By Deanne Panday
Published by Random House
Pages: 262
Price: 199
ISBN: 9788184001570
Everyone’s talking about stress all the time and you have a zillion books offering help on how to handle the menace. If you’re stressing about which book to read and what advice to heed, this is a book I’d recommend you begin with. Considering that stress is one of the most overused words these days and everyone from the CEO of an MNC to the newspaper vendor has it, people often tend to accept it as normal and unavoidable. Stress, whether physical or emotional, can affect your skin, hair, digestion, fertility—any system in the body. Through her book, Deanne Panday, helps you prepare your mind and body to deal with the effects of stress.
At times, the signs of stress are so subtle that you may overlook them. One of the things you’ll learn from this book is that even dealing with stressors often needs only small and subtle changes in your lifestyle, diet and how you interact with people. The USP of
her book is that it is simple to understand and easy to implement—exactly how it should be, isn’t it? The real-life examples cited in the book [some of which are startling] make you feel that you’re not the only one facing these issues.
A celebrity fitness trainer, Deanne, who has an experience of 15 years in the industry, recommends a healthy diet, pranayama, yogic asanas, exercise and meditation as a sure-shot way to beat stress and live better. You’ve probably heard that all of this works and that you should be doing it. But in this book, you’ll learn the ‘how’ of it. No time for the gym, don’t know how to meditate, haven’t been able to locate an authentic yoga teacher…none of these excuses will work any more, because you’ve got the basics of it all, lucidly explained here.
The section on meditation succeeds in demystifying the air around it. Meditation is for all and it can be done in different ways, the book drives home. For some, even their work could be a form of meditation, she writes. But like any other self-help book, only reading won’t help, unless it’s followed by action. So, try the breathing techniques Deanne suggests as you’re reading them. It’s fun.
What I like about the book is that it can help you even if you’re not stressed, but are looking for weight management tips. I’m Not Stressed certainly would appeal to Indian readers since it has some inputs from prominent Indian psychologists, nutritionists and skin specialists.
I’d like to warn you though, that if you’re a seasoned fitness buff, yoga practitioner or have read a lot of books on wellbeing before, you might find this one rather basic.