Alumni Spotlight: Ethan Saal '14
Every single person experiences stress. Maybe a lot, maybe a little—but it’s a fact of existence. What matters is how we handle it, how we help ourselves and others get through it. Ethan Saal ’14 has made it his mission through his company bmindful to extol the importance of taking a beat. Of practicing mindfulness, grounding, and meditation—especially in the competitive world of sports.
“Everyone is so much more than an athlete,” says Ethan. “Student athletes are suffering and they can’t always see there is more to them than their sport.” He says this from experience; from playing multiple sports in high school which made for very long days, to attending Brandeis and playing on the Men’s Tennis team, he knows the performance pressure familiar to any athlete. And how difficult it can be to cope with the realities of rigorous schedules—practice, studying, maintaining relationships and social lives—and that a lot of people need to talk about it.
“[bmindful’s] motivation is to create a non-judgmental safe space for people to come in authentically and speak their mind,” he says. “I really struggled to ask for help in college because it felt like a sign of weakness, but now I’ve come to realize that asking for help is courageous and an act of bravery. That took a long time to understand.” The company is focused on fostering happier and healthier relationships to sports, with an emphasis on culture-building. Ethan has built off of his own mental health and meditation journey to create an atmosphere where clients can pause to reflect on what matters, and find more presence in their daily lives. He’s studied meditation since college, where he founded an early iteration of bmindful, offering weekly mindfulness and meditation courses. So it seemed only natural to combine this knowledge to another passion of his—athletics.
Ethan always starts by saying the same thing to his clients: “I’m just one of you guys, I’m not on a pedestal. I want to be real with all of you.” He elaborated on this: “I feel like I have a deep empathy to that group—I can relate more to that student athlete than an arts student—I can look at a client and say I see you, I hear you, I can fully relate to what you’re feeling, and it allows me to connect with them on a deeper level.” Since he’s struggled with the same weight of sports-based pressure, he’s in an ideal position to share his thoughtfulness with students in similar boats. The empathy is stronger than the sympathy student athletes might get from somewhere else.
Ethan’s based in Denver, following a move to Boulder, which he describes as “a mecca of mindfulness.” It was the perfect foil to a fast-paced New York City upbringing, which isn’t the most peaceful of environments, to say the least. Now, he finds his days filled with extra long runs, plenty of opportunities for personal mindfulness, and calls with students who need the motivation to take a beat in their busy lives.
Of course, starting a company wasn’t easy, or very intuitive—Ethan says the process is still full of surprises. “It’s been a massive learning process. Billing, accounting, managing people as a CEO, creating a curriculum… there’s not one thing that’s not been challenging. But how much I love it is the only thing that keeps me going and wanting to learn. I learn from my students every day. I always tell them they’re my biggest teacher. I’m here with knowledge that I hope helps, but I’ll be learning from them, tailoring content based on what’s going to work for them.”
The groundwork laid from Ethan’s high school journey at Heschel is still ultra relevant to his work. “Heschel teachers had an uncommon interest in you. They took the time to ask you questions about how you’re doing, made you feel seen as a student. They don’t give up on you. Their door was always open, and that has taught me to do the same with my own students.” As a student at Heschel, Ethan’s schedule was demanding, as was maintaining a work ethic from a dual curriculum school. But he always felt genuine care from his Heschel community. A care that he now applies to every student that walks into his classroom.