Welcome to Amateur Wellness!

Growing up I loved reading Rookie Magazine (1) founded by Tavi Gevinson, this serves as a main inspiration for Amateur Wellness – the idea of “an online magazine for and by teenagers” was amazing and unprecedented to me – these girls were my age! It was unafraid, open and most importantly honest in expressing their opinions: may that be from horoscopes, to mental health, to a fun playlist that week. Most of all the sense of camaraderie and distinct understanding that it was “for and by teenagers” really appealed to me.

Therefore when I was deciding what to do for my Extended Project Qualification I was reflecting on how much I loved Rookie, and how sad it was that meditation, mindfulness, wellness – whatever you want to call it – didn’t have something like that. I.e. Wellness content created by teenagers, for teenagers: to make it more accessible and real to young people. And thus came – Amateur Wellness! My EPQ project.

This started off for me when a year ago, I began learning how to meditate and making meditation a part of my life. Along the way, I often felt frustrated at the lack of consistent resources there were for people my age, young adults, not younger children. So, while I began researching what types of meditations there are / how to meditate / why meditate etc. I listed what I found difficult to find online and what I thought could be useful to other young people in the same situation. Now, a year later with this experience under my belt – Amateur Wellness has officially launched!

This is by no means to say that there isn’t wellness provision for young people – in fact it has done nothing but grow in recent years! I loved using mindfulnessforteens.com (2) for example, to learn more. And this site is not intended to criticise any existing provision but instead create a platform to run alongside it! My intention of this project is to grow together with any audience I accumulate (haha!) and increase awareness and understanding of wellness from a teenager someone perhaps more relatable to young people. For my EPQ project, over the last year I have been doing a lot of research on mediation and ‘wellness’ however, I want to make it clear that I am not an expert and I wholly recommend speaking to your local buddhist centre or contacting someone like Dr. Dzung Vo of Mindfulness for Teens to find out more. These are just my musings – all and any feedback and constructive criticism is greatly welcomed!

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SOURCES:

(1) Gevinson, T. 2018. Rookie Magazine Website [Online]. [Accessed 3rd September 2019]. Available from: https://www.rookiemag.com

(2) Mindfulness for Teens. n/a. Mindfulness for Teens Website [Online]. [Accessed 3rd September 2019]. Available from: http://mindfulnessforteens.com