Dear students,
We know that the exam period can be stressful. Therefore, we invite you to watch a training video by Prof. Danny Hamiel, Faculty of the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, and learn about the Ashan Dak technique – a simple method to deal with stress during exam periods, presentations, and other challenging situations. The technique's goal is to rebalance us and bring us to a state of function. The method is comprised of three parts.
- The first part deals with temporarily increasing the physical arousal in order to emerge from a state of intense panic and, in some cases, a blackout. This part entails to contract a group of muscles in the body while inhaling air through the chest with a deep breath.
- The second part deals with lowering arousal, calming, and balancing. This part leads to the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, or relaxing system, by slowly exhaling air, relaxing the muscles we contracted or stretched, and temporarily transitioning to slow breathing.
- The third part deals with balancing the inner speech in which we use a sentence that we formulate in advance and know it can help us to continue to function in a balanced manner during a test. Examples can be found in the recording.
It is critical to remember that during a test, we are not supposed to be calm. We are supposed to be balanced and focused on performance. The goal of the exercise is to bring us to this balanced state, not to be completely relaxed.
* The Ashan Dak technic was developed in the Resilience Center named after Cohen-Harris.
