The Student Loneliness Epidemic

How Heartfulness Heals

Nearly 2/3 of college students feel lonely; we are in what many call a "Loneliness Epidemic." College students are surrounded by social opportunities like clubs, events, and parties, but we still feel lonely.

As psychological researchers and medical professionals investigate why we are experiencing more loneliness than ever globally (the societal, psychological, and environmental contributors to this phenomenon can be explored in the US Surgeon General's report on loneliness).

In this post, I'd like to focus on what became a personal antidote to my loneliness at Stanford University: Heartfulness.

I started my Stanford journey as a Zoom freshman student in 2020, learning remotely. At first, it was challenging that people in my Zoom classes only knew me as a box on a screen, although one classmate humorously remarked that I would be remembered for possessing the most overly expressive eyebrows on our Zoom.

Even if my eyebrows were visible to others, behind my quietly watering eyes I held many stories and identities unbeknownst to the Stanford community.

During the pandemic, one of my dearest friends passed away from cancer. I carried that grief with me every day as I logged on and off Zoom. I also hid that I was an older student; my slightly worn smile lines are much less visible on Zoom. I took gap years after high school due to chronic illness and worked several jobs before starting as an undergraduate student.

When "Zoom Stanford"

ended in 2021, I moved to Stanford's campus in Northern California. This felt like a massive and scary transition for me, moving into my own studio apartment and living on my own for the very first time. I had no idea what to share my life story with the people I met. How would I make friends? Could I share with my peers that I was five years older than them? What would happen if I shared my grief? How would I find my place in such a big school?

Fortunately on my first day of classes in person, I found myself in Dr. Murphy-Shigematsu's Heartfulness classroom.

Let me offer you my perspective on how Heartfulness can help our lonely world:

Heartfulness can help us create powerful spaces where people can bring their whole selves into the room and these selves can be heard as the community listens. This integration of the self through speaking and antoher listening can lead to well-being.

Listening can help individuals be more resilient in the face of social rejection (see the article below) and the loneliness they might experience outside of Heartfulness workshops and spaces.

In Heartf classrooms participants are compassionately invited to share aspects of themselves that are rarely seen by others or touched by the light.

An article about how listening reduces feelings of social rejection

In the Heartfulness classroom, we learn about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing fragments pottery with gold. Kintsugi show us that we are all beautiful and whole in our brokeness. Kintsugi also show us how to integrate the parts of ourselves that we struggle to accept and how we can embrace the beauty in those parts.

Additionally, while peers model compassion and acceptance in a heartful space we often begin to accept parts of ourselves we may have never shared before. When we share new parts of ourselves, we can discover those parts and metaphorically paint them in gold.

Dr. Murphy Shigematsu writes in his book From Mindfulness to Heartfulness:

“We live in a world filled with misunderstanding and disputes, where the capacity to communicate is essential. Yet the American educational system favors and rewards the orally assertive, nurturing experts at communicating their ideas to others, by arguing, persuading, convincing, and influencing. We become unable to listen, our minds filled with thoughts about how to present our ideas and how to win arguments. Schools claim to value cooperation and collaboration, while actually encouraging children to think about what to say next and thus to compete with each other. This self-centered focus makes it difficult to listen, making much of what we consider to be communication merely the exchange of rhetoric...Heartfulness values genuine conversation and dialogue in which speaking and listening both occur in a dance and a kind of play between two human beings."

This "genuine conversation" Sensei describes melts away loneliness.

The connections I've forged through Heartful interactions are are robust, transformative, and powerful.

Heartfulness facilitators model vulnerability, offering their own stories of struggle while modeling deep compassionate listening for others.

"Deep Listening" is a term described by the wise Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dr. Murphy-Shigematsu and I shared this YouTube video in class last week when we discussed deep listening:

Dr. Murphy Shigematsu writes the following in his book:

“The Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls "deep listening" a sacred activity — a form of surrendering, receiving, letting in, in which you listen with one sole purpose: to let the other person empty his heart. When you listen with compassion, you give the person a chance to suffer less. This may not change the person, but you have established a foundation of empathy and communication. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you have to wait for another time when he is open to listening to you. Nhat Hanh believes that we get to this place of listening through practice:” (From Mindfulness to Heartfulness page 130)

So how do we create communities where deep listening can take place?

We gather people before, and we set community norms. It's not the quanity of individuals the room, but the quality of presence those individuals listen with. I've facilitated Heartful sharing circles an exercises for numbers ranging from 4 to 18 students.

Deep listening can happen on any scale, one on on--- a friend to friend and even stranger to stranger.

In a lonely world how do you find individuals to practice deep listening with?

This article provides some great guidance regarding making friends as an adult.

Below find some suggestions how to make more connections and friends with whom you can practice deep listening.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/platonic-love/202209/7-secrets-to-making-friends-as-an-adult

1. I reccomend bringing deep listening into existing communities whether that be your sports team, your family, or your neighborhood.

2. If you don't have an existing community to lean on, courageously try to build it. Check out websites like MeetUp for people with similar hobbies. Maybe attend a yoga class. Try to connect with people with similar interests.

3. Be a host! To facilitate spaces for deep listening in my own life, I often have to be the one hosting the gathering. I invite friends over from many different facetsof my life, and I ask deep questions that guide the dinner time conversations in interesting directions. Friends of mine who have never met each other before end up connecting on a deep level. Sometimes we need to be the facilitators.

Let's create more spaces for deep listening. Deep listening is a healing, transformative antidote to loneliness that can be learned in Heartfulness spaces and taken outside of the Heartfulness classroom. Listen with compassion. It will help you and your friends to be more resilient in our ever-changing world.