The Relaxation Response
When humans face a threat, our bodies respond through the fight or flight response. The body gets ready for action by bringing extra blood flow to the muscles, raising heart rate and blood pressure, and increasing muscle tension. The body was not meant to be this way all of the time.
One of the most effective tools for managing pain, fatigue, and other symptoms is to learn how to stop or calm the fight or flight response. A state of relaxation is the opposite of the "fight or flight response" and changes how you deal, emotionally and physically, with stress.
What is Relaxation?
Understanding the relaxation response
How to Practice Relaxation
Techniques for achieving relaxation
Relaxation Techniques
Skip accordion section (6 items)Also sometimes called belly breathing. Focuses on your breathing to help you relax. One of the easiest and most effective relaxation skills. Allows us to breathe more deeply and calm the nervous system.
Uses mental imagery of calm and relaxing places to induce relaxation. Uses all of your senses to produce the most vivid mental image possible so that full distraction from stress can lead to profound relaxation.
Mentally scanning each part of your body, searching for stress/tension and letting it go. At the end of the scan, the body has been freed of tension.
Focusing one's attention on the here and now. Allowing negative thoughts to flow through and out of one's mind without evoking stress or upset.
Focuses on diminishing physiological arousal. Trains the body to relax and calm physiological processes through self-suggestion.
Rapid techniques for achieving the relaxation response. Often used after mastering other longer techniques. Can be more easily applied in real-world settings outside the home.