More about the MindStream Programme
It All Comes Down to Flavor
In the dining room, students savor meals expertly crafted by a Registered Dietitian and prepared under the guidance of our Executive Chef (with special attention to medically founded allergies or intolerance). Students will fully integrate the message of FLOW; that healthy eating is a joyful pleasure, our inexhaustible source of energy, the core of a well-lived life, and as natural and effortless as breathing.
Culinary Training
Learn to Grow
Students will learn to grow their own food from planting the seed to picking the harvest. Our outdoor, experiential and edible garden will be the starting place for teens to learn and establish healthy eating habits
Learn to Cook
Garden lessons are applied in the kitchen where teens learn how to prepare tasteful, healthy and nutritious meals alongside our chef and staff. Daily culinary classes provide hands-on experience and encouragement in preparing healthy meals from scratch. Our students learn to identify nutritious foods and will return home with the culinary skills to make them taste good too!
Make it Count
Learning how to properly grow, harvest and prepare food not only ensures a healthy and energetic future, it also helps continue your education. After spending a semester at MindStream, students are able to earn credits in culinary arts and nutrition.
FLOW
What is FLOW?
Fresh, Local, Organic, Whole Food Style and Nutrition Program (FLOW): This MindStream program rekindles our natural relationship with simple, healthy eating and demonstrates the essential life-skill of how to select and prepare one’s own food.
Philosophy
Meals that are prepared with seasonal, farm fresh, local and wholesome ingredients taste better and - when eaten in appropriate quantity - will lead to optimum weight and wellness.
Goals
The goals are ambitious yet attainable: demonstrate, stimulate and celebrate – with full student participation – an excitement for real food. Our passionate and skilled staff helps students discover the joy of delicious eating and how much better we feel, physically and emotionally, when we nourish rather than just ‘feed’ our bodies.
Culinary education
In the Soul Garden, students help harvest fresh plants for the kitchen and work hands-on with our chefs, gaining essential life-skills and learning to prepare simple, delicious, super-fresh, natural healthy meals. In the classroom, students will learn the importance of portion sizes, how to make good choices when eating out, how to substitute ingredients in recipes, how to navigate the grocery store and decipher food labels.
Let's Get Moving!
Everywhere students go, there are areas designed to play a role in our overall fitness program. We have athletic areas that feature soccer, volleyball, basketball, and kickball. There is a half-mile fitness track around our 20 acre lake that has fitness stations built in to provide an unlimited number of opportunities for activity. So whether you’re doing yoga at the lake house, working with the trainers at our local fitness center, cardiokickboxing under the pavilion or working through our various fitness stations, there are more activities than there are hours in the day.
A MindStream Day of Fitness
We start the day with some light stretching and a walk/run around the lake. We’ll take our time to work on flexibility and balance as we enjoy the beautiful Lowcountry morning. Before lunch, we will have our focused-phase workout. Here we will work on correct movement patterns and body weight exercises. This may include an exercise class like cardio kickboxing, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Zumba or even suspension training. Mid-day we will head off to the soccer or kickball fields for some fun team sports. Before dinner we’ll enjoy a sunset stroll around campus or a pick up game of basketball.
Is this like P.E. at school?
Absolutely not! Most P.E. class are based on fitness standards created for entire school systems. They use general guidelines based on national norms, which means you have to fit into their system. At MindStream, we fit our system around you - and you define your path. Everything is based off your abilities and individual fitness levels. Our four-phase program is based on the values we gain from your initial medical fitness evaluation. Then, we train you off of your own base line. Your fitness level sets your program. As your fitness level increases, so does the pace of the program and the difficulty of the activities. In short, our program is all about you and how best to help you achieve the highest level of fitness in a safe and individually driven program.