RELAXATION | how to relax your mind

Meditation - the quiet stillness that directly impacts on your parasympathetic nervous system, relaxing muscles and dilating blood vessels, and, in particular restoring to normal the balance in the operation of many of your body systems. It is the great health regulator, and in combination with a good diet and a regular, vigorous physical activity program, is the basis of good health.

Ainslie Meares worked for 30 years in Melbourne as a psychiatrist and used meditation extensively in the treatment of psychosomatic and psychoneurotic illnesses. He died in 1986, but his books are widely read and still available. We encourage you to read them. Here is some of what he had to say about meditation.

I recommend that part of your meditation be the stillness that Meares suggests. Focus on thinking about nothing. If thoughts return, dismiss them and focus on thinking about nothing.

Having the time to do what you want to do and what you need to do is one of the great freedoms.

HOW MEDITATION WORKS

The brain operates on a range of brain-wave patterns, measured in cycles per second.

When you are sitting relaxed and calm with your eyes closed there is a good chance that the brain will be operating at the Alpha brain wave level. The parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated; muscles relax, blood vessels dilate and you begin to achieve a more balanced state of health.

At the Alpha level you experience the state of deep relaxation which is very useful in managing stress, by calming the body and re-establishing equilibrium within the nervous and endocrine systems. It is also the zone of suggestibility, the point at which you can feel new thoughts, ideas and programs into the sub-conscious mind. It is the zone of imagination and creative visualization.

If you are not completely familiar with meditation and deliberately getting into the Alpha state, you may have experienced it while waking up as you drifted in and out of consciousness. In those periods when you are half awake, you are in the alpha state.

MUSCULAR RELAXATION

To get into the Alpha meditative state, follow the sequence of instructions listed below.

1. Sit down in a straight-backed chair, close your eyes, take a deep breath, hold it for a short while, then breathe out and relax.
2. Start breathing using stomach breathing, so that every time you breathe in your stomach goes out. Stomach breathing slows your breathing down dramatically, increases the amount of air you can get into your lungs, stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system so blood vessels dilate and muscles relax, stimulates alpha brain waves and produces a feeling of calm.
3. Once you are comfortably relaxed begin focusing on relaxing various parts of your body, imagining them relaxing more and more with every breath you breath out. eg, feel your scalp relaxing, your forehead, your face and jaw, your shoulders, your back ..., all the way down through various parts of your body.

VACANT MEDITATION

Once you've become relaxed, sit for a few minutes, breathing slowly, deeply and rhythmically, using stomach breathing, and thinking about nothing. If thoughts come to your mind, dismiss them.

DEEP BREATHING

Once you've become relaxed, take five or ten very slow, deep breathes using stomach breathing.

Imagine breathing in a circular fashion, starting the breathing in cycle at the bottom of a large circle, deep inside your stomach.

Keep breathing in until you reach the top of the circle at the top of your head. Hold the breath for a moment and then slowly breathe out, taking as long to breathe out as you did to breathe in. With practice you'll find that ten breaths takes a very long time, sufficient for you to become very relaxed.

Click on the CD cover and purchase a copy of the RELAXATION MP3 file. The relaxation recording starts with waves gently lapping the shore. Listen as the voice on the tape gets you to relax your body from the top of your head down to your toes. The waves form the background and continue for a minute or so after the muscular relaxation part of the recording has finished. You will then be woken up. The recording takes a little over 8 minutes. It is ideal for use in the workplace or at home, just you get you sitting quietly, breathing deeply and relaxing off.

Click on the CD cover to purchase the Relaxation MP3 The investment: $17 us

INNER MENTAL TRAINING - can you picture that?

Inner mental training is a form of meditation in which you creatively visualize a particular goal. In the case of achieving your ideal physique, you can use inner mental training to establish harmony between the goals of your conscious and sub-conscious minds.

At the Alpha brain wave level you can begin to feed visualisations into the sub-conscious, the aim being to reprogram the sub-conscious so that it starts to work toward the achievement of your goal. This means that the unconscious is working toward your objective, even while you are not!

Imagine a large screen in front of your eyes and visualize on that screen a picture of yourself as a fit and healthy person. Visualise yourself doing all the things you need to do to reach and then maintain your ideal physique. In particular focus on establishing a clear picture in your mind's eye of the things you want

• the physique you'd like to have
• the type of food that's good for you
• the right amount of food to eat
• the amount of physically activity you need to do
• the job you'd really like to be doing

AUTOSUGGESTION - Emile Coué

In the early part of this Century, Emile Coué established an autosuggestion clinic in a Paris suburb. Coué became famous for an autosuggestion which he encouraged his patients to repeat out loud to themselves twenty times, twice each day. He described it as his general formula.

'Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.'

The success of his clinic in restoring people to good health was based on the premise that

'The unconscious, in its character of surveyor over our mental and physical functions, knows far better than the conscious the precise failings and weaknesses which have the greatest need of attention. The general formula supplies the unconscious with a fund of healing, strengthening power, and leaves it to apply this at the points where the need is most urgent.'
Harry Brooks 'The Practice of Autosuggestion by the Method of Emile Coué, George Allen and Unwin 1922.

The auto-suggestion works in the quietness of meditation, when brainwave activity is in the alpha range.

You are encouraged to adopt Coue's general formula and use it twice a day, preferably just on waking and just before going to sleep. We recommend that you use the auto-suggestion at the end of your meditation.

Now click on the CD cover and purchase a copy of the BETTER AND BETTER MP3 file. The mantra, 'Day by day I'm getting better and better' was devised by Emile Coue in the first few decades of the last century. The recording begins with the waves lapping the shore and your body being relaxed from the top of your head down to your toes. Then the voice on the tape then repeats, 'Day by day I'm getting better and better' twenty times. Your subconscious mind has a fair idea of what needs to get better. It's also got a pretty good idea of what needs to be done for things to get better and better. Play this tape a couple of times a day for a few weeks, and start doing the things you need to do for things to get better. There is a good chance that things will get better.

Click on the CD cover to purchase the Better and Better MP3 The investment: $17 Aud

John Miller