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Students destressed in the Lower Quad Friday with free chair massages and therapy dogs, which were offered as a part of an event for National Stress Out Week.

Active Minds, a mental health awareness club, sponsored the event. Students could receive five-minute massages while enjoying the weather.

“I thought it was really neat,” senior Ashley Constant said. “The chair massage was great. It was really relaxing, and it’s a beautiful day.”

Active Minds’ senior Julianna Gorder helped organize the event, which is the final event in a week dedicated to relieving stress.

“This is only our third year, so we’re still kind of building ourselves up and establishing ourselves on campus,” Gorder said. “Throughout the week we had several talks going on. We had one talk going on about the benefits of nature on stress relief put on by one of the professors in the psych department.”

She added, “We had another talk the next day about food and mood and how your diet can affect your stress levels. Later on in the night, we had a meditation session led by another professor.”

Gorder said Active Minds’ main goals are to provide information about mental illness on college campuses and to provide information about counseling services on campus.

In addition to the massages, students also could play with Paws for Learning’s therapy dogs. The dogs are brought to different crisis events and college campuses for relaxation purposes because being around animals can be relaxing, Gorder said.

“The dogs were the best part,” junior Jake Latzka said. “Their tricks caught my attention when I walked by.”

Ryan Shaver can be reached at shav7005@stthomas.edu.