The Relaxation Response

Herbert Benson, M.D., Miriam Z. Klipper

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780380815951
• eBook ISBN: 9780061966002
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

In this time of quarantine and global uncertainty, it can be difficult to deal with the increased stress and anxiety.  Using ancient self-care techniques rediscovered by Herbert Benson, M.D., a pioneer in mind/body medicine for health and wellness, you can relieve your stress, anxiety, and depression at home with just ten minutes a day. 

Herbert Benson, M.D., first wrote about a simple, effective mind/body approach to lowering blood pressure in The Relaxation Response. When Dr. Benson introduced this approach to relieving stress over forty years ago, his book became an instant national bestseller, which has sold over six million copies. Since that time, millions of people have learned the secret—without high-priced lectures or prescription medicines. The Relaxation Response has become the classic reference recommended by most health care professionals and authorities to treat the harmful effects of stress, anxiety, depression, and high blood pressure.

Rediscovered by Dr. Benson and his colleagues in the laboratories of Harvard Medical School and its teaching hospitals, this revitalizing, therapeutic tack is now routinely recommended to treat patients suffering from stress and anxiety, including heart conditions, high blood pressure, chronic pain, insomnia, and many other physical and psychological ailments. It requires only minutes to learn, and just ten minutes of practice a day.

1

An astute physician is lamenting the times:

“But the present world is a different one. Grief, calamity, and evil cause inner bitterness…there is disobedience and rebellion…Evil influences strike from early morning until late at night…they injure the mind and reduce its intelligence and they also injure the muscles and the flesh.”

This chronicler lived 4,600 years ago in China, even though his observations appear contemporary. Human beings have always felt subjected to stress and often seem to look longingly backward to more peaceful times. Yet with each generation, complexity and additional stress are added to our lives. The truth is that most of the persistent problems of this planet are even further from solution than when the Chinese doctor decried them. The technology of the past forty-six centuries, and especially that of the last century which was supposed to make life easier for people, often seems to intensify the stress in our day-to-day existence.

Victims of Stress

What psychological price do we pay in attempting to adjust to the knowledge that war or its imminence is with us every day? Are we proud that our scientific know-how has increased the sophistication of weapons since that time when a shepherd named David could defeat an entire army with a rock thrown from a sling? Or do we knowingly or subconsciously despair of the current nuclear weaponry that could exterminate every human being, indeed almost all life?

Most of us find that we are helpless in solving the big problems. We have some vague hope that the leaders we elect (and the experts they in turn rely on) can find the solutions. But our concern usually involves everyday difficulties. Our frustrations come about because we generally can’t even solve the less earthshaking problems, such as being on time to work in a large, congested city. Indeed, the everyday demands of living make it more and more difficult to escape the increasingly adverse psychological effects that seem built into our existence. Whatever it may be—the daily commute, or the rising cost of living, or the noise and fumes of the city, or unemployment, or random violence—we find it difficult to reach a satisfactory equilibrium, and as a result we become the victims of stress.

Our rapidly changing world has necessitated many other adjustments. For example, before the women’s-liberation movement had filtered so far and deep, people were married under a set of unspoken agreements that society now questions and sometimes shatters. Today, women must reexamine their own roles and lifestyles against conflicting expectations and suppositions. For the older woman, the problems of reeducation and readjustment can be overwhelming. Men must also adjust to a new role that may mean more responsibility for family and household. They are being forced to view women in a new way, one that may be threatening to their accustomed role. Concurrent with and related to the movement is the change of the family structure. Mobility separates families into small nuclear units. Women raise children outside of marriage. Divorced fathers assume custody of children. All share in the impact of societal changes.

How are these anxieties and stresses affecting us? The presence of mental stress as a part of modern living has been the subject of a number of books, most of which concentrate on the psychology of stress. We will consider stress from a somewhat different perspective, for our concern is not only the psychology but also the physiology of stress. We will explore what happens to you internally under stressful situations and how stress physically undermines your health. This will be done by examining the relation between your emotional reactions and what they may cost you in hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, and other diseases. We will then point out what you can do about the effects of stress. We will show how, by your personal adoption of a simple psychological technique, you can improve your physical and mental well-being.

The Hidden Epidemic

We are in the midst of an epidemic, one that is all too prevalent in the United States and other industrial nations. The name of this epidemic is hypertension, the medical term for high blood pressure. Hypertension predisposes one to the diseases of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), heart attacks, and strokes. These diseases of the heart and brain account for more than 50 percent of the deaths each year in the United States. Therefore, it is not surprising that various degrees of hypertension are present in 15 to 33 percent of the adult population. Although this epidemic is not infectious in nature, it may be even more insidious, simply because its manifestations do not affect large numbers at the same time and because we are not generally aware that the disease is slowly developing within us. Throughout its course there are few, if any, symptoms. Yet each day we see it strike without warning, cutting short by decades the lives of our friends and loved ones. According to carefully compiled Government vital statistics, the diseases resulting from this epidemic account for an average of two deaths every minute in the United States alone. Put another way, that is nearly one million out of two million deaths a year. Translate this statistic into your own personal experience—the loss of a friend who leaves young children, the premature death of a father about to enjoy his retirement years. You are a fortunate individual if you have not personally experienced the ravages of this epidemic.

High blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes have markedly increased, not only afflicting a growing percentage of the population but steadily finding their way into younger age groups. The late Dr. Samuel A. Levine, an eminent American cardiologist, pointed out in 1963 that in families he had treated for many years, sons suffered heart attacks at an average of thirteen years younger than the age at which the fathers experienced theirs. Today many cardiologists observe this same significant shift. Five to ten years ago it would have been a relatively rare event to witness a stroke or heart attack in a person in his thirties and it would have been astonishing if the patient were in his twenties. Now interns and house staff just starting in medicine consider heart attacks in men in their thirties commonplace.

There is no shortage of theories to explain the rapidly increasing prevalence of hypertension and the associated increase in the number of heart attacks and strokes, suffered mainly in the Western world. The traditional explanations have been (1) inappropriate diet, (2) lack of exercise, and (3) family disposition. Yet there is another factor, which has often been ignored: environmental stress. Although environmental stress is gaining recognition as an important factor in the development of these diseases, it is still poorly understood. All four factors play a role. What has yet to be adequately determined is the relative significance of each.

Doctors have recognized for years that stress is taking a toll. It is not difficult to understand the correlation between the highly competitive, time-pressured society in which we live and mental stress with its influence on heart disease. For example, a commonly heard warning is “Don’t get upset, you’ll get high blood pressure.” The problem has been how to quantify stress. In other words, how do we objectively measure the effects of stress upon the body? Medicine has recently made inroads, moving from psychological speculation to hard, measurable, physiologic data.

Our focus will be on the relation between stressful psychological events and their associated physiologic changes, as they affect your health. Traditionally, psychology and medicine have long been separated by their different methodologies of research. This dichotomy has kept most physicians from seeing the relation between the psychologically laden term “stress” (hinging as it does on personal behavior and environmental events) and the functioning of the body and related diseases. Although most doctors would agree that stress does affect health, they are not attuned to the psychological, nonmedical literature about stress. Concerned mainly with bodily signs and symptoms, the physician treats stress by prescribing medication and, when no specific diseases are present, by reassurance and counseling. More often than not he will dispense so-called tranquilizing drugs rather than delve into the psychological roots of the problem. On the other hand, most psychiatrists and psychologists do not directly treat organic disease states. Their major concerns are emotions, thoughts, and personality. Psychiatrists may prescribe pills, but treatment is directed essentially to the psyche. If bodily symptoms are apparent, the patient will most likely be referred to a medical doctor, thus completing a circle with little interplay between the professions.

However, these traditional barriers are slowly crumbling. There is still a long way to go, and most physicians, because of the very paucity of concrete data, remain distrustful of psychosomatic or psychophysical diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, the specialty called psychosomatic medicine, which is the study and treatment of diseases caused or influenced by psychological events, is now a rapidly spreading field of medical research.

The Fight-or-Flight Response

The stressful consequences of living in our modern, Western society—constant insecurity in a job, inability to make deadlines because of the sheer weight of obligations, or the shift in social rules once binding and now inappropriate—will be described here in a manner that clearly explains how they lead to the ravaging diseases such as hypertension which are prevalent today and which are likely to become more widespread in the years ahead. We are all too familiar with the stresses we encounter. However, we are less knowledgeable about the consequences of these stresses, not only psychological but physiologic. Humans, like other animals, react in a predictable way to acute and chronic stressful situations, which trigger an inborn response that has been part of our physiologic makeup for perhaps millions of years. This has been popularly labeled the “fight-or-flight” response. When we are faced with situations that require adjustment of our behavior, an involuntary response increases our blood pressure, heart rate, rate of breathing, blood flow to the muscles, and metabolism, preparing us for conflict or escape.

This innate fight-or-flight reaction is well recognized in animals. A frightened cat standing with arched back and hair on end, ready to run or fight; an enraged dog with dilated pupils, snarling at its adversary; an African gazelle running from a predator; all are responding by activation of the fight-or-flight response. Because we tend to think of man in Cartesian terms, as essentially a rational being, we have lost sight of his origins and of his Darwinian struggle for survival where the successful use of the fight-or-flight response was a matter of life or death.

Man’s ancestors with the most highly developed fight-or-flight reactions had an increased chance of surviving long enough to reproduce. Natural selection favored the continuation of the response. As progeny of ancestors who developed the response over millions of years, modern man almost certainly still possesses it.

In fact, the fight-or-flight response, with its bodily changes of increased blood pressure, rate of breathing, muscle blood flow, metabolism, and heart rate, has been measured in man. Situations that demand that we adjust our behavior elicit this response. It is observed, for example, among athletes prior to a competitive event. But the response is not used as it was intended—that is, in preparation for running or fighting with an enemy. Today, it is often brought on by situations that require behavioral adjustments, and when not used appropriately, which is most of the time, the fight-or-flight response repeatedly elicited may ultimately lead to the dire diseases of heart attack and stroke.

If the continual need to adjust to new situations can bring on a detrimental fight-or-flight response, and if we live continuously with stressful events which trigger that response, it is natural to question whether we know how to check the dangerous results that inevitably follow. Take this line of reasoning one step further. If the fight-or-flight response resides within animals and humans, is there an innate physiologic response that is diametrically different? The answer is Yes. Each of us possesses a natural and innate protective mechanism against “overstress,” which allows us to turn off harmful bodily effects, to counter the effects of the fight-or-flight response. This response against “overstress” brings on bodily changes that decrease heart rate, lower metabolism, decrease the rate of breathing, and bring the body back into what is probably a healthier balance. This is the Relaxation Response.

 

This book will first explain the ways in which heart attacks and strokes develop within the body, often undetected, through the insidious mechanism of high blood pressure. We will show how high blood pressure is related to stress through the inappropriate elicitation of the fight-or-flight response.

Our main purpose, however, is to discuss the Relaxation Response, for it may have a profound influence on your ability to deal with difficult situations and on the prevention and treatment of high blood pressure and its related, widespread diseases including heart attacks and strokes. The Relaxation Response has always existed in the context of religious teachings. Its use has been most widespread in the Eastern cultures, where it has been an essential part of daily existence. But its physiology has only recently been defined. Religious prayers and related mental techniques have measurable, definable physiologic effects on the body which will be explained. From the collected writings of the East and West, we have devised a simplified method of eliciting the Relaxation Response and we will explain its use in your daily life. You will learn that evoking the Relaxation Response is extremely simple if you follow a very short set of instructions which incorporate four essential elements: (1) a quiet environment; (2) a mental device such as a word or a phrase which should be repeated in a specific fashion over and over again; (3) the adoption of a passive attitude, which is perhaps the most important of the elements; and (4) a comfortable position. Your appropriate practice of these four elements for ten to twenty minutes once or twice daily should markedly enhance your well-being.

2

If you owned a factory and a sales representative called on you to sell you a “miracle” machine that would never fail to distribute vitally needed materials to all points of your plant, you’d probably give him a few minutes of your time. When he told you this machine was designed to last over seventy years and pump more than two and a half billion times, indeed, circulating between forty and eighty million gallons of essential “fuel” to keep your factory functioning, you might begin to doubt that such a fantastic device really could exist.

Yet every living man and woman in the world possesses just such a machine, the human heart. The pressure generated by the heart is called blood pressure. Like any other machine, however excellent, the heart is subject to defects. High blood pressure, when the heart beats too forcefully, is one such defect. High blood pressure is so widespread in our society that it afflicts between twenty-three and forty-four million Americans.

Statistics, however, do not explain what is happening to cause high blood pressure, or hypertension, and how hypertension actually leads to heart attacks and strokes. We will first explain several basic biologic and medical principles, which will give you an adequate background to understand these events.

Vital Functions

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is very dangerous because it increases the rate of development of what is technically called atherosclerosis, commonly known as hardening of the arteries. The popular name is well chosen. Atherosclerosis is the deposition of blood clots, fats, and calcium within the walls of the arteries, causing the normally soft, elastic, open arteries to become hard, inelastic, and partly or completely blocked. This blockage leads to dire consequences. But, before we discuss atherosclerosis, several basic principles of how the body functions should be understood.

The arteries perform a key function. They carry the blood from the heart, the pump of the body, to the body’s many functional units, the cells. Tissues are simply a specialized group of cells with a common function. Different groups of tissues with a special function are organs. For example, the heart is an organ made up of muscle and other types of tissue. The function of the heart is to pump blood. The blood is another tissue. In the blood, carried by the arteries and other blood vessels, are the foodstuffs and vital components that keep the tissues alive, such as digested proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and other necessary nutrients, as well as vital oxygen. Each cell slowly “burns” its nutrients with oxygen to derive usable energy and maintain life.

Early in evolution most organisms were unicellular, made up of only one cell, living in what we would now call the sea. It was simple for these organisms to get nutrients for survival. They took them from the surrounding sea and excreted their wastes into this large reservoir by a type of simple passage called diffusion. As forms of life became multicellular and more complex, the cells were removed from a direct source of nutrients. Cells became surrounded by other cells, and nutrients and wastes could no longer make their way in and out of cells by diffusion. A circulation was necessary to carry the environment of the sea to the individual cells of the body.

Our blood is part of that hypothetical sea. The circulation of the blood carries food particles from the digestive organs, such as the small intestines, and oxygen from the lungs to the cells. Special organs such as the kidneys developed to eliminate waste products, carried to them by the blood, which could no longer be eliminated by diffusion directly into the sea. In this circulatory system, the vessels that carry the nutrients from the heart to the tissue are the arteries; the veins, on the other hand,...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• Bibliography
• Searchable Terms
• Praise
• Copyright
• About the Publisher