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It does amaze me sometimes when i meet clients in my practice who have never really known what it is like to deeply relax. I specialize in anxiety counseling and can only recall one person who came to me who performed a relaxation exercise daily. It is vitally important that anxiety sufferers establish a relaxation routine because the core of anxiety and panic disorder, as well as many other emotional issues, is an over-arousal of the nervous system. I am aware that to a certain extent i am stating the obvious, however, in practice most clients don't take time out to lower this arousal on a regular basis which would tremendously enhance their quality of life if done consistently.
Now at most psychological out-patient departments all over the world most patients are taught the classical relaxation technique where you tense each muscle around the body and then relax it and these techniques can calm most people who do them but their one drawback is that they don't actually go far enough and they only reach a superficial level of relaxation and many people still remain in over-arousal because they only go to this basic level of calmness. The traditional technique was developed by Herbert Benson, M.D. at Harvard Medical School, and written up in his book entitled, of all things, "The Relaxation Response".
We must remember that stress starts in the mind so relaxing the muscles is half of the picture, stress it is a product of arousal in certain brain centers. The brain is made up of three main areas, the reptilian brain (our most ancient part), the limbic system and the frontal brain or neocortex.
It is in the first two that the action takes place with regards to stress. This is the famous 'fight or flight' area that is very primitive in it's nature. These two areas contain the glands and structures that react to stress and fear and fire us up and then keep us aroused. These main glands are the thalamus and the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland all of which are located in the limbic system.
In the reptilian brain, at the rear, is a small structure known as the locus ceruleus which is also part of the brains stress response equipment. Further into the body itself are the adrenal glands which fire cortisol and adrenaline into your body when the afore mentioned structures notice stress looming. So in order to really reach a deep level of relaxation where our stress really is 'turned off' we have to switch off these structures somehow. How that is done is by simple visualization exercises that take you way past the superficial level of calmness that the traditional techniques do. You can literally learn to 'shut down' your minds stress centers at will.
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