Stress

As a result of the increased demand for acute care for Service Members who have sustained injuries in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, the level of perceived stress and other associated variables among military healthcare providers is even more pronounced.

Research suggests that many counselors experience stress in the workplace. In fact, Sears and Navin (1983) reported that 14.8% of school counselors viewed counseling as “very stressful,” 50.4% rated it “moderately stressful,” and 30.1% found it “mildly stressful.” In addition, Arvay and Uhlemann (1996) reported that 16% of counselors working with trauma patients felt that they were highly psychologically fatigued. Just over a quarter (26%) reported that they were dissatisfied with their level of productivity at work, and 14% claimed to experience extreme stress levels similar to patients who have post-traumatic stress disorder.

There are inherently different types of meditation used to manage stress. Focused attention meditation (FAM) techniques involve sustaining attention on a specific object. Open monitoring techniques (OMM) involve moment-to-moment, nonreactive, monitoring of the present experience. 

Although the efficacy of meditation-based interventions has been widely studied, research with homeless groups is minimal. Homeless people suffer from increased levels of stress, emotional distress, and negative life events that can present a complicated web of inseparable stressors.

Objectives: There is evidence that yoga practice is associated with dec reased stre ss, worry, and depre ss i on, and with improved mindfulness-based skills. These findings had not been previously replicated for a sample of college students. This study evaluated whether iRest yoga-nidra practice was associated with reduced perceived stress, worry, and depression, and increased mind fulness in a sample of college students.