Learning Curve: relieve anxiety the Hindu way

Exam stress and anxiety regarding results are part and parcel of being a student. While anxiety can be a driving force, it is more often an incapacitating factor in exam preparation.

In my experience, a student's anxiousness stems from the seemingly insurmountable list of things that need to be done during exam preparation and doubts about being unable to complete them.

This leads to poor exam preparation, which then lays the foundation for a fear of failure. Students who are prone to procrastination seem to experience more anxiety.

I find students expend more mental energy thinking about all the things they need to get done than in actually doing them. Because anxiety is agitation of the mind, the value of meditation in clearing the mind of clutter and making it more receptive to learning is well known. Common sense dictates that one cannot add to a full pot.

New research from the University of California, Los Angeles Laboratory of Neuro Imaging also suggests that people who meditate show more grey matter in certain regions of the brain, show stronger connections between brain regions and show less age-related brain atrophy. Presumably, then, the more folding that occurs, the better the brain is at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and so forth.

Lead researcher Professor Eileen Luders says: "It appears to be a powerful mental exercise with the potential to change the physical structure of the brain."

While there is no dearth of information and self-help strategies, when students ask how they can deal with exam anxiety and fear of failure, I am reminded of two verses from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, , which is often seen as an allegory of the moral struggles of the human condition.