Surf your Stress week: not either-or, but and-and

Breathing exercises, chair massages, meditation, yoga. Next week is Surf your Stress week for students and PhD students. Not merely the popular standard ingredients that might be expected during a week such as this (which are standard due to the fact that they help combat stress), but also a few noteworthy new activities.

A workshop on how to handle climate anxiety, for example, a type of stress all too familiar to many at WUR, and not just students. Or a session of creative painting ‘to catch your energy in colour’. And a hormonal perspective on top days and down days, in terms of the menstrual cycle, will be facilitated by WUR teacher Anneke Valk – who taught students how to cope with the monkey in your head during a previous Surf your Stress. The last two workshops are fully booked, but plenty of other exciting activities still have a few spots, and you can still register.

Removing the causes of stress certainly is a point of focus

Caroline Berkhof of the Student Wellbeing team

A happy change is that, following the editions of the last two years that were affected by the covid pandemic, this edition will be entirely live on the campus and beyond. For example, the Surf your Stress week will begin with an energetic breakfast rave at KSV Franciscus on Monday morning. And students can join a theatrical reflection in the Thuis Theater by the Inspringtheater that same evening. This reflection addresses the pressure of social media.

Cause and effect

However special and valuable they may be, all these workshops and activities do not remove the cause of feelings of stress, Caroline Berkhof of the Student Wellbeing team says. She is familiar with the criticism that Surf your Stress addresses symptoms. ‘But it does help students and PhD’s to cope better’, she asserts. ‘Getting rid of the causes of stress, insofar as this is even possible within the Dutch education system, is certainly a critical point of focus for WUR’, she declares. ‘Nevertheless, students can benefit from tools that help them cope with stress. And knowing that they are not the only ones struggling can also help. That is the aim of Surf your Stress week. It is not either-or; it is and-and.’

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