Along with the start of the new school year, JVBNA successfully kicked off its Youth Forum with the first meeting on October 23. This forum is designed for older middle school children and high school children to meet once a month and its main purpose is to spiritually engage us and mentally help us through these stages in life. Coming into this meeting, we all had high expectations that we would learn a lot and take away something that we could use for the rest of our lives.

During the first hour, Samani Satya Pragyaji and Samani Rohini Pragyaji discussed the topic of “Physical Fitness and Discipline”. This is a very important topic, as it relates not only to our physical health, but also to our mental and emotional health. Samanijis touched upon the fact that through physical fitness we can achieve discipline and that discipline is essentially focus, which can be achieved through meditation – meditation – not in a conventional but liberal sense. This is to say that one needs to be mindful while eating, walking and in other day-today aspects of life.

During the second hour, Kavita Aunty (Kavita Kothari) helped us on the mental aspect of life by discussing that to achieve success, we should set goals for ourselves. Setting goals and reaching them gives one renewed confidence and self-esteem to keep doing so, and eventually achieving success. We also discussed our likes and dislikes, which will be further dwelled upon in following sessions. Though it is only the first meeting, I have already felt that by bringing together a spiritual sense with a mental one, we are truly bettering ourselves in this youthful stage.