New age stress-busters

It's a stress-buster with a difference. A corporate holiday with dieticians and pranic healers thrown in. The aim: to give harassed corporate honchos a chance to avoid illnesses like hypertension and diabetes that hit the desk-bound with depressing frequency.

Does it work? Perhaps it's too early to tell. Later this month a group of executives will pack their bags and travel to the Claridges Corbett Hideaway in Uttaranchal.

Here, in this sylvan setting, they will unwind for three days, leaving the cares of the corporate world and the incessant buzzing of cellphones behind.

A test run with select invitees was held a few weeks ago. The most important part of the package was that a panel of experts was on hand to advise the guests. There was, for instance, Shikha Sharma, who has a soaring reputation as a dietician and weight-loss consultant.

Sharma prepared a specially planned menu, incorporating the concept of nutrigenics -- where she designs individual menus according to food habits, nutritional requirements and blood groups.

Then, there was lifestyle counsellor Rachna Singh, a cardiac counsellor at the Escorts Heart Institute, who will be studying individual lifestyles and stress levels, and suggesting therapies for treatment.

Similarly, pranic healer Anita Gawri conducted healing sessions, through meditation sessions and breathing exercises.

"We identified that an executive or a businessman of today is not leading a comfortable and stress-free life, which directly affects him on the professional and personal fronts. "Our package enables him to learn the small and easy ways of living a stress-free life. We don't claim to change your lives in a span of three days," says Samir Mutreja, CEO, RAMS, which is promoting the stress-busting packages that has been given the name Balance. The packages cost between Rs 12,000 and Rs 18,000.

RAMS is an event management company that is also building expertise in relationship management. "What we do offer is an insight into certain practices, which one may take back home and work upon," says Mutreja.

Now that the test run for Balance is over, he is all set to offer extended, longer programmes in the second phase.

In August it will be back to Corbett Hideaway and then the next holiday destination is Goa, in October. RAMS has meanwhile been conducting stress management programmes for corporates like GE and Nestle.

Corporate training is something that Poonam Sareen has been doing for quite some time now. The founder-director of Speed has been conducting workshops for corporates like HLL, Cadbury's, ITC, Citibank, HDFC Bank and Philips.

The length of Sareen's workshops varies from three-hour modules to a four-day Ahah workshop. Her modules encapsulate the issues that matter in a work environment like self-development, creativity, team building, voice and personality development, communication and stress management.

Using guided meditation and music therapy the workshops aim at "balancing the seven chakras or centres of energy" in a person's psyche.

A standard one-day programme for 20 managers costs around Rs 20,000. And apart from taking her workshops to companies she also has a guided meditation audio album titled 'The Ultimate Ahah' and has earned herself quite a reputation in Mumbai, where she is based, as a 'fun shrink'.

She does one-on-one counselling for individuals, including movie stars and CEOs, for around Rs 1,000 an hour.

"We encourage people to make mistakes, because fear is the root of all stress, when we bottle up feelings within and carry them home," says Sareen.

A session with a 'fun-shrink' or a holiday in the hills -- the options are there for anyone who is ready to take the first step.