Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org ISSN (Paper)2224-5766 ISSN (Online)2225-0484 (Online) Vol.4, No.25, 2014 29 Impact of Spirituality on Stress: With the Special Reference of Engineering Students of Indian Institute of Technology Radha Yadav Research scholar in the Department of Polymer and Process Engg., Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee E-mail: yadavradhika121@gmail.com). Ashu Khanna Assistant professor, Department of Polymer and Process Engg., Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, 247001 E-mail: drashukhanna@gmail.com) Abstract Spirituality is to ‘know’ who you are and the knowledge of yourself understanding the highest spiritual qualities and attributes which are love, peace, purity and bliss. Spirituality is a resilient and controversial variable that has evidenced an ability to help people better cope with stress. This empirical research paper attempts to identify the relation between spirituality and stress in the student life. In student life, meaning of the spirituality is different and beyond from the prayer, religion, etc., this paper covered the factors which affect the students and engender the stress. Four types of indicators are used for measurement of stress such as behavioural indicators, emotional indicator, sleep indicator and personal habits of students. Hypothesis said there is no relation between spirituality, stress and academic life of students. Spirituality is high then stress will be low or if spirituality is low then stress will be high. Data is collected through the questionnaire based on spirituality index and stress index. 75 students have taken as participants to find out the level of spirituality and stress in scale and correlation is used for determine the relation between spirituality and stress. The result showed that there is negative correlation (r = -0.519) between the stress and spirituality of engineering students. Stress indicators showed that emotional indicators and physical indicators are high in girls than boys. Keywords: Spirituality, faith, stress, supreme power, engineering students 1. INTRODUCTION Stress plays an important role in the life of the individuals whether it is businessman, students, teachers and other professions. To cope with the stress people use meditation, listen good music, fun etc. depend upon which type of stress is occurring. Managing stress is all about taking charge: of your thoughts, emotions, schedule, and the way you deal with the problems. Spirituality is to know about oneself and the understanding of some supreme power through which the world is governed. Spirituality is not just about the god and religion, it is something related to elite power, it is a faith which connects a normal human being to their soul. “a person’s experience of, or a belief in, a power apart from his or her own existence” (Mohr 2006). Spirituality is the bridge between what we are and where we want to reach or we can say it is hopefulness. Spirituality is the choice of human being to surrender him to one supreme power that is meaningful and desirable for him “An active choice to surrender oneself to God's will” (Wong-McDonald, 2000, p. 149). Sometimes people believe on supreme power only to mitigate the deleterious effects of the life. Spiritual coping has been effective in protecting individuals from the negative effects of death of a loved one, natural disasters, chronic illness, and acts of terrorism (Zinnbauer, Pargament, Cole, Rye, Butter, Belavich, Hipp, Scott, & Kadar, 1997). In other words spiritual is the faith and trust who save the people from the negative things. Spirituality is the way to reduce the negative effects of life such as: death, stress, illness etc. Stress is the body’s instinctive response to external environment cues as well as to one’s inner thoughts and feeling.Stress arises when we try to control the uncontrollable things. American institute of stress says that “Everyone knows what stress is, but nobody really knows.” Means we know about the stress and the reason of the stress but we don’t focus on it in the initial stage when its effects the mind then we starts to find the solution. Types of stress: Basically, there are two types of stress: one is related to positive stress called eustress which motivate and improve performance of the individual and other one is negative stress called distress which demotivate and decrease performance of the individual, it can lead to mental and physical problems. According to the situation, stress is of three types (The Stress Solution by Lyle H. Miller, PhD, and Alma Dell Smith, PhD.): Acute stress: Acute stress is thrilling and exciting in small doses, but too much is exhausting, because it is short term, acute stress doesn't have enough time to do the extensive damage associated with long-term stress. The most common symptoms are: • Emotional distress — some combination of anger or irritability, anxiety and depression, the three stress emotions.