How to Use Two Simple Stress Management Practices

Relaxation Response Practice

Dr Herbert Benson, Director Emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has done extensive research to show that what he calls the "relaxation response" is beneficial for anxiety, cardiac problems, headache, hypertension (high blood pressure), irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia and pain, among other conditions. He claims that it helps with any disease that is either caused or made worse by stress, in proportion to the contribution of the stress to the disease.

There are two essential steps to bringing about the response:

1. Repeating a word, sound, phrase or action.

2. Letting go of any thoughts that arise and returning to your repetition.

 

In fuller form:

  1. Choose a word or short phrase to be your focus. If you hold religious or spiritual beliefs, you could use a name, word or phrase associated with those beliefs; if not, choose one which reflects important values to you, like "peace" or "compassion".
  2. Find a quiet place and sit comfortably.
  3. Close your eyes.
  4. Progressively relax your muscles, either from head to foot or foot to head. Let your muscles relax, don't try to "make" them relax. Become aware of any tension in them, and allow that tension to release as if it was leaking out.
  5. Breathe slowly and deeply, but without forcing, and say your focus word or phrase silently to yourself on each outbreath.
  6. Thoughts will come to mind. Let them go past. If you find you have followed a trail of thoughts away from your repetition, just gently let the thoughts go and return to your focus on the next breath.
  7. Use some kind of timer to signal you after 10 to 20 minutes.
  8. When the timer goes off, let other thoughts gradually return for a minute or so, then open your eyes and sit for another minute before standing.
  9. Practice once or twice daily. Good times to do so are before breakfast and before dinner.
If you prefer to be guided verbally through the process, I've made a recording of the relaxation response practice.

The Welcoming Practice

The Welcoming Practice is simply this: Whenever, in the course of your life, you become aware of feeling an emotion such as fear, anger or sadness, you say, "Welcome, name of emotion." You are not welcoming the circumstances that caused the emotion, but in acknowledging the emotion itself, greeting it as part of you, you diminish its power to hurt you.

The Welcoming Practice, like the relaxation response, has been taught in the context of meditation and prayer for centuries. Recent research at UCLA (Lieberman and others, 2007) shows a basis for its effectiveness in the operation of the brain. Apparently, naming an emotion moves the brain's activity away from feeling the emotion and reverses the stress responses that the body makes to the presence of a negative feeling.

References:

  1. http://www.mbmi.org/basics/whatis_rresponse_elicitation.asp (Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine).
  2. Matthew D. Lieberman, Naomi I. Eisenberger, Molly J. Crockett, Sabrina M. Tom, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, Baldwin M. Way (2007) 'Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli,' Psychological Science 18 (5), 421–428.

I have formatted these simple practices onto a bookmark, which I give to all my hypnotherapy clients.

Here is the relaxation bookmark in pdf format. I print out two of these pages at a time, trim and cut them with a paper trimmer, fold them and gum them so they don't come open during laminating, laminate them, and then trim the four resulting bookmarks with a craft knife.

The Welcoming Practice and the Relaxation Response Practice also form part of my course 7 Steps to Effective Personal Change.

Interested in tools, tips and techniques to improve your life without substances or devices?

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