Stress Management through ZeNLP tribal meditation

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Hyderabad, Oct 26 (IANS) Stress is increasing in everyday life due to multiple social and economic factors but an expert assures a remedy through ZeNLP - the science of creating structured change in behaviour using simple "tribal meditation" techniques like clapping or chanting.

Internationally acclaimed ZeNLP trainer Murli Menon, a stress management guru, believes economic stress is increasing due to price rise while people also suffer from physical, mental and spiritual stress.

Menon imparts tribal meditation technique for relieving mental stress. "There are various simple techniques to manage stress. For example, you can overcome physical stress by clapping and spiritual stress by chanting," he said.

"Tribes are misunderstood. Everyone thinks that tribes are not advanced but the technology I have seen in the tribes is much more modern and efficient than modern factories," Menon, who has lived with primitive tribes in different parts of India, Tibet, Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Laos and China, told IANS.

Menon has done a certified course in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). ZeNLP is a combination of NLP and Zen meditation. According to him, it is the science of creating structured change in behaviour using the language of meditation.

NLP, the programming of the brain with positive vibes and thoughts, was created by psychotherapist John Grinder and mathematician and psychologist Richard Bandler in association with Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist. NLP was developed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the 1970s.

About 9,000 people, mainly CEOs and middle-level managers from corporate houses, school teachers, students, professionals and homemakers have attended Menon's programmes during the last 15 years. During the training programmes, Menon shares his experience with tribals in different countries and explains how simple techniques of physical exercise, vegetarian food, music, chanting of mantras and living in harmony with nature can help overcome stress.

Menon, who was here to conduct a programme for CEOs at the Dhruva College of Management, is of the view that economic stress can be managed by certain techniques like budgeting.

"Stress is increasing because things are getting costlier but incomes are not rising in parity," said Menon, who conducts stress management programmes in India and abroad.

"There is physical stress as people are working for longer hours because of mobile phones. There is also mental stress as people think too much about what will happen tomorrow and there is spiritual stress. People are not getting time to pray," Menon said.

Menon, president of the Ahmedabad-based PhenoMenon Consultants Inc, is coming out with a book "Learning through stories" in December. "It is a compilation of 50 stories, each one of which I learnt from a different country I travelled to. There are stories I learnt while living with tribes."

The 45-year-old has already penned two books - "ZeNLP: The power to succeed" and "ZeNLP: The power to relax".

He asserts that a family which eats, prays and stays together, relaxes with more holidays and just thinks of the present can relieve stress.

Menon, a Keralite settled in Ahmedabad, started training programmes after an accident left him paralysed in 1995 and rendered him unfit to continue his job as a manager in a pharmaceutical firm.

While undergoing treatment at the Manipal Hospital in Bangalore, he made a dramatic recovery thanks to NLP, his strong will power and determination to succeed despite all odds.

Lying on hospital bed, he set 20 goals, which then looked impossible for him. Today, he has achieved most of them.

(Mohammed Shafeeq can be contacted atm.shafeeq@ians.in)