Relaxation Techniques

A good relaxation program can be divided into two parts.

The first involves calming down your sympathetic nervous system, the fight and flight part of your brain. When you get agitated and upset you produce more of the stress chemicals, in particularly adrenalin and cortisol.

What you need is a mechanism to ‘burn up’ these chemicals and wash them out of your system. It’s called an aerobic fitness training program. 20, 30 or 40 minutes of exercise with your heart rate over 120 beats per minute, four or five times a week should do the trick.

If you’re stressed or depressed make it 7 days a week. A year’s supply of daily aerobic exercise trumps a year’s supply of Prozac.

The second part of a relaxation program involves active relaxation techniques that stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system - the part of your nervous system that calms you down.

Meditation is one way of using active relaxation techniques to get control of our bodies and our minds. It involves an understanding of brain wave patterns.

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

At the alpha level we experience the state of deep relaxation which is very useful in managing stress; calming the body and re-establishing equilibrium within the nervous and endocrine systems.

To get into the alpha meditative state when you are awake, sit or lie comfortably, close your eyes, take a deep breath and as you breathe out count from 3 down to 1 and relax. And then start breathing slowly, deeply and rhythmically and with every breath you breathe out feel your body becoming more and more relaxed.

Take a long slow, deep breath and hold it. Relax and breathe out, and with every breath you breathe out feel your body becoming more and more relaxed.

Start breathing using stomach breathing, so that every time you breathe in your stomach goes out. Stomach breathing will slow your breathing down dramatically, get more oxygen into your body and will stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system. Muscles will relax and blood vessels dilate to the very core of your body. Brain waves will start to slow down …

Then just sit there, breathing slowly, deeply and rhythmically thinking about nothing.

Meditation is one of the keys to successfully dealing with stress because it works to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.

The effects of meditation include inner peace, better interpersonal relationships, clearer thinking, increased work capacity, better sexual relationships due to less tension, absence of disturbing dreams, and smoother physical reactions often shown in better performances in sport.

It does not require long periods of meditation to obtain relief from stress. Ten minutes twice a day has produced dramatic relief in some hundreds of people who have consulted me professionally.

The only reason you can't find time to meditate is because you can't find time for yourself.