Princeton University Students, Faculty & Staff are invited to a Yoga & Meditation Session that will be followed by a conversation about Wellness, Self-Compassion & Grit with Rebecca Nyquist Baelen '09, Tabitha Belshee '20 and Vineet Chander. 

Rebecca is a doctoral candidate in Education Policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. Her research interests are focused on the development and effects of mindfulness practices and positive psychological interventions for educator and student well-being in K-12 settings. Rebecca graduated from Princeton in 2009, where she majored in religious studies and earned a certificate in environmental studies. After Princeton, she taught abroad in Vietnam through the Princeton in Asia program and then returned to Princeton to earn her teaching certification in Social Studies through the Teacher Preparation Program. She spent five years as a classroom teacher, teaching in a wide range of classroom settings. In her last two year of teaching, she taught history and religious studies at The Lawrenceville School, while earning her Master's degree in Education from the University of Pennsylvania. After completing her master's degree, Rebecca spent two years working as a research coordinator for Angela Duckworth at the Positive Psychology Center, studying mindfulness and character development in youth. Currently, Rebecca is completing her doctoral dissertation focused on the design, administration and testing of a mindfulness-based self-compassion intervention for beginning teachers.

Tabitha is concentrating in Politics and pursuing a certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning. She focuses specifically on studying border patrol hiring processes and their affects on misconduct and acts of corruption. On Princeton's campus, she serves as a proud Wilson RCA, officer in her eating club, and Head Tutor at The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. She was introduced to yoga as a form of physical therapy as a child and began to approach the practice more seriously in college by traveling to India with a small group of students through the Office of Religious Life. She began her yoga teaching journey at a training in the French Alps last summer and apprenticing under a teacher in the fall. Tabitha is currently teaching yoga in Dillon Gym and Quadrangle Club, beginning her study of the Bhagavad Gita, and enticing friends to practice by teaching them how to do headstands. 

Vineet Chander is the Coordinator for Hindu Life and Hindu Chaplain at Princeton University. He is also a Religious Life Leader at the Lawrenceville School, and has served as an adjunct professor, attorney, and communications consultant. His areas of specialty include the Bhakti movement, models of pastoral counseling, and the Hindu-American diaspora community. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from the Journal of Vaishnava Studies to the George Washington University International Law Review, and he has also written for The Huffington Post, the Washington Post, and National Geographic online. He is co-author of Hindu Chaplaincy(2017: Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies) and co-editor of Hindu Approaches to Spiritual Care: Chaplaincy in Theory and Practice (forthcoming 2019: Jessica Kingsley Publishers).