Stress Reduction & Wellness

1. What is stress and how does it affect physical and emotional health?

2. Look at ways to cope with stress

3. Use mindfulness meditation techniques

4. Create positive and meaningful personal contacts

5. Explore ways to create emotional health.

In this course you will learn to identify stress, establish what situations, thoughts or feelings stress you out and learn ways to reduce this stress. Identifying mind traps, will help you to become more aware of your thinking patterns and enable you to be more mindful of them, allowing you to increase your resilience to stressors and life difficulties.

The course consists of video lectures with voice and documents, together with supplementary materials such as videos, and audios to enhance your practice. If you complete the course in one sitting it should take about half a day to one day to complete.

In a review of research into the benefits of mindfulness, the American Psychological Association found that many studies show that practicing mindfulness reduces stress. (Davis, D. M., Hayes, J., A. What are the benefits of mindfulness? Monitor on Psychology, July/August 2012). Studies show evidence that mindfulness increases positive emotions and decreases negative emotions and anxiety. Farb et al., found that mindfulness shifts a person's ability to use emotion regulation strategies, enabling them to experience emotion selectively.

Farb NAS, Anderson AK, Mayberg H, et al. Minding one's emotions: Mindfulness training alters the neural expression of sadness. Emotion. 2010;10(1):25–33.

Besides these benefits there are many others, such as: boosting working memory, ability to focus attention, becoming less emotionally reactive, increased relationship satisfaction, increased immune functioning, improved sense of well-being, to list a few.

Reference: American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/ce-corner.aspx