The Library hosts a variety of health and well-being activities across the system, including creative wellness and recovery classes at Central, fitness classes at Waldo, healthy cooking and smart shopping strategies at Southeast, yoga at Plaza and Ruiz, and TempleMade youth fitness at North-East, to name a few.

Starting November 18, the Bluford Branch will offer a series of mindfulness sessions on Mondays from noon to 1 p.m. through December 16, with a focus on the senses.

“You don't have to go to the gym, or some yoga studio, or the spa,” says Branch Manager Sunny Branick. “You can just have a quiet moment for yourself and useful, practical grounding activities” at the Library.

Branick credits Assistant Branch Manager Gabby Miller for spearheading the idea. “She’s the one who was like, ‘Let’s do mindfulness!’” he says.

Tracy Ochester, a coordinator with the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness, defines the term as “really recognizing what you’re doing while you’re doing it in a kind and nonjudgmental way.”

Since the pandemic, the organization has offered many mindfulness sessions online via Zoom. But, at Bluford, the in-person sessions will cover the five senses: taste, smell, touch and sensation, seeing, and hearing.

The senses, says Ochester, are “something that we can only experience in the present moment. You know, we can’t sense in the past, and we can’t sense in the future. So, when you’re sensing something, we are really being mindful.”

Each session includes an introduction to mindfulness, as well as guided processes. The first session explores taste, so, she says, there’s likely to be a jellybean flavor exercise.

“A jellybean is something most people have eaten before, but it’s something we usually grab a fistful of and pop them in our mouths without a lot of thought,” Ochester says. “And the way I’ll be instructing them to consume the jellybean will be a little different. And then we’ll take a little time to talk about what that was like.”

The series is an opportunity for patrons to sample or “taste” mindfulness “in a lighthearted, experimental kind of way to start to just see what practicing mindfulness might feel like,” she explains.

The months of November and December during the holiday season can be a challenging time. So, Branick encourages patrons to explore some useful, grounding activities to manage their stress and cultivate joy.

“Hopefully, at least one person walks away with something that they learned that day that they can incorporate into their life,” he says, “or it otherwise improves their life in some way, shape, or form.”

All sessions take place at the Bluford Branch on Mondays from noon to 1 p.m.:

• November 18: Mindfulness of Taste
• November 25: Mindfulness of Smell
• December 2: Mindfulness of Touch and Sensation
• December 9: Mindfulness of Seeing
• December 16: Mindfulness of Hearing