On Thursday morning, BRAC University was different. Amidst the chaos of lectures, assignments and exams, the multipurpose hall opened its arms to a safe space dedicated to mental and physical well-being. Hundreds of students walked in, and they were asked to breathe. Not to network, not to listen to a keynote, not to perform enthusiasm for a camera. Just to breathe, to arrive in their bodies, and to be honest, at least for a moment, about how they were doing.
The 3rd National Youth Wellness Festival, organised by The Flow Fest and co-presented with Prime Now, has never been a conventional student event. Over two days this week, it brought together 1,000 young people from ten universities across Dhaka under a single, deceptively simple theme: You Be You: Find Your Flow. By the time it closed on Thursday afternoon, it had made a credible case for being the most significant gathering on youth mental health this country has seen.
The festival opened each morning with welcome addresses from Shazia Omar, the writer, yogini and activist who founded The Flow Fest. She started by asking, “When you are feeling down, what does the world look like?” A simple yet incredibly hard question that laid the foundation for what Flow Fest was about. Allowing a space where people can change their inner frequencies, explore themselves and be more mindful.
Renowned financial services innovator Lowell Campbell echoed her statements. He quickly set the tone of the event by joking about sports, then discussed the importance of mental wellbeing. He said, “I’ve been around the world doing interesting stuff, but life is stressful, very hard. I just want all of you to take a moment for yourself, to chill out, to be yourself. Because it’s important to embrace yourself.”
Before panels, sessions, or any of the formal programming began, the floor was given over to yoga. Flow instructor Maisha Khan led students through breath, body and meditation. The message was simple: before the day asks anything of you, you get to arrive in yourself.
Following the interactive yoga session was an interesting panel discussion by Assistant Professor Dr Sinthia Alam, Nusrat Jahan Deepa and Associate Professor Dr Hossain Imran. They engaged the students in a panel discussion through debunking common healthcare myths, answering frequently asked questions and giving some well-needed general welfare advice. The session ended with a special quiz segment, where the winners were given prizes by Medix.
Then started the fun with a Salsa masterclass by Havana Salsa. The students were pulled into the rhythm of something most of them had never tried before, and the room went with it entirely. Hips found the beat, laughter filled the gaps, and for a stretch of time, the festival stopped being an event and became something closer to a party.
Swagata followed with hip hop, and the energy did not drop. If anything, it shifted into something looser and more uninhibited, students freestyling, mimicking moves, finding their footing and then abandoning it for something wilder. Both sessions did what the best parts of the festival did throughout. They reminded everyone in the room that joy is not a reward you earn after doing serious work. Sometimes joy is work.
The afternoon mental health panel by Prottoy Medical tackled what the organisers described as one of the most urgent and least spoken-about topics in youth wellness: addiction and its relationship to mental health. Moderated by Minhajul Haque, with panellists Afifa Jahan, Ashik Abdullah, Monica Nayer, Joya Berlin and Tamima Tanzin, it offered students something they receive very rarely, which is an honest and non-judgmental conversation about the things that pull people under and what returning from them looks like.
After the panel discussion that had asked the room to sit with some of the harder truths about mental health, Farzana Gunjan offered something different: ten minutes of guided meditation, and the silence that followed felt earned. Students, having just spent their time in honest and difficult conversation, were invited to set it down for a moment and simply be still.
Tabith Awal, BFF President and Chief Guest, emphasised the importance of mental well-being with his address after the meditation session. “Our body and our mind are our most important assets. When we feel good, we can do good things. When you smile at someone, they smile back. That’s what we are here to do, to do good things and to share goodness.”
Then there was a Poi spinning performance by Poi Nation that brought the spectacle. Glowing props cut through the air in looping, hypnotic arcs, and the crowd that had just been sitting in quiet reflection found themselves leaning forward, watching something that felt equal parts performance and art form.
After that came something altogether different. Ed Alcanzare from Playground MMA, joined by Ayan Hafiz, took the floor for a self-defence class that was as energising as it was practical. Students were on their feet, learning stances, trying holds, laughing at their own attempts and trying again.
Fourteen stations were set up across the venue, each offering a completely different route into rest, expression or release. Apart from Poi Nation and Ed Alcanzare’s Defend now, there was Write to Release with Kashfy Ahmed, Art Healing with Cartoon People, Caricatures with Ahsana, Portraits by Ohama, Move Now with Fahad Nazmul, Fencing by Deshi Fencers and Visionboard by Diti.
At the very back, there was graffiti with Aqua Paints, and mini canvas painting with Brushstory. The premise behind all of it was stated plainly: there are hundreds of ways to be healthy. Find the one that resonates with you. Healing, the festival insisted, does not always look like sitting still. The event closed with a live performance by Vintage Theory, because music and joy also belong to wellness.
What the 3rd National Youth Wellness Festival offered, across all of it, was something that sounds simple but is genuinely difficult to build: unhurried space. Space for a thousand young people to be asked how they are doing, and to have whatever answer they gave received without judgment or redirection. Bangladesh’s youth mental health gap is real, and, by most measures, it is widening.
Shazia Omar said, “We have three messages we are working hard to get across. To have fun, you need to be healthy. Healing happens through connection, not isolation. Finally, seeking help is courageous, not shameful.” The Flow Fest, which has spent over a decade building a wellness community now numbering more than 40,000 people across Dhaka, Dubai and Galle, has been working to spread that message campus by campus, year by year.
Thursday was not the end of that work. It was, if anything, a demonstration that the work is possible. Young Bangladeshis are not waiting to be convinced that their mental health matters. They have always known. They just needed somewhere to take it seriously.
