Twenty minutes once a week

Drop-in Mindfulness Meditation hits five years and still going

Eimile Darney | Argonaut The instructor of Mindfulness Meditation guides listeners through a meditation on Wednesday, Mar. 06

Drop-in Mindfulness Meditation turned five years old in January and Jamie Derrick marked the date by doing the same thing she has always done — holding her weekly session. 

“On a January Wednesday about five years ago, I got a room, put some advertising up and about 70 people showed up,” said Derrick, an associate clinical faculty in psychology.

Now five years later, there is a steady flow of students, faculty and staff who go to the sessions regularly.

“I’ve offered it every year since, so this is going on five years,” Derrick said. 

When she first started the sessions, Derrick said she put out flyers and did little else to announce her meditation sessions, something she still does.

“I had no idea when I put up those posters and put up a slide in the Commons, that anyone would come.”

Once she showed up, there was standing room only. Derrick said she started the program after attending a class to become certified in mindfulness at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). 

She said the program here was formed after the drop-in meditation at UCLA.

“I’ve just kind of let the program flower over the last five years, I’ve done a 21 day mindfulness challenge pretty early on into the program and about 600 people participated,” Derrick said. 

There have been a few changes to the program since it began in 2014, now Derrick offers Zoom opportunities for students who want to join but are not on campus. 

“I’ve just started including Zoom drop in so people can dial in so it makes this accessible to people on our satellite campuses in Boise and Coeur d’ Alene and it also makes this accessible to people who don’t want to come to campus that day,” Derrick said. 

Derrick said she has recorded a few of her sessions to put up online once she gets a chance to edit them. 

“I visit departments or living groups and sometimes organizations and just do a little education around mindfulness and introducing people to the practices,” Derrick said. 

But leading the Mindful Meditation sessions is not all Derrick does. She helps lead a mindfulness retreat in Los Angeles for teens and a local meditation retreat in the fall. 

The fall retreat is about three and a half days and is usually comprised of about 50 to 60 people Derrick said. 

Meditation has been part of Derrick’s life since her 20s and she compares it to a foundation. 

“Meditation creates the foundation for learning, developing those skills I was talking about, of focus and self compassion but bringing those skills into the world and making them part of life is really what it’s all about,” Derrick said. 

Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kalinelson6

Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.