This January, a brand-new semester is starting at Penn State, bringing with it a new set of opportunities, along with new challenges and deadlines. As projects and papers begin to pile up, students can gain resiliency and focus on well-being through relaxation rooms found in the Intramural Building and the HUB-Robeson Center.
“The rooms are designed to provide a calm, relaxing place for students to disconnect from the stress of their everyday lives and enjoy a kind of quiet, calming space that’s provided,” Linda LaSalle says.
LaSalle is the director of Health Promotion & Wellness at Penn State, which focuses on cultivating a community that supports student success, well-being, and the pursuit of lifelong health. She says the relaxation rooms are a way to experience quiet amid the noise of everyday life.
“Both spaces have interactive mindfulness tools that students can use when they are in that space. Those include biofeedback software, Zen gardens, Buddha boards, and Tibetan singing bowls,” she says. “In winter months, there are light therapy boxes that students can use.”
In addition to the interactive elements, each space offers books on contemplative studies as well as one-on-one services.
“We have undergraduate peer educators who are trained to deliver one-on-one wellness services in the areas of stress, sleep, healthy eating, healthy relationships, and something we call the mind-body connection, which is understanding how the mind and the body are connected, and how one’s emotions show up in the body,” LaSalle explains.
She says students can gain skills like body scanning, where they walk through exercises with a peer educator to learn how to relax all of their muscles via guided meditation.
“During those wellness services, students learn hands-on skills and strategies that they can apply to create behavior change on that topic,” she says.
The space also includes photography by Eric Roman, associate teaching professor in the College of Arts and Architecture.
“His work all focuses on photographing nature in a very unique way, and we worked with him to specifically have his photographs in the space to help contribute to the calming, relaxing nature of the space,” LaSalle says. “There’s lots of research supporting the notion that spending time in nature, even as little as ten minutes, can have mental health benefits, and it’s a way to bring nature into the space.”
LaSalle says the rooms are used steadily throughout the school year—not just during finals week. “There are multiple students in here every single day using the space and studying.
“I’ve interacted with so many students who have expressed appreciation for the space being here,” she adds. “They really appreciate that the university provides this kind of a quiet, calming space where they can relax.”
The relaxation room in the IM Building has been in place since 2018 in Room 020. The HUB’s relaxation space, the Flourish Penn State suite in Room 102, opened to students in 2023 in conjunction with the Flourish Penn State initiative.
Flourish Penn State was launched by Student Affairs in 2023 to support student mental health and well-being. The initiative is spearheaded by the health and wellness units within Student Affairs, including Counseling & Psychological Services, University Health Services, Campus Recreation, and Health Promotion & Wellness, which LaSalle directs.
“We know that there are a lot of stressors every day in students’ lives,” LaSalle says. “And these spaces are really designed to give them a place to disconnect from that and experience some quiet from the noise of their everyday lives.”
“Our lives are really focused on always doing, and having to be busy,” she adds. “And the space is designed to encourage students to take a break.” T&G
Cara Aungst is a freelance lifestyle and business journalist who writes about people, events, and how Happy Valley ideas change the world.
