Everyone knows about the Barnes Center at The Arch’s Pet Therapy program, but few know about Barnes Center Health Promotion’s other star wellness initiative: the Crowley Family MindSpa. It’s understandably hard to compare anything to Clayton the goldendoodle and his puppy love, but the wellness benefits of the MindSpa’s resources are just as noteworthy!
With three individual meditation rooms and two massage chairs, the MindSpa is located on the first floor of the Barnes Center and is free for all Syracuse University students, faculty and staff to use.
According to Barnes Center student assistant Thomas O’Brien, “The selling point is normally free massages.” But there is a lot more that the MindSpa has to offer. O’Brien, a junior film major that’s worked on the Health Promotion team for the past year, shares some of the other highlights of the MindSpa that aren’t as talked about as the massage chairs.
The first room in the MindSpa includes windchime machines and bells for sound meditation, coloring books and other art therapy materials, Zen gardens and other meditation tools. For all its sensory benefits and creativity-sparking resources, the first room is sophomore student assistant Natalia Cancel-Quintana’s favorite part of the MindSpa.
Rooms two and three are both used for napping and relaxation, and they’re fully equipped with reclining chairs and light therapy boxes. The light boxes were introduced as a therapeutic tool to help combat the seasonal depression that often accompanies the gray Syracuse winters. With dimmer settings and adjustment capabilities, Cancel-Quintana says students can simply “close [their] eyes and imagine [they are] on a beach.”
The MindSpa is intended to reach students where they are at in their busy schedules and give everyone an individualized opportunity to practice mindfulness and self-care. Because of this, the MindSpa has satellite locations in Bird Library, Day Hall and the Goldstein Student Center on South Campus. Students can book appointments for the Barnes Center and Bird Library locations through the Wellness Portal or the Syracuse University Libraries website. To use the locations in Day Hall or the Goldstein Student Center, students can simply visit the front desk to request access.
Cancel-Quintana and O’Brien say that the meditation rooms have been booked for students and staff to hold meetings, take appointments, do homework, pray and take naps. But many people come in and simply color or play with the sand in the Zen gardens—letting off some steam and “taking some time to do silly things you don’t normally make time for,” Cancel-Quintana says. She points to drawings on the walls of the MindSpa that students have colored and hung up in the room.
Prioritizing ourselves and our well-being is always going to be difficult. Our brains and our societal culture constantly tell us to keep going, keep working, keep pushing; we are programmed to resist rest. One of the hardest things to learn in college—or at any time in our lives—is that it’s not just okay to stop pushing; sometimes, it’s the better thing to do. “No matter your workload, you should always put yourself first,” Cancel-Quintana believes.
Taking 30 minutes out of your day to stop pushing and just be is so important, and this can look different for everyone. To some, relaxing is coloring and listening to music, while for others, it can be meditating or praying. It can even be as simple as taking a nap or getting a massage. Regardless of what it looks like for you, there is something for everyone at the Crowley Family MindSpa!
Written By Olivia Fried ’26, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications