When many people think of yoga they imagine someone flexible who exercises through unnatural body contortions.

However, that aspect of yoga, called Asana, is only one of the many types of yogas in the Hindi lifestyle. Other types of lesser known yogas are Karma, Dhyana, Jnana and Bhakti.

The Bhakti Yoga Club at SMU meets every week in Room 113 of the Jerry Junkins building. At these meetings, a speaker lectures on a topic of relevance to students.

Tuesday night the speaker was Rasaraj Das, an applications engineer who received his Master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati and now works in Dallas. Das spoke on “Stress Management.”

Das began his PowerPoint presentation by defining the different types of stress, or “the good, bad and the ugly” according to him. For all of the differing types of stress Das explained demands and resources were directly involved. For example, eustress (good stress) occurs when demands and resources are neutralized while distress (ugly stress) happens when our demands exceed our resources available. Bad stress was defined as just being lazy since resources were abundantly available than the demands expected.

“We can not eliminate stress,” Das said. “We try to manage and if we manage them the right way we will be fine. If we do not handle our distresses, well, exhaustion and frustrations ensue.”

He named many frustrations that could surface because of distress such as mental problems, depression and suicide.

“Mental problems are on the rise,” Das said. “You have to look good and excel at what you do and are told to be super rich and spend large amounts, whether you have it or not.”

Das finished his presentation by talking about coping mechanisms people use to deal with stress such as intoxication, drugs, illicit relationships, gambling or weird addictions. One of his colleagues, Das said, “was 39 and very addicted to comic books.”

Some stress reduction methods Das suggested were breathing exercises, laughing, yoga, music, exercise, and video games.

Das ended the lecture by stating that since “our desires are pretty unlimited” we will always have stress and a “hankering to get on top” so all we can do is healthily manage our stresses as best as possible.