SOSC1980 Psychology and Everyday Life

Individual Outline (5%)

Group #: 43
Your Name: Partner’s Name:
Your SID: Partner’s SID:

Task #1:
List the 3 strategies that you personally use to reduce stress in life. Pick one and
evaluate its effectiveness:
1.Listen to Music
2.Drink Tea
3.Chatting with friends

Choose one of the above strategies and explain its effectiveness of stress reduction:
Drink Tea
 Drinking tea is proven to lower cortisol level which is a stress hormone in the body
 Tea consumption can aid recovery from stress through psychoneuroendo-crine and
inflammatory pathways (Andrew Steptoe et al., 2006)
 Elf iodine, Amino acid found in tea, helps induce a calming sensation over the body

List the 3 strategies that your partner adopts (no need to evaluate effectiveness):
1.Social support
2.Afternoon nap
3.Time Management

Task #2:
We broke down Task #2 below for you. Discuss with your partner each part and list
the main points for each part in point form:

a) Identify 1 way that you heard is an effective way of reducing stress but neither you nor your
partner have tried (or use consistently):

Doing Yoga

b) Describe what it is and explain why it is effective (you may list the research findings/articles
that you plan on using but it’s not required for this Outline):

 Yoga is a combination of light physical (stretching) and mental (mediation) exercise

 Yoga is effective to strike a great balance of development between body and mind
 Study was found that yoga can increase sympathetic activity and decrease stress level
 Yoga raises the level of Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in brain leading to a lower
 chance of having anxiety-related disorders (Chris Streeter al., 2010)
 Yoga also reduces the level of catecholamine in brain resulting in decreasing the activity of
reticular formation, thus it can help relieve stress
 Study revealed that yoga has anxiolytic effects related to increase in melatonin with yoga
posture. Hence, it serves as a mechanism to reduce stress level
 Study also discovered that ‘Ujjayi’ pranayama (a breathing technique widely employed in
yoga practices) can help calm nervous system which helps lower the resting heart rate
 The breathing technique is also effective to delay the onset of mental fatigue and help
improve mental efficiency

c) Consider 2 barriers people commonly have in adopting this stress coping strategy and suggest
ways to overcome them.

1st barrier: Busy lifestyle

Suggestion:
 Yoga doesn’t require a set of complicated pros including yoga mats, yoga blocks and a huge
gym. It is living practice every moment of your life
 YogaWorks: Practice chair yoga and mediate for a moment at workplace either lunchtime or
breaks, it takes you 5-10 minutes
 Time Management: Set up a list of tasks to be finished daily with efficient workflow and
attainable timeline
 Spend some time on practicing yoga to relieve the amount of stress between task, it can help
refresh your mind and raise work efficiency and productivity again

2nd barrier: Costly

Suggestion:
 Yoga classes in franchised gym generally price high especially for hiring personal trainers
 Read books, articles and other literature are readily available with much lower costs to
deepen your knowledge of yoga skills
 There are also plenty of free online videos in YouTube or Facebook available to beginners
 Yoga classes sponsored by government in community centers are also alternatives with
cheaper tuition fees compared to yoga classes in gym

d) Discuss how you can incorporate this strategy in your lives.

 Cope with 2 stressors: work hassles and health hassles

 Work hassles: Yoga can relieve the stress level from heavy burden of workload, it
helps workers to attain work-life balance.
 Practice yoga even at your work desk and chair with some basic chair-sitting posture

 Health hassles: Yoga can help alleviate shoulder tension, neck and upper back pain, it
helps worker to achieve better physical health
 Regularly practice yoga can train our commitment and perseverance on doing
 exercises on a regular basis
 It also facilitates a good practice of consistently monitoring our physical health

Group work requires planning and coordination between partners on various tasks.
Please list your agreed work allocation and internal deadline(s) of your group paper:

Work allocation:
1. Trend and background research
2. Scientific study research:
-Effectiveness
-Barrier 1: busy lifestyle and its recommendation
-Barrier 2: costly tuition fee and its recommendation
-Incorporate the strategy into our daily life

2. Grammar checking

3. Finalized version checking:

Internal deadline:
First meeting: 28/3
Outline internal deadline: 29/3
Second meeting: 4/4
First draft internal deadline: 10/4
Third meeting (improve first draft): 11/4
Final draft internal deadline: 15/4
Finalize group paper: 16/4

Did you and your partner reach consensus about the above outline, work allocation
and internal deadline?

Yes / No