The Effects Of Stress And Hatha Yoga As A Coping Strategy

16 Pages 4114 Words

too intimidating, to flee from it. Once out of danger, the parasympathetic nervous system would then work to bring the body back to a homeostatic calm . (Bernstein, et al., 2003, p. 92-97).
In today’s society, humans don’t encounter wild tigers (or not often) but we do have present-day threats in our lives to metaphorically fight or flee from. Realizing that you are just about to run a pedestrian over, and having the ability to slam on the breaks within a split second, is thanks to this intricate biological mechanism. So it is still a much needed function of the body.
Unfortunately though, this response is also triggered under conditions that are not physically dangerous but where emotional stimulation disturbs our psychosomatic balance. Thus, evolution of human cognition has over taken its physiological counterpart, leaving us ill-equipped for threats which endanger our self-view or intellectual pursuits, rather than our objective health (p.8-9).
So let’s start with stressors. Stressors can be catastrophic events, such as earthquak...