Worry and Stress

LESSON: 1

This text was machine-transcribed from the printed book and may contain errors. Select the words and choose “Report a mistake”.

Introduction: Introduce the topic of stress to the kids.

Goals: To make the kids aware about a topic called stress and how stress is related to worry.

Click: You are not in tension. You are the tension. Realize it and relieve from it.

About the topic: Worry and stress are closely interrelated; they are like parent and child. One cannot exist without the other.

Stress is one of biggest destroyer of health in today's world. Conditioning of the child causes stress, when parents force a child to study it creates stress. Even clever child will not perform well when conditioned too much. For example, stress related to exams , even brilliant students sometimes fail to perform because of the stress created by the parents.

The confusion between our true nature and what we pretend is stress or tension.

Too much worrying leads to stress. When we are stressed out we worry a lot.

Mind is not a thing as we all have been taught, it is a process. It is not a noun but a verb.

We are not stressed; we are the sources of stress.

The moment we start believing that our life is depressed, your life indeed becomes depressed.

Stress makes you process too many things in the mind.

Even if you are thinking about the past and future, you are doing it in the present moment. If you are aware of that, you can be liberated and remain in restful awareness, you don't need to struggle or suffer to be in present moment.

If you think life is only the waking stage, you will have intense stress.

Breeze cannot move the mountain; time is a breeze on your inner space. There is a part of you which is consistent and constant and can't be moved by the time passing over you. Experience that space catch the space, be in that space. The outer world follows the inner world. If you think the inner world follows the outer world you are wrong.

[Figure: Stress illustration]

Assessment: • What is stress? • How is stress related to worry? • How is stress related to ego or mind? • Name some incidents when you got stressed out? • What is mind? • Is stress only for adults or do children also feel very stressed? • What happens when you get stressed? • Where is stress in our body? • What happens when you feel too much stress? • Have you felt happily stressful? • How does one become the source of stress instead of being stressed?

Evaluation: Evaluate the knowledge of the kids by asking multiple questions.

Conclusion: Conclude the topic by reviewing important details. You are not stressed; you are the source of stress because it is from your mind/ inner chatter.

[Figure: Stress illustration]

Art of the day: Drawing the stress emotion

Materials needed: Plain sheet, sketch pen, chalk, pencil.

Procedure: Encourage the children to depict the stress emotion in a pictorial form. They can use a sketch pen, chalk and pencil.

Inference: Mostly stress drawing will be more of scribbling, because of the continuous Usually depicting a drawing of stress will include a lot of scribbling thought patterns that occur in the mind. Mind will experience too many racing thoughts while in a state of stress and comes out in pictorial form as intense scratch marks or as scribbling.

[Figure: Stress]

Activity -1 – Mustard Seeds in water

Material required:
● Bowls
● Water
● Mustard seeds

Preparation: Have the materials ready, and gather the class in a circle.

Presentation and discussion: Where is the mind? In our heads and in every muscle. We need the mind to perform every task.

The bowl is the mind and the seeds are thoughts.

So first: Take the bowl, and pour in some water (each child should have 1 bowl). In each bowl drop one mustard seed each. Give them 3 seconds to remove the mustard seed. Then add 10 seeds to each bowl, and give them 10 sec to remove them. Because of the time frame, they will get very stressed and quickly try to remove them, when really the easiest way is to drop the mind. Just push the mind away, un-clutch from the thoughts.

After Activity What does mustard represent? How can we un-clutch from our thoughts? How do we feel after un-clutching from our thoughts? “Empty” Why can't we take the mustard one at a time from the bowl? Where is it we feel empty?

Activity -2 – Punching Holes

This activity is about stress and how one thing leads to another how worries and negativity create more worries and negativity.

Material required:
Paper leaves, newspaper (variations).
Safety hole, puncher machine.

Presentation:

Gather the class and talk about stress, worry and negativity.

Using the safety hole puncher and with the material of choice, demonstrate how stress affects us, how worries build up and negativity spreads. It spoils our body leaving holes/wounds in our body.

As you punch holes, it affects other things. Have the children each take turns punching holes and seeing the effect.

Conclusion: We need to leave the stress, worry and let go, and focus on the present.

Work shop

Topic of discussion: What they knew when they felt each emotion in each deeper layer

Explanation: Explain to them to talk about each emotion in one level and then to the next deeper level and so on.

For example: I give a present to her because I like her She is very nice She never gets upset with me and so on........ For Example:- I am getting stressed out while doing exams because I could not remember what I studied. I have to write more My parents scold me when I do not score well My teacher compares my score with others My parents compare me with my brother who always gets first and so on.........