UNH Speakers Bureau

Calming the Mind, Healing the Body: Can alternative therapies help college students improve their health?

 

Program Description:

From students facing exams and paper deadlines to adults trying to balance the demands of family life and long work hours, we are a nation under stress. What are the consequences of this stress on our collective health, and how might the consequences best be mitigated? Gamtso looks at the negative results of our fast-paced, frenetic lifestyles—anxiety, depression, heart disease, sleep disorders—and investigates how these effects can be minimized through the use of so-called alternative therapies that seek to calm the mind so as to heal the body. She offers healthy strategies for dealing with stress and encourages inquiry into the wealth of traditional systems that focus on mindfulness as the gateway to a healthy life.


Speaker:

Carolyn Gamtso

Carolyn Gamtso is the head of public services at the University of New Hampshire Manchester Library, where she focuses on library instruction and reference services. Her research interests include information literacy, faculty collaboration, and peer tutoring in the library. Professor Gamtso is very interested in the history and civilization of Tibet, and is the secretary and web master of the Monadnock Friends of Tibet, a New Hampshire-based Tibet support group. As a result of this interest, and as a result of her deep concern about the current plight of the Tibetan people and their nation, she pursued a long-held dream by spending her academic sabbatical in the foothills of the Himalayas, teaching English to Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, India, home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. While in Dharamsala, she put her library skills to good use as well by reorganizing a volunteer organization’s community reading room. A long-time yoga practitioner, Professor Gamtso is currently working toward her teaching certification in the Classical Yoga tradition. (*M)

Other topics offered by Carolyn Gamtso