The use of meditation as a strategy for stress management and the promotion of wellness in teachers : an educational psychological study

Abstract

The teaching profession is generally regarded as one of the most stressful occupations across the world. Teachers are, however, persons and as such function not only as teachers, but also as citizens, parents, spouses, house owners and so on, which make them experience multiple stressors in their personal lives. Apart from the implementation of various new policies in the sphere of education, such as Outcomes-Based Education and Inclusive education, teachers are also subjected to various social-political changes and stressors like extreme levels of crime, affirmative action and the secondary effects thereof, and so on in a new democracy. These changes and stressors are often experienced as stress which, due to a spill-over effect, often affect the other domains of life of teachers as persons. In order to understand human experience, behaviour, problems and phenomena, such as stress, one needs to take a meta-approach to analyse and then synthesise all the contexts of human existence - biological, intra-psychic, ecological and metaphysical - to obtain an eco-systemic and holistic view and understanding. These contexts of existence can both function as potential sources of stressors, or can reflect the potential effects of stress -the detail will depend on an individual person's situatedness. These sources of stressors or effects of stress can impinge on personal wellness - where wellness is seen as a holistic construct which embraces all the contexts of human existence. Due to the experience of elevated levels of stress by a large number of teachers and the resultant negative effect on their wellness - also vice versa -there exists a genuine need for strategies for stress management and the promotion of wellness. The teaching, learning and practise of Clinically Standardized Meditation is one such a strategy open to teachers. Findings from this study suggest that Clinically Standardized Meditation is an effective strategy for stress management and the promotion of wellness in teachers.