Celebrating Yale-NUS Wellness Week and The Wellness Pod’s fourth year

Organised by the Student Affairs Office (SAO)’s Wellness team, Yale-NUS Wellness Week is an initiative that promotes students’ mental and physical well-being. This year, Wellness Week was held between 9 and 13 October 2023, offering a diverse line-up of events, workshops, and talks held in collaboration with on-campus student groups and external organisations.

On Monday of Wellness Week, Yale-NUS students had a chance to bond with four adorable canine friends. Coming from the Animal-Assisted Interactions SG (AAISG) “Take a Paws” programme, Holly, Goldie, Vinyl, and Loki received high-fives, tasty treats, and generous pets from the students. AAISG is a Singaporean social enterprise that offers a range of animal-assisted programmes and services.

Through the medium of human-canine interactions, this programme aimed to relieve stress and anxiety and improve the mood of participants. Ashley Chin (Class of 2024), who participated in the activity, reflected afterwards, “A lot of self-care strategies, like journalling or meditation, are very individual––which is great when you need time to yourself. But playing with the dogs at ‘Take A Paws’ reminded me that self-care can also be about being with others, whether [they be] human friends or furry friends. I really hope we get more events like this!”

On Thursday, Yale-NUS students and staff members had the opportunity to partake in a Tea Appreciation session, facilitated by HUSH TeaBar. HUSH is a social enterprise that aims to promote self-care, mental well-being, social inclusion, and empathy. The HUSH team is led entirely by the Deaf, as well as persons with or in-recovery from mental health conditions. Their tea appreciation session is a silent ritual that helps the participants reflect on their life journeys, assess their strengths, and express their gratitude.

To facilitate mindfulness, the students and staff were asked to turn their phones off and use earplugs. The HUSH team then taught the audience a few signs that they could use to express emotions, and led the participants to appreciate the tea at hand, while meditating and reflecting.

After the reflection, the participants expressed their feelings in drawings, as well as wrote a card for future HUSH TeaBar event attendees.

“It was a really good opportunity for me to take a break from classes and assignments to just unwind,” said Anjali Venketram (Class of 2024). “I really enjoyed learning more about Singapore Sign Language from the instructors. I will definitely remember to incorporate mindfulness into more of my daily activities.”

Other activities that took place over the week included a Wellness Resource Fair, at which on-campus and external wellness-focused organisations came to share resources and information. There were also several workshops: a Do-It-Yourself fidget rings workshop jointly organised with the Yale-NUS Fashion Society, as well as a workshop on holistic wellness self-care brought by Total Wellness Initiative Singapore. The Yale-NUS College Council also organised a casual art jamming session.

The activities that brought physical wellness in conversation with mental well-being included a rebounding class with Bbounce Studio; a chat with Body-Ody (a student body neutrality collective) about healthy mentalities at the gym; and two Gym 101 sessions led by the Yale-NUS Athletics student associates.

The Wellness Pod

While Wellness Week takes place annually, some student-led initiatives provide students with opportunities to improve their mental well-being all year-round.

One such initiative is The Wellness Pod, a podcast series that returned to campus for its fourth year. This is a student-led podcast produced by the SAO Wellness team and hosted by Maleeka Hassan (Class of 2024) and Mpiwa Gwindi (Class of 2024). With over 20 episodes released to-date, The Wellness Pod has covered topics ranging from sleep and sexual health to fostering healthy relationships on campus and discovering one’s identity.

When reflecting on the podcast’s beginnings, Mpiwa and Maleeka shared that while they both had to audition for the host position, they organically grew into the role and made it their own.

For one, Mpiwa and Maleeka developed a great dynamic. Mpiwa shared that ever since beginning to work on the podcast, the two have moved beyond collaborating in a professional capacity. They also extend genuine care and friendship to each other, and their relationship now can almost be described as “symbiotic”.  Maleeka added, “The podcast feels like our baby, and we love coming up with content for it and getting to speak to different members of the college community about various topics.”

Commenting on changes and growth over the three years, Mpiwa noted that they both have matured as individuals and grown into their roles as hosts.

Maleeka explained, “In many ways, The Wellness Pod has grown with us, and is often a reflection of where Mpiwa and I are also at in life. The content has definitely matured over time: our first episode was to discuss video journaling and content creation as a means of wellness, and now we delve into much deeper topics. You can see the transformation of content from our first year as doe-eyed freshmen, to older and, hopefully, wiser Seniors now!”

When asked what the Yale-NUS community can look forward to this semester, Mpiwa and Maleeka revealed that they will focus on talking about the different stages of life that students go through. Said Maleeka, “As seniors, we may be concerned with what adult life looks like in a year, and we may be feeling stressed about it.” Therefore, the co-hosts have decided that the coming episodes will focus on the topics of anxiety, mental health, and stepping into the ‘adult’ world post-graduation.