Class offers a simple message: just relax

“Clear your mind” is a simple enough directive that quickly becomes hard to carry out. Sandi Love and a new class at The Paradise Center are working to solve that for Longboat Key residents. 

Love has begun teaching a new Meditation and Stress Relief class at 11 a.m. on Fridays, drawing in about eight students in her second week. The hourlong class involves some stretching and a guided meditation from Love. Community outreach and marketing manager Donna Sharp Blaney helped Love develop it for The Paradise Center’s most regular attendees. 

“The reason it came about is there are so many yoga classes on Longboat Key and ours was not very well-attended,” Sharp Blaney said. “A lot of what we were doing in yoga was meditation, anyway.” 

Love starts the class with some tapping and light stretching to bring body and mind together before working towards total relaxation. She incorporates yogic breathing techniques, such as wave breathing and three-part breathing, to bring down her students’ heart rates. Once everyone’s on their way to Zen,  Love makes sure they’re comfortable — some students lay down in The Paradise Center’s activity room with pillows surrounding them, while others get comfortable on a cushioned chair. The meditation involves visualization, so she walks around with photos of the tranquil location she’ll be describing to help her students along. On Oct. 8, it was the redwood trees in California. 

“Once they’re really comfortable, I start the guided meditation and take them to a different place each week,” Love said. “I take them on the whole journey. Open your screen door and walk out to your porch and down the beautiful steps and into the fall forest and down a path. It’s very relaxing. Sometimes I’ll do a brief time of quiet … It just gives them a time to breathe. As we’re walking through the forest, we come upon a tree stump to relax.” 

Love keeps her voice low and slow to keep her students relaxed. The guided meditation helps students really focus on staying calm, as focusing on a situation or destination gives their mind something to grasp onto rather than try to fight errant thoughts that try to sneak in and lose their meditation entirely. Sharp Blaney has joined the class both times it's been put on so far. 

“With all that’s going on in the world, who wouldn’t benefit from an hour of self-care?” Sharp Blaney said. “It seemed like a good fit.”