The Effects Of Stress And Hatha Yoga As A Coping Strategy

16 Pages 4114 Words

r for your body, sparkling, clear, alert, calm, and above all tranquil.




Introduction
Modern society seems progressively more prone to “stress”. This widespread phenomenon is expressed and observed in many settings, from periodicals and tabloids to books and leaflets in medical establishments. An individual’s ambition - to achieve and obtain as much as is mentally and physically attainable has developed into a fixation for a vast amount of people. Of course there is no wrong doing in wanting nice things or exerting your best effort, but sometimes impatience and the number of goals set at the same time in our lives can be the cause of tension, leading more often than not to stress.
To define the concept of stress in clinical terms permits a brief examination of stress in an objective manner but more interestingly allows examination of the suggestion that: reduction of stress symptoms and reactivity to stress can be achieved by using Yoga, an ancient approach to mind-body wellbeing and self- awareness, as a coping strategy for this phenomenon.
Stress is a condition arising, when there is a stressor (events or circumstances a person perceives at threatening or harmful) and stress reactivity known as the fight-or-flight response (the physiological component of the response to stressors). Hence, in this way, stress is operationally defined. (Bernstein, et al., 2003, p. 92-97).
Since man’s early ancestors, stress has been a major factor of life on earth. On encountering a tiger our ancestors may well have experienced the fight-or-flight response, an underlying biological mechanism – which they relied upon for survival. But as humans have evolved, so has stress. The fight-or-flight (or stress reactivity) response is the preparation of the body, by the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system, to stand and fight in a threatening situation (known as the stressor) or, if deciding that the situation is ...