Stress Reduction
During crunch time, due either to the amount of work or simply its procrastination, students often push themselves and their brains to a bitter end. When students are frazzled, they are not only "hard to look at" or "difficult to be around," but also ineffective. It's a terrible thing to see: a tired student late at night trying to cram information into her head and watching it just slide away like water. We hope that a very good application of study skills strategies, and perhaps some academic life coaching, will prevent most of this unpleasantness.
Sometimes even the most organized students over-do it and get stressed out. Some are naturally anxious about their achievement, bedraggled by comparison to others, pressured from their school, or difficulty managing an overfull schedule.It is true that positive pressure can be good – the pressure to achieve or excel can be productive motivation. It's not up to us to determine a student's goals; we're just here to help. But when the student "can't think straight" then it's time for some stress reduction. We promise not to relax them into a state of ambivalence. We'll keep the positive stress and the push for achievement while ameliorating the snap-crackle-pop of ineffective stress. We train our students to treat their brains like athletes treat their muscles: by actively providing the appropriately timed and amount of training and rest. As many Americans know, constant stress is bad for you. And there's no better time to learn how to balance for OPTIMAL achievement than as a young person.
Countless studies have shown that people learn better and deeper when in a relaxed state. Relaxation is better for health, better for learning, and it's a really great habit to have. Our stress reduction methods include coaching or talking about it, progressive relaxation techniques, breathing exercises, and the calming effect of natural fragrances. We have a proven track record of helping high achieving students achieve even more, and of helping students hindered by anxiety to relax into their true, balanced and focused potential.