Posts Tagged ‘Relaxation’

The routines we’ve developed to contend with our modern multitasking lifestyles don’t tend to allow much room for relaxation. That’s a pity. Because not having relaxation built into our routines isn’t just harmful to our psychological well-being; it actually decreases our productivity at home and at work. Multitasking was hyped as the new efficient way to work but it has actually proven less efficient. Engaging in multiple ongoing tasks leads to less focus on each task. That leads to a drop in efficiency and quality in our work as a whole, and production suffers. Integrating relaxation and meditation time into our daily routines can help increase productivity.

Relaxing improves focus. Taking a half hour at the start of your day for relaxing seems could seem counterintuitive. But instead of charging into work and blundering into your tasks like a whirlwind of misdirected energy, try taking a different tactic, even if it means coming into the office a bit earlier. Sit down and close your eyes and don’t think about work at all initially. Meditate if you like. Don’t get lethargic, but allow yourself to relax completely.

Once you’ve achieved that, direct your thoughts to the tasks you need to accomplish in the day ahead. Allow yourself to begin prioritizing the tasks mentally. What is most important? What task needs to be executed on first to set up the next one? A logical progression will begin to follow and priorities will begin to crystallize in your mind. At this point, while still relaxed, take out a pen and paper and begin to write down the day’s priorities in a list. When you’ve done this, you’re ready to start your day. There is no reason to be anxious during the day because you’ve got your list of tasks identified and you can begin to complete each one in order while remaining calm, focused and efficient.

This process can work just as efficiently for your personal life as it does at work. Worrying about things that need done seldom results in accomplishing concrete goals. Not accomplishing goals results in anxiety. You may find it helpful to set aside time every day for meditating. Just as you do at work, while meditating at home, begin to identify the areas in your life that are causing you anxiety. Once you’ve identified personal priorities think about the best way to execute an action plan for each one.

Education, career and relationship issues are often areas that people fret about without having an action plan to resolve them. If education is high on this list for you, think about your options. For folks who never finished college, or who want to return to university for continuing education for a master’s degree, getting an online degree may be a great action plan.

Career issues need to be identified. Make a list of three actionable items that you can easily incorporate into a workplace strategy. If career advancement is what you’re preoccupied with; execute your identified goals to help get you there and quit stressing about it. Relationship issues can be handled the same way. Identify the problems you may be encountering in your relationship and come up with three concrete actions you can take to positively impact your relationship.

Meditating and relaxing can be vehicles to increase calmness and tranquillity in your life in two different ways. The most obvious of course is that the mere process of meditating results in calmness. The second, less obvious way that meditation can increase your quality of life is that by using it as a tool to identify causes of worry, you can set about removing the worry by taking effective action.

- Article by Whitney Jones.

Thank you to Kemila Zsange, C.Ht, RCH for providing us with this exclusive article

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When some clients tell me, “I just can’t relax. No matter what I do, even under hypnosis.” I would recommend to them the book Relaxation Response, written by a very mainstream medical doctor, Herbert Benson from Harvard Medical School, in 1975. It became national bestseller and was updated and reprinted in 2001. For those who like “scientific measurements”, this book is full of diagrams and charts.

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This book is especially helpful for people with chronic stress and high blood pressure.

People can’t relax because our usual thinking is concerned with events outside ourselves. Through emotional attachment, social feelings, ideological beliefs and sensory contacts, we are constantly diverting our thinking toward external factors. Any attempt to redirect this outwardly directed consciousness requires a different mental process.

The book explains “Fight or Flight Response” in details. This term was fist described by Dr. Walter B. Cannon at the turn of the twentieth century, as an “emergency reaction”, in the same institute as Benson – Harvard Medical School.

Fight or flight response is the inborn mind mechanism. In the past, it had considerable evolutionary significance. Individuals with this response could survive more effectively, passing it on to their offspring. However, we are living in a very different world now than our ancestors.  Nowadays, this mechanism is activated when we face stressful events. We may differ in what is stressful to us individually, depending on our own value systems, but our society poses enough stressful circumstances to affect all of us. When this happens, blood pressure increases, including heart rate, increased rate of breathing, increased body metabolism, or rate of burning fuel, and marked increase in the flow of blood to the muscles of the arms and legs.

People then start to have associations, and develop fear, or phobia. And chronic elicitation of the fight-or-flight response leads from the transient elevations in blood pressure to a permanent state of hypertension. In the brain, it is hypothalamus that controls the evocation of he fight-or-flight response. When a single situation requiring behavioral adjustment occurs again and again, the fight-or-flight response is repeatedly activated.

When the fight-or-flight response is evoked, a part of the involuntary nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system becomes highly active. It deals with the everyday bodily functions that normally do not come into consciousness, such as the maintenance of heartbeat and blood pressure, regular breathing, the digestion of food. The sympathetic nervous system acts by secreting specific hormones: adrenalin or epinephrine and noradrenalin or norepinephrine. These hormones, epinephrine and its related substances, bring about the physiologic changes of increased blood pressure, heart rate, and body metabolism.

The fight-or-flight response happens in an integrated fashion, as it’s controlled by a part of an area in the brain called hypothalamus. And as it’s involuntary, we think we don’t have control over it.

We don’t need to give examples of monks who meditate years to show you it is absolutely possible to control and change your blood pressure, heart rate, breathing or metabolism. We as hypnotherapists, can show you, and guide you, to use the power of your mind to achieve this by hypnosis and self-hypnosis, because there is another response in us that we can activate and it can lead to a quieting of the sympathetic nervous system. This is Relaxation Response.

Your hypnotherapist can help you activate this involuntary response anytime you want. So that we don’t have to change your environment to avoid fear, phobia or stress, we can train ourselves to have a different response.

Think of those surgeries without anesthesia. Your mind has greater power than you want to give credit for. Needless to say all my clients may feel hot, warm, or cold, raise one of the arms… and last but not lest, feel relaxed by simply accepting the suggestions. By the way, hypnosis is mentioned in this little book and is described as “a widely known but still poorly understood technique”.

Just in case that you are curious. The way to bring forth the Relaxation Response is to have the following four components:

1. a quiet environment
2. a mental device – a mantra or sound, or a fixed gaze
3. a passive attitude
4. a comfortable position

Tai chi is a soft martial art and is commonly practiced as a means to improving health and relaxation. With slow, flowing movements, tai chi is said to improve the movement of energy around the body. Surprisingly considering the pace of tai chi you actually burn more calories practicing tai chi than you would surfing or lifting moderate weights. Due to the slow nature of tai chi it is extremely low impact, making it perfect for anyone who suffers from joint or bone problems.

There are actually hundreds of different forms of tai chi but the most popular ones are Chen, Yang, Wu, Sun and Wu-Hao and Fa styles. While most tai chi is slow paced there are variants that are much faster paced although these are typically only taught and practiced by masters of the slower forms.

The best way to learn tai chi is to scout your local area for classes. Almost all martial arts dojos will run a tai chi class, as do many community buildings. Tai chi is one of the most affordable martial arts to learn as there’s no special equipment required, all you need is to pay for entry into the class and that’s it. It’s best to wear loose fitting clothing to allow for full range of motion and circulation. Also tai chi is typically practiced barefoot or wearing flat soled shoes to enhance balance.

There’s no official accreditation system for tai chi teachers, however as I mentioned above, teaching tai chi is hardly a get quick rich scheme and I can’t imagine there are many, if any, teachers out there who don’t have a good knowledge of tai chi and are just looking to make an easy buck. Also because of the respect people have for martial arts, a dojo won’t employ a teacher they don’t have full confidence in.

Much like meditation, tai chi is something that is best done at least once a day. When you enroll in a class it will probably be run only once or twice a week. This leaves the rest of the week for you to practice what you have learned so far. Preferences vary, but many people like to practice tai chi in the morning as it is a gentle exercise that gets the blood flowing, and gives them a reason to wake up early.

Do remember that tai chi is a martial art and was originally used as a form of combat. Please treat it with the respect its tradition deserves, failure to do so could offend the teacher.

You can follow the tai chi exercises in the video below to get a good idea of what tai chi is, and if it feels right to you.