A mandated workshop to reduce stress?

One might think that these mandated workshops and blogs are just another bullet point on our long list of things to do, but I’m grateful for them. Each one introduces something new that is invaluable to our learning and professional lives, and this one in particular aimed to reduce stress, thus making us more productive in all areas. We began with common ways that we get stressed, and talked about preventing ourselves from being in stressful situations in the first place. As we all know, stress is inevitable, so it was important that we had active ways to combat it. One way was to be more mindful and aware of our surroundings. We had a sensory activity in which we examined every aspect of a raisin including how it looks, feels, smells, and tastes. We took a lot of time for this to really get to know the raisin. After we were through, we were calmer from having spent so much of our focus on becoming mindful of all of the sensations, and also from focusing on one task. We had done the same thing in my psychology class, so this was nothing new, but there was then a muscle relaxation exercise that I found to be very effective. It involved tensing your muscles, one group at a time working from head to toe, and then releasing them. Building up tension by flexing or stretching brought our stress level higher, but upon releasing and relaxing we felt relieved. It’s something I’ll definitely keep in mind as I make my way through college, where stress is just going to accumulate exponentially.