STRESS MANAGEMENT THROUGH FRAGRANCE THERAPY

STRESS simply defined is a 6 letter word that truly freaks all of us out. It is a normal psychological and physical reaction to the ever-increasing demands of life. It is a feeling of emotional or physical tension and can come from any event or thought that makes you feel nervous, angry or frustrated. Most Indians experience major challenges with stress at some point during the year and relatively minor challenges all year round.

Stress may be due to a hectic and stressful job/business, a chaotic home life, involving very little time for the family, pressures of expenses and taxes and bad habits such as unhealthy eating, drinking, smoking and late nights. All such mundane things can lead to a mountain of stress.

Our brain is equipped with an alarm system for our protection. When it perceives a threat, it signals our body to release a burst of hormones to fuel our capacity for a response. Once the threat is gone, our body is meant to return to a normal relaxed state. However the nonstop stress of modern day life means that the alarm system rarely shuts off. That’s why stress management becomes most important. Stress management gives us a range of tools to reset our alarm system. Without stress management, our body will always remain on high alert. Over time, high levels of stress lead to serious health issues. So don’t wait until stress has a negative impact on your health, relationships or quality of life. Start practicing a range of stress management techniques today.

1. Start with the Basics: The best way to manage stress is to start with the basics, quit smoking, eat healthier and started exercising regularly and drink lots of water. Simplify your schedule by reducing the number of commitments in your life to just the essential ones. Leave room for family time and socialising with friends and relatives.  Play with your kids and/or pets, they take your mind off stress. Television and/or movies if you love them can be de-stressing too. Be positive, have fun and try to smile and laugh regularly, even if it’s just for a few minutes.
2. One Thing at a time: Focus as much as possible on doing one thing at a time. Clear your table of distractions. Pick something to work on. Need to work on a presentation? Do only that. Remove distractions such as phones and email /WhatsApp notifications while you’re working on that presentation. If you’re going to do email, do only that. This takes practice, and you’ll get urges to do other things, especially distractions like Cell phone and WhatsApp messages. Just keep practicing and you’ll get better at it.
3. Develop a Hobby: Try to develop a hobby, any activity which you love like singing, drawing/painting, dancing, acting, cooking, gardening, meditating, taking a Nature walk and which can do regularly and which relaxes you. 
4. Be Early: It’s always hard to be early, especially with kids around. But being late can be very stressful. Try to be early wherever you go. Leave earlier by getting ready earlier or by scheduling more space between events.
5. Simplify your Finances:  Simplify your finances, try to eliminate your debt or at-least keep it at a manageable level.

All the above Stress management Techniques work much more effectively when implemented along with Fragrance Therapy. Fragrance therapy is the art and science of using fragrances for therapeutic use. When you encounter a foul odour, maybe due to the passing of a garbage truck or after encountering a blocked drain or stale food, your face immediately gets contorted and your stress level goes up. On the other hand if you are walking in a flower garden, your face automatically breaks into a smile, and you tend to relax and forget your worries. Research has proven that good fragrance especially based on Natural Ingredients has a rejuvenating impact on the mind and body. Susegad Fragrance products contain a significant percentage of Natural aroma ingredients and Natural essential oils, which are manufactured in-house by us at our manufacturing facility at Cuncolim, Goa. Susegad products are specifically designed to stimulate the smell receptors in the nose. These receptors then send messages to the emotional seat of the brain which rules over feelings, memory, behaviour and creativity and creates a positive mind-body experience resulting in relaxation, optimism and vitality, facilitating Wellness. This is the concept of “Wellness through Fragrant living”, which we believe is Wellness in the true sense of the word. The goal is to make people Stress free, relaxed and happy. Try to inculcate our Fragrance Therapy along with the stress management techniques suggested by me and gradually over the course of a year or two, you will find that you have changed a lot of things in your life…..for the better of course. Your life will probably never be stress-free. In fact we should never aim at that, even if it is possible, because stress, when managed well, is something that challenges us and helps us grow.