HSEM2232H: Improvisation and Mental Health

The ability to tolerate ambiguity is essential to mental health. In this course, students will explore this premise by learning the fundamentals of improvisation and discovering how these skills can enrich their lives and make them more flexible, effective, and empathic, both personally and professionally. Through dynamic exercises and personal feedback, students will understand how an improvisational mindset can deepen communication skills, reframe negative self-talk, reawaken a sense of play, and strengthen awareness of mind-body connections. At the same time, students will reflect on our experience as a group, one that is guided by improvisational tenets. Our time in class will be primarily experiential, and students will be given the chance to give presentations about various psychological topics—cognitive schemas, positive psychology, mindfulness and its benefits, group development, creativity and cognition, play theory and polyvagal theory, and ethical development—as well as read studies about improvisation and the ways it can guide psychological growth.

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