by Suja

Created on: May 06, 2009

A day at the beach would be ideal and a perfect way to bring a person both physically and mentally to an even keel. Just thinking about it with eyes closed does the trick too, if one has five minutes to spare in between a busy schedule. An ideal calming scene at the beach would be when the waves come rolling in, crashing into the sands, and then pulling out. One can watch mesmerized the unfolding scene. The water as it recedes leaves tiny holes that bubble air out. The sand often looks like it is gasping for air. Just as it recovers another wave comes in and buries the holes all over again and the bubbles start all over again. In a twinkle of an eye one can see a little crab slither away running straight into the oncoming waves. One would then sit there wondering why the crab raced straight into the ocean and what kind of death wishes does it have. Shouldn't it be going the other way to the safety of the rocks and hide under its serene shade, away from the maddening waves? These might be the typical questions that arise in the mind if one is spending a day languorously on the beach.

Then on shifting one's gaze slowly to the other end of the beach; a few gulls sit around waiting for something to happen making one wonder. Are they waiting for the ocean to bring in the feed? They sit like festoons in grey and white, like little sentinels watching and guarding the ocean. After a while they flutter away forming patterns in the sky. Then there are miles and miles of endless sand that one can stare at, frozen in time leaving all the worries behind. A lazy sense of being suspended in space takes over one's mind. Eyes droop and falling asleep on the sand is as common as salivating looking at caf Mocha. The warm sun sends a tingling sensation through the skin transferring one to a world away from the current one. A journey into nothingness; a journey that relaxes one and de-stresses from the everyday routines, travails and tribulations is what relaxing by the beach is all about.

Hans Selye a Canadian endocrinologist was one of the founding fathers of stress research. He had espoused that the word 'stress' can be a good or bad thing depending on how one perceives it. The biochemical effects of stress are experienced irrespective of whether a person is in a positive or negative situation according to him. He also was of the opinion that the stress of an exhilarating, successful work was rewarding while negativity was detrimental. These days an accepted definition of stress attributed to Richard S Lazarus is that stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources an individual is able to gather. Dr. Lazarus was a psychologist who began rising to prominence in the 1960s who was a pioneer in the study of emotion and stress especially their relation to cognition. He was well renowned for his theory of cognitive-meditational theory within emotion. Intuitively a person knows when he is stressed as it results in easy irritation, a headache maybe, a sense of being purposeless and directionless in addition to the nerves being frayed.

Life can get overwhelming and chaotic at times and when that happens it is so important for us to find our centre and calm ourselves. Everyone needs stress busters of some kind and it varies from person to person. Some may find their calming element by creative outlets such as writing, yoga, for others it may be fishing and for some a day at the beach is enough to relax and rejuvenate the mind enabling it for the next task or goal ahead as the case may be to bring back a sense of well-being.

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