is important to stretch coming from a person who didn’t take stretching as seriously and had a lot of dumb injuries during the season. I was still able to play through them, but I do know that if I stretched more I would’ve been healthier. I would say to anybody who wants to learn about mental health and ways to get through it, you should take this class. Mr. Shelton is a great teacher who is unique because he has been around all parts of the world, he’s seen it all, and he carries a lot of wisdom with him. This class has made me realize you can’t change something without putting the effort in to change it.