Relaxation Techniques

Meditation

Meditation is simply a mental exercise that affects body processes. Just as physical exercise has certain psychological benefits, meditation has certain physical benefits. The purpose of meditation is to gain control over your attention so that you can choose what to focus on rather than being subject to the unpredictable ebb and flow of environmental circumstances.

Types of Meditation
 
Transcendental meditation is but one form of meditative practice. Chakra yoga, Rinzai Zen, Mudra yoga, Zen meditation, and Soto Zen are examples of other meditative systems. In Soto Zen meditation, common external objects (like flowers or peaceful greens) are focused on. Tibetan Buddhists use a mandala - a geometrical figure with other geometric forms on it that has spiritual or philosophical importance -- to meditate upon. The use of imagined sounds or of silently repeated words, called mantra, has also been used.

Regardless of the type of meditation, however, one of two approaches is used: opening up of attention or focusing of attention. Opening up of attention requires a nonjudgmental attitude: you allow all external and internal stimuli to enter your awareness without trying to use these stimuli in any particular manner. As with a blotter and ink, everything is just absorbed. When the meditative method requires the focusing of attention, the object focused upon is something either repetitive or something unchanging.

Benefits of Meditation
 
Because it is so popular and can be learned quickly and easily, meditation has been one of the most researched of the relaxation techniques. Its physiological effects include a decrease in muscle tension and a decrease in heart rate. When experienced meditating people were compared with novice ones and people taught a different relaxation technique, it was found that the most significant decreases in heart rate occurred in the experienced and short-term meditating ones.

Psychological effects include less anxiety. At this point, you realize that the mind cannot be separated from the body. Consequently, you've probably guessed that the physiological effects of meditation have psychological implications. Numerous studies have found evidence that the psychological health of people who meditate often is better than that of non-meditating individuals.

For instance, people who meditate have been found to be less anxious. To add, teaching people to meditate can diminish anxiety. Researchers have also found that meditation is related to an internal focus of control and greater self-actualization.

Autogenic Training

 German psychiatrist Johannes Schultz had used hypnosis with his patients. In 1923, he developed autogenic training, which consists of a series of exercises designed to bring about these two physical sensations and, thereby, an auto-hypnotic state. Autogenic training is a technique to treat neurotic patients and those with psychosomatic illnesses. However, its use quickly expanded to healthy people who wanted to regulate their own psychological and physiological processes.
 
Although autogenic training and meditation both lead to the relaxation response, they get there by different means. Meditation uses the mind to relax the body. Autogenic training uses the bodily sensations of heaviness and warmth to first relax the body and then expand this relaxed state to the mind by the use of imagery.

Benefits of Autogenic Training

Physiological
The physiological effects of autogenic training are similar to those of other relaxation methods that elicit the trophotropic response. Heart rate, respiratory rate, muscle tension, and serum cholesterol levels all decrease. Alpha brain waves and blood flow to the arms and legs increase. Other studies show that autogenics also helps with bronchial asthma, constipation, writer's cramp, indigestion, ulcers, hemorrhoids, tuberculosis, diabetes and back pains.

Psychological
Autogenic training has been found to reduce anxiety and depression, decrease tiredness, and help people increase their resistance to stress.

Doing Autogenic Training

There are two basic positions for doing autogenics: one, reclining; and two, seated. In the reclining position, you lie on your back, feet slightly apart, toes leaning away from the body. The seated positions have two advantages: you can do them almost anywhere, and they are less apt to result in sleep. On the other hand, they don't allow as much total muscle relaxation as the reclining position.
 
The stages of Autogenic Training are sequential. You need to master the skills of each stage before practicing the next.

Six Initial Stages Of Autogenic Training:

1) Focus on the sensations of heaviness throughout the arms and legs.
2) Focus on the sensations of warmth throughout the arms and legs.
3) Focus on the sensations of warmth and heaviness in the area of the heart.
4) Focus on breathing.
5) Focus on sensations of warmth in the abdomen.
6) Focus on sensations of coolness in the forehead.

(Source: The Relaxation Response, by Herbert Benson, 1975)

With experience in autogenics, it should take you only a few minutes to feel heaviness and warmth in your limbs, a relaxed and calm heart and respiratory rate, warmth in your abdomen, and coolness in your forehead. Remember, though, that it usually takes several months or more of regular practice to get to that point. However, don't be too anxious to master it, since trying too hard will interfere with learning the skills. Proceed at your own pace, moving to the next stage only after you have mastered the previous stage.

Other Relaxation Techniques

Diaphragmatic Breathing

This is what we call very deep breathing, and it is quite effective as an immediate response to stress. To practice diaphragmatic breathing, lie on your back, with the palms of your hands placed on your lower stomach area. As you breathe, expand your chest area while keeping your tummy flat. Next, expand your abdomen so that your stomach rises and falls with each breath while chest size remains relatively constant. Practice it at various times of the day.
 
Body Scanning

Even when you are tensed, there is some part of your body that feels relaxed. Body scanning requires you to search for that part and, once identifying it, spread that sensation to the more tense parts of yourself. The relaxed sensation can be imagined to be a warm ball that travels to various bodily locations, warming and relaxing them.

Massage and Accupressure

Massage has a way of relaxing the muscles of a tense body. But acupressure - pressing down on points of the body where knots or bands of muscle tension frequently occur - appears to be one of the more popular forms. To use accupressure correctly, you should obtain a chart of accupressure points.

Yoga and Stretching

Yoga comes from a root words that has many meanings: to bind, join, attach, and yoke; to direct and concentrate one's attention; or communion with God. The stretching involved in yoga can be quite relaxing, and the prescribed yoga positions encourage this benefit. However, be careful not to stretch in a way that is uncomfortable (remember, you are trying to relax) or in a way that will cause injury.

Quieting Reflex
 
Quieting reflex is a relaxation technique designed to elicit relaxation quickly, even in as short as six seconds. To practice QR:

1) Think about something that makes you afraid or anxious.
2) Smile inside.
3) Tell yourself "I can keep a calm body in an alert mind".
4) Inhale a quiet, easy breath.
5) Let your jaw go loose as you exhale; keeping your upper and lower teeth slightly apart.
6) Imagine heaviness and warmth moving throughout your body - from head to toes.

Spirituality and Stress

Seldom do we celebrate life's wonders with the attitude of gratitude. Parents take their children for granted instead of marveling at their uniqueness and development. Students become desensitized to the beauty surrounding them on campus. Professors forget to appreciate the cloistered environs in which they are honored by being allowed to devote their careers to labors of love. And creation itself often receive short shrift in a hurried society concerned with fast food and quick weight-loss diets. Quicker, faster, more, sooner, easier: so little time to nourish the soul, to develop optimal spiritual health.

Spiritual health has been defined in a number of ways. Some of these recognize the existence of a supreme being, whereas others relate spirituality to one's relationships with others and one's place in this world. Another definition is the ability to discover and express your purpose in life; to learn how to experience love, joy, peace, and fulfillment' and to help yourself and others to achieve full potential.

Spiritual health may include answers to such questions as "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" questions that confront you with the very fact of your existence and the meaning of your life. Answers to these questions may comfort you and alleviate stress with assurance that your life is headed in the direction you desire. On the other hand, your answers may disturb you. Should that occur, use that dissonance to make changes in your life to be more spiritual - take more walks in the park, so to speak.

Celebrate loved ones and natural wonders, find activities in which to make a contribution to your world and the people who inhabit it, leave something of meaning behind, experience who you are and let others experience that as well. All of these changes will make you less distressed, more satisfied with your life, and more effective in your interactions with both your environment and the people about whom you care.

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