Stress Mangement Workshop Resource
Irvine, Calif. – The Big West continues its SAAC Student-Athlete Programming Series during the 2023-24 academic year. These events serve as a series of virtual webinars for student-athletes, coaches, and administrators based on informative topics for real-world success.
The league encourages SAAC members across its institutions to join these calls and extends the invitation externally across other conferences. If you want to attend one of these webinars, please contact your campuses' Big West SAAC representative or Quentin Rodriguez (qrodriguez@bigwest.org) for more information.
This week, Big West students and staff joined the founder and CEO of Root of Noor, Aminat Salihu. Root of Noor is a well-being platform dedicated to human flourishing. The word “Noor” in Arabic has the meaning of the word “light” in English.
The “Stress Management” webinar focused on Root of Noor’s philosophy on handling stress throughout our daily lives and painted the picture through the lens of a student-athlete and how they may deal with certain issues about their lifestyle.
Overall, stress is a natural response that occurs when demands or pressures on us exceed our natural threshold or ability to cope. When we are under stress, our bodies become triggered, and we risk compromising our cognitive function. Stress can negatively impact reaction times and athletic performance and increase the risk of injury. Long-term issues of chronic stress include cardiovascular diseases, mental health issues, immune system dysfunction, gastrointestinal problems, and metabolic disorders. Although stress is inevitable, there are ways we can alleviate these issues.
Restructuring how we view ourselves is a huge part of cognitive intervention and plays a pivotal part in de-stressing ourselves. Particularly with student-athletes, if someone has a difficult day at practice, they may develop signs of self-doubt and begin to believe they are no longer a good player. Providing positive aspirations from a realistic lens of what you can do, what you have done, and what you like to do that is true and feasible. Most of the time when we are stressed, we lose sight of what our abilities are so these affirmations are important to practice.
One of the leading factors of stress is improper time management. Creating a time management sheet by identifying daily tasks, prioritizing them, and estimating time are the three starting points in this exercise. From there, you can properly decide when to time block and stifle through what tasks are a priority and which tasks can be deemed flexible.
How Can Time Management Help Improve Stress?
- Prioritization
- Clarity & Control
- Preparedness
- Efficiency
- Balance
For more information and coaching concerning the topics of well-being, visit
Root of Noor.com
ABOUT ROOT OF NOOR
Root of Noor is an intentional space for individual & collective learning. Throughout our work, we embrace both the root & the bloom, the light & the dark, & the highs & the lows of our human experiences while lovingly tending to the root of our matters.
“At the heart of it, I’m an orator, writer, educator, & certified coach. But mostly, I’m a professional question-asker. I design culturally aware instructional material rooted in honest well-being for individuals, communities, & organizations.”
“My favorite ways of helping people unlearn & reimagine life themes are through prompting radical reflection, hosting workshops, coaching, podcasting, & curating really, really good conversations.”
- Aminat Salihu, founder and CEO of Root or Noor LLC