Abstract: Stress is a subject which is hard to avoid. The term is discussed not only in our everyday conversations but has become enough of a public issue to attract widespread media attention. Different people have different views about it as stress can be experienced from a variety of sources. It is interesting to see how slow change in lifestyle of Indian women has brought the stress in their life. Traditionally, Indian women worked within the framework of the family system. That time the stress definition was different, basically emotional tension. Now they have stepped out for jobs and business. So the consequent outcome is that modern women live in two systems and need to perform both familial as well as professional role. This in turn leads to a number of stresses among working women, which sets in their body as many psychosomatic and other diseases. The concept of stress in the modern sense is not easily found in the traditional texts of Indian culture. However, a number of concepts developed by ancient Indian scholars, like greed, envy, anger, desires and ego etc, relate to or appear similar to the phenomenon of stress. Now the problem is of coping with the stress. It is more of a psychological rather than a medical problem. What can be treated medically are the effects of stress but not its causes. In Indian scriptures there are many systems like yogic literature, meditation techniques and respiratory controls etc which try to remove the cause of the stress. Here a sincere effort is made to compile the reasons, effects and coping of stress by Indian women. |