: In today's fast-paced lifestyle, stress is a part of our everyday life, both in private as well as in professional life. The job of preschool teacher is considered as one of the most stressful ones. Long-term exposure to stress in workplace can lead to exhaustion and burnout, which is reflected in both psychological and physical areas of our life and has a negative impact on our work. It is important to learn how to reduce stress, how to cope with it and how to control our responses to stress. By using relaxation techniques one can deal with stress effectively. They make us aware of ourselves, our feelings and thoughts. Further on they help us calm down, we become aware of the present moment and they make it easier to handle challenges of everyday life. The diploma thesis deals with relaxation techniques as an effective way of preschool teachers coping with stress.
In the theoretical part of the thesis I defined stress, reasons and consequences of stress and ways of coping and preventing stress. Further on I defined relaxation, the meaning and effects of relaxation. I described relaxation and relaxation techniques as one of the effective ways of dealing with stress for preschool teachers.
In the empirical part of the thesis I wanted to find out whether preschool teachers know and use relaxation techniques as a way to cope with stress, how they evaluate their effectiveness, and what impact the use of relaxation techniques have on their work with children.
There were 75 preschool teachers from the central part of Slovenia involved in the research. The results showed that less than half of preschool teachers use relaxation techniques as a way to reduce and cope with stress at work, while more than half of them do not use them.
Most of preschool teachers involved in the research use breathing exercises, meditation and yoga. Other relaxation techniques are less known to them and consequently less used. Preschool teachers who use relaxation techniques described them as an effective way of reducing stress at work, which helps them to become more relaxed and calm and contribute to more energy and better wellbeing.
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