Book on stress just what doctor ordered?

Press, 13 June 1986, Page 5

Book on stress just what doctor ordered?

If you ask Paul Wilson what he does, he will say, “Quite simply, I teach calm.” In fact, his simplified approach to taking much of the stress out of people’s lives has caught on in such a big way in Australia that even he is surprised. What started as a modified technique for meditation to suit his own lifestyle as a creative director of one of Australia’s most dynamic advertising agencies has snowballed to become a book with sales of more than 20,000 to date. Now Mr Wilson is in New Zealand to introduce “The Calm Technique.” In Christchurch yesterday he explained that the book, in one sense, was just what the doctor odered.

About seven years ago, when he was 29, he was sent to his doctor when he developed chest pains at work.

“He told me I was an ordinary, everyday stress victim — a candidate for a heart attack,” said Mr Wilson.

“I started to get serious about getting my life into order. I had some knowledge of meditation techniques from my travels in India earlier, but most of them were complicated and difficult to understand so I modified them.

“The result was that I became more relaxed and my health improved, I no longer suffered with nerve-related illnesses.”

This change did not go unnoticed by his work colleagues and several of them who were feeling the pressure of business asked Mr Wilson about his “secret.” “I was coerced into writing a simplified paper for them so that they could easily understand about meditation. From that, the word quickly spread round Sydney business circles and eventually snowballed to become a book, after a lot more research.” “The Calm Technique” does away with the traditional romanticised view of meditation, said Mr Wilson. Gone is the mystical metaphor and Eastern

gobbledegook. It is written for the Western reader using everyday, to-the-point language. He has been surprised at the wide cross-section of people who have read the book.

“It is not only business people, but I get a lot of mail from housewives suffering from stress. There are also a large number of elderly people who are interested in a simple form of meditation,” he said.

After an approach by a group of Sydney psycho-

logists, Mr Wilson prepared a programme to help alleviate the high stress levels among schoolchildren in Sydney, some of them as young as seven. “I have developed a relaxation programme involving a variety of fantasies which do the same thing as the Calm Technique,” he said. “Teachers using it have told us that classroom relationships have become more harmonious, the children are more receptive to learning, and are generally more relaxed.” Mr Wilson said he encouraged his son, aged eight, to spend about five minutes each day doing absolutely nothing. “Most stress therapists insist on that to recharge the batteries. “The way it is in 1986, we are all being barraged with stimuli. If there is nothing happening in a house people turn on the television or the radio. Silence is seen as being something negative. What the Calm Technique does it to put that silence to good use.”