An unfamiliar smell travels through the third floor hallway during lunchtime, distinct from the smells of yogurt and take-out that students nearby are eating. Follow that smell, and at its source you’ll find burning incense in Head of Drama Department Leslie Holland Pryor’s TV arts studio. There sits junior Joseph Watkins every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday practicing and sharing his love of meditation with the Parker community.

There are a number of Parker clubs: Clean Water Club, Power of Education, Geography Club, and more, but what makes Watkins’s Meditation Club unique is the fact that anyone–from the oldest members of the community to the youngest–is welcome to attend.

In addition to upper schoolers and faculty, fourth and fifth graders can often be found coming in and out of sessions. Sitting next to Watkins most days is fifth grader Gannon Holt-Hall. Holt-Hall said, “I come in to meditate with Joseph around three times a week and meditate by myself every day, usually in the morning.”

Scattered around the school, peach-colored posters inform the Parker community about what each session entails. Meditation Club meets four times a week: Mondays during G1, and Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during U lunch.

People come to Meditation Club for all sorts of reasons. “I love meditation club,” junior Chloe Gonzalez said. “It’s truly a break from what has been an extremely hectic year.  Joseph has been extremely supportive of people who are new to the practice and has been a helpful asset as he ensures to be inclusive to all who want to take part.”

Watkins, who only began practicing meditation at the beginning of his sophomore year, started Meditation Club right around first semester finals of this year.  Feeling overwhelmed by different factors in his life sophomore year, he made the conscious decision to take control of his thoughts and emotions. He soon discovered the most efficient way of doing so, for him, was through meditation.

“Through making that decision, I realized that we’re all in our own worlds, and we all have our own universes,” Watkins said. “If we could change the way in which we perceive the universe, we can change the universe for ourselves.” He paused. Then he said with a laugh, “If that makes sense.”

In February and March, Watkins was absent from school for a few days attending retreats with the Isha Foundation in Tennessee. Although Watkins did not say the specifics of what he did on the retreat, he said that his experience there was incredible. “I don’t think I’ve ever cried that much in a single week,” Watkins said. “To be able to look at a rock, tree, or even water coming out of a shower and to see all that as alive, and the life within that thing is the same as the life within me is incredibly beautiful.”

The Isha Foundation, a non-profit organization, was founded by yogi, mystic, and author Jaggi Vasudev, more commonly known as Sadhguru, in 1992. With locations all over the world, including India, Lebanon, The United States, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore, Isha follows this mission: “This is not a place of worship. This is not a place of religion. This is not a place which is nurtured by some philosophy or belief system. This is the place we are exploring technology for well being. This is a place for people to find and make use of technologies for their own inner well being.”

Watkins describes the skills and practices he learned at these retreats as tools in a hypothetical tool bag. “I buy different ‘tools’ and each of these tools works on my body and my mind in different ways,” Watkins said. “Every time I go to the retreat, I learn a different meditation, and I apply that meditation to my schedule the best I can.”

Watkins’s end goal is simple: he wants to transfer what he can, when he can, to Parker, so it might benefit the members of our community. “I want to leave Parker with the Meditation Club, not in my name–I could be forgotten,” Watkins said with a laugh, “but I just want it to be something where people are working towards working on themselves and having some sort of awareness on how they are functioning in this world.”