Mount Holyoke mindfulness event blends meditation, community, and cookies

At Mount Holyoke College, mindfulness was not just about sitting still. The April 9 gathering in the Eliot House Multipurpose Room blended guided meditation with relational practice in the Burmese and Thai Theravada Buddhist Insight tradition, then left time for cookies and socializing afterward.

The setup made the hour feel unusually accessible. The event ran from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. EDT in the first-floor room at 50 College St. in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Attendees were told to bring a friend, and the listing explicitly welcomed both beginners and experienced meditators. The lower level of Eliot House was reachable via Lower Lake Road next to the Art Museum, and the room offered soft and hard chairs as well as supported floor seating, with light and sound kept low.

That combination of guided practice and social ease fits the way Mount Holyoke’s Office of Community and Belonging frames its work. The office says it takes an intersectional approach focused on social justice, liberatory consciousness, faith and identity development, which helps explain why this was not presented as a stand-alone wellness drill. It was a campus belonging event, built to make meditation feel less intimidating and more communal.

Eliot House itself reinforces that message. The building houses the Office of Community and Belonging and also includes a kosher/halal kitchen, a Muslim Prayer Room, a Hindu Prayer Room, and Wa-shin-an, the Japanese teahouse and garden. Mount Holyoke describes Eliot House as a hub for a religiously pluralistic student body, where gatherings such as Shabbats, Jummah lunches, Muslima conversations, and puja space sit alongside contemplative life.

Wa-shin-an gives the college a longer meditation history to draw from. Built in 1984, it was envisioned as a place for nourishing beauty and meditative practice within Eliot House. In its early years, Professor of Religion Tadanori Yamashita led zazen, seated Buddhist meditation, there. Today, Wa-shin-an remains open during the academic year for meditation, prayer, sketching, reading, or quiet sitting.

With more than 80 countries represented on campus and a self-description as the most globally diverse liberal arts college in the U.S., Mount Holyoke has built a setting where contemplative practice can be tied to identity, community, and shared space. The event drew one person interested in attending, a small number that still captured the quiet pull of a meditation gathering that offered both stillness and company.