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Using
relaxation and mindfulness to counter stress and anxiety
Relaxation and mindfulness
techniques have been shown to have positive effects on stress and anxiety
and help people to feel happier and more positive. Relaxation can calm your
body, reduce muscle tension and aches, and relax your mind, helping you to
respond to stressful events with a clearer mind.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness has an ancient tradition
in eastern meditation techniques. It involves learning to focus on our
current experiences, rather than operating on 'automatic pilot' where our
thoughts and feelings can take over and cause distress. Being more 'mindful' of what we do and
how we experience our emotions is a powerful technique to help your life in
several ways:
- Manage stress and pressure better
- Cope with distressing feelings
- Manage difficult people more
effectively
- Master habits and impulses
The core mindfulness techniques include the
following:
- Observing what is going on in our body
and mind or our outer experiences at the present time. This includes
being aware of our feelings, thoughts, physical sensations, and urges.
It also means that we are not focusing on past or future worries
or concerns. To observe anything 'mindfully' means deliberately bringing
your attention to that thing (in your mind or in your environment) and
letting that be there - as it is - in the present moment.
- Describing or labelling
all of these experiences. For example, it is helpful to slow down our
processing of events and be able to label individual sensations (e.g.,
"I have an anxious feeling, my heart is pounding, and I have an
urge to leave this situation").
- Accepting these experiences without
judging them. For example, an accepting thought about anxiety could be
"this feeling is anxiety, which is normal and understandable given
the situation I am in". A less accepting, and more judgmental
thought about anxiety that is likely to increase our distress levels is
"I can't stand feeling this way, it's wrong to feel like this and I
need to make it go away".
Relaxation
techniques
There are many different ways to relax. A common strategy that is used by
many of us to
relax and counter stressors include regular exercise. However, often more
direct techniques are required to counter high levels of stress or anxiety.
Some of these include:
Slow breathing technique
Learning to breathe properly helps
to slow your heart rate and reduce muscle tension and can be a useful
'portable' method of relaxing when you are feeling anxious, as well as a
regular strategy to use throughout the day to reduce general stress levels.
Breathing is the basis of
relaxation, it is a common theme in ancient meditation practice. It gives us
our essential life force, but breathing the wrong way can retain tension in
the body, and when we don't breathe well we have less energy and more
stress. One of the most important points about breathing well is to take
long, slow breaths using the bottom half of our lungs. There are several
reasons why we don't always breathe well. Posture is one reason. If we are
too hunched or slumped, as opposed to sitting upright with back straight,
then our diaphragm (a muscle at the bottom of the lungs) gets compressed and
we only use the top half of our chest to breathe. Tension or stress is the
other main reason for poor breathing. When we feel worried, scared, or under
pressure, our body tends to tense up. Some of this tension stays in our
chest and shoulders, and again, the bottom half of our lungs and chest will
not be used. For this and other reasons we breathe faster and this makes the
body work harder. If we keep breathing with shallow and faster breaths it
will lead to other noticeable effects like shortness of breath, dizziness,
pins and needles, and feeling hot. So again, one of the most important
points about breathing well is to take long, slow breaths using the bottom
half of our lungs. Purchase one of our Relaxation CDs (below) to find out
how to do this effectively.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
(PMR)
PMR is a classic procedure for
training our body and mind to relax. This technique involves systematically relaxing
different muscle groups, working progressively through the body until a deep
state of calm and peace is achieved. Most people find that it takes regular
practise to achieve the desired result. The more you practise, the more
powerful the effect. Practise requires repetition and patience. The natural
rhythm of our breath is used to make the relaxation effective. We naturally
tense up a bit to breathe in and we relax the same muscles to breathe out, so we only let go of
tension in PMR when we breathe out. It can also be helpful to deliberately
put a bit of tension into our muscles before relaxing them. This helps to train the body to
notice tension and helps some muscles to relax more after being a little
tense first. Another principle of PMR is to utilise conditioning through
repetition and association. During PMR exercises you are asked to say the word 'relax' each
time you breathe out. After repeating this hundreds of times whilst
practising the technique, the word 'relax' becomes associated with muscle
relaxation and can be used to achieve a quick state of relaxation throughout
the day.
Purchase
Mindfulness and Relaxation training CDs
Basten & Associates have
produced mindfulness and relaxation CDs to allow you to practise these techniques as an
adjunct to other therapy, including cognitive therapy. The CDs will only
play on mp3-compatible CD players (new models of stereos and computers). The
files could also be copied to an Ipod or mp3 player.
Cost of all CDs: $15 (including
p&h within Australia).
MINDFULNESS Volume I:
1. Introduction.
Dr Chris Basten gives you an introductory explanation about the idea of mindfulness - what it is and
how we may use it for our own growth.
2. Mindfulness Breathing Meditation. This is a good beginner's exercise in
meditation, where the focus of one's attention is on the breath. It
illuminates the process of 'observing' the contents of one's mind and
sensations in our body with a mindful quality. While it is relaxing, the
chief goal of this exercise is to help you become the non-judgemental
observer of your body and mind - as a
core skill.
3. Mindful Eating. This is
included as a briefer exercise to extend your practice of mindfulness into
everyday life. It is designed to help you appreciate and practice
mindfulness away from breathing. Because it is a physical and food-related
activity, it is also a good precursor to other work with body-image (see
Volume II).
4. Thoughts, Feelings, Urges.
This script is a variation of the mindful breathing meditation, with a
deliberate focus on using mindfulness to manage emotions and urges better.
You are encouraged to sit in an upright position without too much support
(therefore not in a chair), so that some physical discomfort is likely to
occur over time. As urges to move and become comfortable appear, you are
encouraged to 'note' this mindfully, before acting on any urges. The idea is
to generalise this to other urges in life. Likewise, time in the exercise is
devoted to noticing and observing thoughts as they appear in the mind - and
to regard them more mindfully. It helps if you already have an understanding
of the cognitive model of
emotions. This sort of mindful noting of thoughts can help
you to have healthier meta-cognitive
skills (helpful for relapse prevention in depression and worry, amongst
other conditions).
MINDFULNESS VOLUME II:
1. Body Scan. This long (30
minute) exercise is a core, traditional mindfulness exercise. It involves
progressively bringing attention to each part of the body and noting all
sensations mindfully (that is, with acceptance of how things are in that
moment, without effort, without judgement). If you have a history of abuse
or physical assault, please talk with your therapist first, as this exercise
can evoke strong feelings that are harboured in the body. People with
chronic pain will find it helpful, but need to work on other mindfulness
practices and CBT for chronic pain before introducing this. Body scan can be
used to (a) practise and refine mindfulness skills, (b) as a relaxation and
sleep-inducing exercise, and (c) as one way to relate to one's own body with
less subjective emotion and judgement (therefore helpful for people with
body-image difficulties and those with chronic pain). Once you have followed
this exercise six or so times, we recommend that you try to develop and
practise your own 3 to 5 minute version.
2. Healthy Relationship with Our
Body. This exercise is a briefer variation on the body scan, with an
emphasis on noting our automatic thoughts and feelings about our body. It is
designed for people whose relationship with their body is a negative one.
This experience is designed to help you develop concepts like: (a) our feelings come from cognitions such
as automatic thoughts, assumptions and beliefs and (b) these cognitions are
often inaccurate and unhelpful and do not match evidence. Again, some
caution should be exercised if you have a history of sexual abuse or related
trauma.
RELAXATION TECHNIQUES:
This CD will guide you through
(1) a
slow breathing exercise, (2) a progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), and (3) a PMR
exercise without the initial tensing (this latter exercise is preferable for those who experience
pain in certain parts of their body).
In this CD (mp3 compatible) you
will have your own relaxation coaching and practice resource. PMR is a
powerful tool that everyone should learn as a life-skill.
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