If anyone felt that stress was a relatively new phenomenon ushered in by a fast-paced modern life with its complexities and everyday deadlines, problems and responsibilities, banish the thought.
This now commonplace irritant finds mention in the ‘Bhagavad Gita' and the ‘Upanishads' too, said speakers at the launch of a ‘Stress Awareness Month' (SAM) here on Monday. They agreed though, that today's fast life indeed compounded the phenomenon.
This was the message sought to be driven home at a function organised here by the Hyderabad branch of International Stress Management Association (ISMA). Its Honorary Chairman, former IAS officer P.V.R.K. Prasad said that in an era of modernisation across all spheres of activity, everyone was in a tearing hurry, everyday. “Just like all those concepts for which India is known for, ‘stress' too went abroad and has come back to us in a distilled all-pervading version that spares none,” he said.
P. Geervani, Special Chief Secretary, Health, underscored the need for awareness to be improved across all sections of people and recalled a recent survey that found only five per cent of the Indian population actually knew about stress and its affects. Among factors that were leading to spiralling stress levels were the dominance of the nuclear family culture as the joint family system was on the decline, she said.
S. Balasubramanyam, Commissioner, Technical Education, said that unlike popular perception, those involved in the conduct of a public examination were more prone to stress than those who actually wrote the examination.
ISMA Board member B. Udaya Kumar Reddy said it was part of the Federation of ISMA, founded in 1973 and present in 11 nations, with India being the 12. For the first time since 1999, he said they were organising a ‘SAM' like it was done abroad.
Keywords: Stress Management
Stress-Is the widely used terminology in our every day life. It is just like a cancer spreading its wings to all walks of our life. In one way, we can define stress as something related to attachment. Try to be in a detached way of attachment.It is very difficult to practice, which is widely proclaimed in our ancient epics like the Bhagavat Gita. In Gita, Arjuna asked to Krishna, "How can I fight against my own relatives and elders?". This question was asked in a stressful situation. Then Krishna replied, "In a war-front, you are a warrior. You don't have to think about whom you are attacking. Moreover, you are fighting for your right". In this way Krishna tries to detach the attachments of Arjuna with his opponents. Similarly, if we are able to detach ourselves from the worldly attachments, we can reduce our sufferings as well as stress.
Human beings have been stressed from time immemorial. Just imagine how
the primitive men would have lived. Hunting every day for food. No
proper houses to take cover from temperature, rain and storms. Stress is
just expending energy. Energy given to the body in the form of food gets
depleted in stressful situations. People under stress should ensure that
they take recommended amount of proteins, potassium rich foods, b-
vitamins, magnesium rich foods. This will help the body in meeting
stressful situations.
Stress is the cause for both achievements and debacles in life and also a result of such feats or problems. Play has been scientifically proved to reduce stress in young children at the same time improve their competitive spirits, skills and ability to accept defeat as part of life. When competition reaches a stage of unrealistic proportions stress reaches unnatural levels and becomes harmful. Example, for 7000 seats over 10 lakh children compete at IIT, JEE. Parents and teachers should rather play a constructive role instead of egging their wards to do better and better. Children should be harnessed on the importance of knowledge, the strength of unity, the virtues of selflessness and they should be exposed to the problems faced by not so privileged in the society as well. One way of reducing stress is to see either entertainment which gives happiness or a health problem needing hospitalisation for example as an activity in life. This does not mean one would be bereft of emotions.
Knowing or not knowing the stress is only assumption.Every body knows when they feel tense are troubled.The most important thing,the educated,high ranking or affluent parents push their children from young age into a kind of stress cycle by pushing them to competition in varied fields.I many times feel sorry for the stressed children waiting for their ranks,with stressed or tense moods.If really the Forums are interested to work for eliminating the stress,they have to start this from their own families and avoiding subjecting family members to unnecessary bouts of competition on A to Z misc things.
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