Stress Guru is a valuable archival web site that serves as a hyperlink to a wide variety of body/mind resources.1 The term guru commonly refers to a spiritual teacher. However, the acronym G.U.R.U. is intended here to convey the notion that "Gee, you are you!" = G.U.R.U. and encourages each person to be his/her own guide and authority to health and happiness.
The word health is intended to mean whole in mind and body and free from physical pain or disease. The word happiness is intended to convey good fortune, prosperity and contentment. (See the resource at hyperlink www.dictionary.com to check definitions.)
In short, the Stress Guru hyperlinks you to holistic websites and other resources to familiarize you with the rather complex phenomena of factors which affect the whole person, not just the body, some of which may not yet be recognized by scholars and researchers.
Since medical science is experiencing a paradigm shift, one from the duality of mind and body to the holistic concept of mind, body and spirit, the Stress Guru intends to familiarize readers with that shift and emphasize the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO) cited below:
"The existing definition of health should include the spiritual aspect and that health care should be in the hands of those who are fully aware of and sympathetic to the spiritual dimension."2
The word stress is used continually in many diverse ways:
"(a) as an environmental condition; (b) as an appraisal of an environmental situation; (c) as the response to that condition; and (d) as some sort of relationship between the environmental demands and the person's ability to meet those demands."3
1 Candace B. Pert,
Molecules of Emotion, New York: Schribner, 1997, p. 187
2 Brian
Luke Seaward, Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and
Wellbeing: Boston: Jones Bartlett Publishers, 1997, p. 18.
3 Gary L. Cooper, Stress Research: Issues for the Eighties,
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983, p. 81.