IIM Bodh Gaya organized a Mindfulness Session by Dr. Mathew Swerdloff, EdD, Senior Executive in the Education and Non-Profit Sector, on 5th September, 2022, for the students of IPM Batch 02. Mathew Swerdloff has served as an educator in New York State’s public schools for over thirty years. He earned his Master’s Degree in Education and New York State School District Administrator Certification from the State University of New York at New Paltz and his Doctorate in Instructional Leadership from Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut.
Mathew is trained in Mental Health First Aid, Youth Mental Health First Aid, and Teen Mental Health First Aid (tMHFA). He leads trainings for teens in tMHFA throughout the Hudson Valley of New York. He is the co-founder and President of the Maya Gold Foundation, a non-profit organization that serves youth in the Hudson Valley of New York and in Nepal, and he is the Vice-President of the Board of the Rowe Center, a summer camp and conference center in western MA.
In 2013, Mr. Mathew was awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant to travel to Santiniketan, India, and offer lectures and workshops to students and staff at Visva-Bharati University. In 2020 he was again awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant. He returned to India in 2022 to work with faculty and students at IIM Bodh Gaya. IIM Bodh Gaya is delighted to host Dr. Mathew Swerdloff for the next 15 days.
He began today’s session by elucidating the word Buddha, which means “awakened”. He defined mindfulness as “Being present with yourself with loving openness,” and introduced the notion of mindfulness through various group activities that stimulated the curiosity of the students. He also emphasized that, “Our life will be shaped by our mind through the way it thinks.” He guided our students to meditate and stated that we could not achieve mindfulness without it. The session was highly engaging, and the students greatly appreciated the session.