CALM club helps members cope with stress, anxiety

Junior Jellirica Tan said she wanted to start a club focused on helping students cope with their daily stresses and to live to their fullest potential.

She said the club called CALM, Caring About Living More, adopts a philosophy about balance within an individual’s mind, body and soul. Tan said she got the idea after researching the Integrated Health and Wellness Application last year. The IHWA model focuses on addressing the social, environmental, emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual aspects of one’s life in order to achieve mind, body and soul equilibrium.

Tan said the club utilizes the IHWA wheel in order to illustrate how every aspect of life interacts with another. 

“We focus on different parts of the wheel during our meetings, this way by the end we will have completed the wheel, making one feel whole,” she said.

The club helps members realize their inner strength, according to Tan. By using the IHWA, students are more likely to cope with stress in a healthier manner, she said.

CALM was launched as a registered student organization last spring and now has 92 members, Tan said. She said it was started because of the increasingly stressful lifestyles of college students, and said the club offers students techniques to cope with their anxiety.

Nursing professor Karen Avino worked with Tan in order to get CALM started and believes in the IHWA model.

“Students who practice self care and work towards a body, mind and spirit balance report increased clarity and improved grades in school,” Avino said. “This clarity translates into many other aspects of a student’s life including relationships and decision making.”  

Tan said she realizes how easy it is for students’ well-being to become unbalanced and said they often overlook spiritual health.

“By neglecting [the] soul, one is neglecting their subconscious which is the realest part of your body and the part that drives you to do what you want,” she said. 

She also said most students think eating well and physical exercise are the answers to a healthy lifestyle, but they do not engage in practices specifically aimed at balancing their mind, body and soul.

Sophomore Chelsea Rozanski, CALM vice president, said students often forget to self reflect. Self reflection is a discipline which she said is where the balance should begin.

 CALM’s treasurer, junior Allison Herschlein, said students often do a poor job harmonizing every aspect of their active lifestyles.

“We are all busy and we all just try to get by,” Herschlein said. “We may focus on schoolwork, friends, or exercise, but probably not all three equally. CALM helps students to evaluate how they are doing and how to balance all three.” 

Junior and CALM member Sean Page said he finds the club to be different than other groups on campus because it allows for a personalized approach to solving every student’s issue.

“Unlike other clubs, CALM is not focused in one direction,” Page said. “We like to explore several avenues to help us better understand ourselves and to get us closer to our individual goals.”