Emotional release | Multi-disciplinary stress management

In this, the final week of Stress management we'll be looking at emotional release and multi-disciplinary stress management.

Weekly tasks

• Read Body Mind Integration in the personal growth process.
  This article gives you an overview of the dominant model for understanding how emotional release occurs.
  
  
• Elluminate Thursday 10am - 12
  Emotional release | Multi-disciplinary stress management
  

Focus on the assessment

On Monday this week in stress management we're going to have a good look at the assessment, and writing the case study. For the rest of the week I want you to focus on practice and experiential learning.

Weekly tasks

1. Elluminate Monday, 14 September 1-3pm
   The assessment - writing a case study
   Somatic experience
   
   
2. Assess yourself
   * Go through the complete assessment process with yourself, and record the results somewhere.
   * Consider how this relates to the models of stress we've discussed
   
   
3. Create a stress log for yourself, and carry it with you over the next three weeks recording the situations that cause you stress and your reactions to them (as discussed in class).
   
   
4. Assess a classmate in the same way that you've just assessed yourself but including palpation & breath assessment.
   
   
5. Get started on the case study if you haven't already!!!
   

Getting deeper into the protocol

This week in stress management we'll have a deeper look into the stress management protocol that was introduced in the last session, and we'll investigate different elements that may be incorporated within a stress management programme.

Weekly tasks

1. Elluminate Monday 1-3pm
   
   
2. Elluminate Thursday 10-12
   

Chronic Stress & the stress management process

This week in Stress management we'll be looking at the effects of chronic stress, approaches to stress assessment, and we will overview the stress management model that we expect you to use with clients.

Weekly tasks

1. Elluminate - Monday 1-3pm
   The effects of chronic stress
   
   
2. Make some notes about what was discussed in Monday's session. Summarise these & refer to them over the next 3 weeks when you're working with clients. Does the evidence under your fingers agree with the theory presented?
   
   
3. Try to come up with a list of things that can cause stress. What has caused stress to you in your life?
   
   
4. Elluminate - Thursday 10 - 12am
   Causes of stress
   Approaches to stress assessment
   Introduction to the stress management process
   

Introduction to stress management

This week we'll be getting started on Stress management by having a look at the question "What is stress?"

Weekly tasks

1. If you haven't already, familiarise yourself with the Course page.
   Note that there are a range of resources at the bottom of the page which may be of use to you in the course of your studies. Stress management resources (Wikieducator) contains a set of resources which have mostly been developed specifically for this course.
   
   
2. Download and review the course assessment. Don't worry about getting started on this yet, I'm not anticipating that you will get going with it for another month or so.
   
   
3. Elluminate - Monday 1-3pm.
   Introduction to Stress management
   This presentation will contain some fundamental ideas & models which you will need to have a good grasp of if you want to really understand the rest of the course. Interpretation of your clients' state of stress using these models is also a required part of the course assessment.
   
   I strongly recommend that in the time between this lecture and the next, you study this material to clarify your understanding.
   
   

Looking forward

1. In the next practical block you will be introduced to your first relaxation technique - breath retraining. We'll quickly run through some theory behind the use of breathing in stress management, will practice assessment of breathing patterns and breath retraining.
   
   
2. Two weeks later we'll get into looking at the chronic effects of stress, causes of stress, and assessment for stress.
   

Focussing on the exam

I'm sure you're all focussing now on the exam & end of semester clinical assessment. There is still one task to complete.

Multi-disciplinary stress management

As of 10pm on Sunday, no-one has worked on the case study which Judy prepared for you to help you to understand multi-disciplinary stress management. Can you please jump in there now, and answer the questions which she has posed.

Regarding the exam

You could be assessed on anything that we've covered so far. Remember that the exam will be composed of some questions on theories and some case studies that you will be expected to apply your learning to. You should be ensuring that you understand all of the theory that we've covered, and you should be practicing applying this theory to the case studies which will be provided to you through the Intermediate massage blog.

Multi-disciplinary stress management

This week your focus in stress management will be learning about how to work in conjunction with psychological health professionals to help your clients achieve their stress management goals.

Tasks this week

The week will start with an elluminate session on Monday at 11am. In this session Judy will introduce the ideas that you will be working with over the following week.

You will then be directed to apply these ideas to some work over the week.