With the holidays putting everybody a little more on edge than usual, the Rural Alberta Business Centre in Cold lake is holding a workshop on stress management tomorrow.
Kathryne Hotte with the centre says the numbers on stress paint a rather bleak picture. “Some stats to consider that we’ve been looking at is that 45 per cent of adults experience the negative effects of stress and 75 to 90 per cent of doctor visits are stress related. It contributes to six leading causes of death. Stress is huge.”
The workshop is scheduled from 9 to 12 at the RABC offices. The topic of stress will be covered from a variety of angles, starting with what exactly stress is to begin with. “People often don’t understand how it manifests,” Hotte explains. “So we do take an inventory of your stress levels and we ask participants to do a quick tally on a score sheet of 43, what we call 43 life events. That will help them identify if they are in fact stressed. We go through some symptoms and causes and then we talk about some stress management techniques.”
Some of those techniques include meditation and reflexology, with guests coming in to demonstrate. Another topic will be identifying “good” stress from bad among many others