Progressive Muscle Relaxation

In 1929, Dr. Edmund Jacobson published Progressive Relaxation. In it, he detailed a technique that focuses on tensing and then relaxing different muscle groups in the body.

The technique is now called Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR). The mental component of the technique focuses on the difference between feelings tension and relaxation. During PMR the eyes are closed and concentration is directed to the sensation of tension and relaxation. Feelings of warmth and heaviness are felt in the relaxed muscle after it is tensed, a mental relaxation is felt as a result. With practice, one can learn how to effectively relax and deter anxiety.

Since Dr. Jacobson’s ground-breaking work, practitioners who are trained in various body therapies have come to believe muscle tension serves an important role in keeping psychological material repressed. They believe tension stops energy flow and therefore the flow of emotions.

It is best to consult a physician before beginning PMR – especially if you have suffered a serious injury, have muscle spasms or back problems.

PMR tips –

• Find a quiet place with no electronic distractions
• Remove restrictive clothing
• Sit in a comfortable chair – you may practice PMR lying down but you just might fall asleep
• Remember to hold the tension in each area for fifteen seconds
• When you finish a session, relax with your eyes closed for a few seconds before getting up slowly

To begin –

·         Start with the right hand and lower arm. Make a tight fist and feel the tension in the hand, over the knuckles and up into the lower arm. Hold it for 15 seconds, then let go and relax. Notice the difference between tension and relaxation in your hand and lower arm.

·         To tense the right bicep, push your elbow down against the arm of the chair, feel the tension, study it, and then let go and relax

·         Move to the left hand and lower arm - make a tight fist......

·         Right bicep - push your elbow against the arm of the chair......

·         Move to the muscles of the face – start with the forehead. Tense the forehead by lifting the eyebrows as high as possible. Tense the muscles of the upper cheeks and nose by squinting tightly. At the same time wrinkle the nose.

·         Tense the muscles in the lower part of the face and jaw by gentling bite the teeth together while pulling the corners of the mouth back. Remember to feel the tension.

·         To tense the muscles of the neck – make a fist and push the chin against it, creating tension in the back and sides of the neck

·         Tense by shoulders by lifting them towards the ears. At the same time, create the tension in the back of the neck.

·         To tense the upper back - take a deep breath and hold it. At the same time, pull the shoulder blades together and try to make them touch

·         Tense stomach and abdominal muscles by pulling the stomach muscles in and holding them

·         Tense the right thigh by lifting the leg up off the chair - feel the tension in the upper leg and into the hip

·         Tense the right calf by pointing the toes

·         Tense the right foot by pointing the toes and turning the foot inward

·         To tense the left leg, lift it up off the chair

·         Tense the left calf by pointing the toes

·         Tense the left foot by pointing the toes, turning the foot inward

·         Now that each muscle groups in the body had been tensed and relaxed, try to relax each muscle group more deeply. Take deep breaths and let go of any remaining tension 

Moira

Your Happiness Set Point

Studies done with monks who are adept meditators, found that a particular form of meditation called compassion or loving kindness meditation trains happiness and can actually change the happiness set point.

Through tracking brain activity, researchers have found when the activity in the Left Prefrontal Cortex (LPC) is higher than in the Right Prefrontal Cortex (RPC) – people feel alert, energized, enthusiastic, joyous, enjoying life more, and are happier. When the activity in the RPC is higher than in the LPC – people worry, are anxious, and sad. If the activity in the RPC cortex is much greater than the LPC, people are prone to depression.

The more adept meditators used more of their brains when meditating (more areas lit up). This shows how meditation accesses more of the brain. Particularly – the left prefrontal cortex – activity in the LPC cortex swamped that in the RPC the LPC is associated with happiness, love and empathy. This is what keeps meditators coming back for more – it feels good!

This meditation is a 2,500 year old practice in which key phrases are repeated and the meditator focuses on feelings of happiness or loving kindness toward themselves and others.

It is best to practice daily for fifteen to twenty minutes for several months.

Sometimes this meditation can bring up feelings opposite to those one is trying to cultivate. If this happens, please be patient, acknowledge those feelings, feel them, let them pass, and continue with the loving kindness phrases. Over time, the part of your brain that deals with feelings of happiness, love and bliss will be developed.

While repeating the phrases, it is important to focus on the feeling of happiness. If it is difficult to hold onto that feeling, concentrate on a time when you felt happy and focus on that feeling (don’t focus on the activity involved or the people you were with). Or, imagine yourself as a child or as you are now, surrounded with loving kindness by those who love you, or God.

·         Sit or lie down in a comfortable position.

·         Take a couple of deep breaths and settle in – allowing your body to relax.

·         Make sure you are breathing from your diaphragm, your abdomen should rise as you inhale, and fall back down as you exhale.

·         Take deep breaths, letting the peace and the relaxation flow in and all of the tension, conflict and worries flow out.

·         Remember your breathing helps you relax – you can relax just the right amount, by first paying attention to your breathing and extending the exhalation just a little bit more from where it was before.

·         If thoughts, ideas or images come to mind, remember, it is part of the exercise, just acknowledge them, gently usher them through and go back to the exercise.

You will be repeating the following phrases for yourself and others:

May I be free from fear

May I be happy

May I be well

May I live life with ease (or in peace)

Begin by repeating these phrases for yourself, imagining the feelings of loving kindness and happiness permeating your body and mind. You may have to repeat these phrases for yourself for weeks until you feel the sense of loving kindness grow for yourself.  Then begin adding others, such as your family or friends - repeating to yourself:

May they (my family) be free from fear

May they be happy

May they be well

May they live life with ease

Using Your Whole Brain

Another day of multi-tasking, reading e-mails, juggling responsibilities and cramming facts means another day of using only half your brain. Research studies estimate the majority of people living in the developed world are trained to think with the left half of their brains. Not a bad thing if you’re organizing information and situations or developing detailed plans. The left brain excels at order and detail.

The problem? Without your right brain, you’re missing the big picture. You won’t find creative solutions to challenges. Your intuition is locked away. And, you may be less flexible.

Not that you want to use your right brain instead of your left brain… ideally, you should use your whole brain. Chances are you’ve got the left brain covered – the question is how to access the right brain.

And, you guessed it, meditation is one of the answers:

1.      Sit quietly and comfortably

2.      Close your eyes

3.      Try to relax all your muscles. Start with your feet and progress to your face – telling each body part to relax.

4.      Breathe through your nose. Pay attention to each breath. As you exhale, repeat a word like peace or relax, or a brief phrase such as “I am completely calm” to yourself. Breathe easily.

5.      Continue for at least ten minutes (twenty is better). If you get distracted that’s O.K., it’s part of the exercise. Just acknowledge where your mind goes, let it go, and go back to repeating your word. When you finish sit quietly for several minutes.

6.      Don’t worry if you’re not immediately successful in achieving deep relaxation. It will come with time and practice.

Another option for accessing the right brain is repetitive physical exercise. Running or getting on an elliptical machine or treadmill can help access right brain potential.

Breathing exercises can help as well.

1.      Sit comfortably (and yes, that is a theme) and release the tension in your body.

2.      Use your thumb and index finger to press down on your nostrils. Release pressure on one nostril and inhale.

3.      Switch the pressure on your nose and exhale. Inhale.

4.      Switch the pressure on your nose and exhale. Inhale

5.      Breathe through your abdomen

6.      Practice for at least ten minutes (and up to thirty)

Studies suggest that alternating your breathing between left and right nostrils helps build neural pathways through the corpus callosum (the junction point between the left and right hemispheres) in the brain.

Good luck!

Moira

Meditation

Ommm…ommm…ommm

For those who don’t meditate, the very word conjures images of a saffron-swathed swami seated pretzel fashion amidst tinkling wind chimes.

The reality is much different. Studies have shown that meditation boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, can be used to manage chronic pain or alleviate anxiety. The health benefits are real.

Put aside the vision of Tibetan temples and find a comfortable chair that allows you to sit up straight. A dimly lit room and soothing music are options that can enhance your meditation but they are not essential.

Close your eyes.

Breathe. Deeply. Focus on it. Inhale and exhale slowly. Deeply.

Now imagine descending with each breath. Perhaps you’re on an elevator and each time you exhale means you’ve passed another floor. Perhaps you’re on the stairs and each exhalation represents a step downward. Concentrate on your breath and reaching the ‘ground floor.’

When you’ve arrived, focus your mind on each body part body you want to relax. Your neck? Imagine each kink melting away. After your body is relaxed, imagine a peaceful place – a tranquil beach or a tranquil wood. Relax your mind.

Get back on your elevator or staircase and climb back up to consciousness.

Easy-peasy. And, the more you meditate, the easier it becomes.

Check in often for more tips on meditation and its benefits.

Moira

Exercising Your Brain

It’s hardly news one in three American’s is obese. The causes are two-fold – too many calories and not enough exercise.

A constant barrage of media encourages us to get off the couch and exercise. We are told that exercise improves mood, reduces tension and promotes the tendency to see problems as solvable. It increases endorphins and produces an important anti-distress effect in the body. And, more recent research indicates that exercise makes you smarter. The studies linking exercise to cognitive functioning have been going on for decades (1,2,). After years of research, we find that cardiovascular exercise does improve cognitive abilities, learning, memory and executive functioning (planning, scheduling, multitasking). Although we don’t know the exact mechanisms that improve brain health, animal research is giving us some clues. Researchers are finding that cardiovascular exercise creates new capillaries and increase blood flow and the production of proteins that create new nerve cells and encourage old neurons to grow. All good things, right?

Did you know that inactivity can contribute to depression, ADHD and Alzheimer’s disease? Studies done at Duke and University of Victoria found that exercise works as well as antidepressants on depression. In addition, Laura Baker, PhD, from the University of Washington School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System (3), found that Alzheimer’s patients with mild cognitive impairment improved with aerobic exercise while the group who participated in stretching and balancing exercises continued to decline.

So, how does this relate to resilience? Remember, resilience is all about recovery time. Your mental and physical health is directly related to how quickly you bounce back from stressful events. If you are losing brain cells and your cognitive abilities are declining, you certainly won’t be as sharp as you need to be to cope with life challenges. The healthier you are, the stronger you are, the tougher you are. So get off the couch, get fit and improve your brain. What have you got to lose besides brain cells?

www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/train-your-brain-with-exercise

Kramer, Art. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (Vol.11, No.8)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol.106, No.49)
Archives of Neurology (Vol.67, No.1)

A Man With Two Brains

A man with two brains? Only in the movies, right? No.

Each and every one of us has a second brain. It is called the enteric nervous system and is a network of neurons lining our gut. This “second brain” is not involved in any cognitive thought or decision making, but contains more than 100 million neurons (more than in the peripheral nervous system) that do more than just handle digestion. Those neurons can affect our mental state and influence certain diseases.

This system is far too complex to only move things through your colon. In fact, research shows that a “one-way street” runs from the gut to the brain via the vagus nerve. According to Emeran Mayer, professor of physiology, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA , “A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut”. In fact, 95 percent of our serotonin is found in the bowels (low serotonin levels affects depression). What this means is that our emotional state partially relies on information carried from the brain in our gut to the brain in our head.

In addition, 70 percent of our immune system relies on the gut to kill and eliminate foreign invaders. Current research is focusing on specifics of how the immune system and gut work together.

How does this affect resilience?

• We are what we eat. We want our gut to be healthy, happy and working properly. If our digestive system is in distress, we now know that our emotional state can be affected.
• Our digestion is influenced by our stress response. When we go into the fight/flight state, digestion is halted so we can run or fight for our lives. Therefore we do not properly digest our food.
• If 70 percent of our immune system relies on our gut, we had better make sure our gut is in top shape so the immune system can work efficiently.
  
  Source: “Think Twice: How the Gut’s “Second Brain” Influences Mood and Well-Being. February 12, 2010. Scientific American.

How Stress Can Affect Our Memory

Have you ever been at a party or social/work related event and forgotten the name of someone whom you know that you know? Have you ever walked into a room to get something and forgotten why you are there? Have you ever started to ask someone to pass you something only to forget what it is called? “Could you please pass me that……you know, thing over there, I can’t think of the name”.

You could be suffering from “neurotic stupidity”. Yes, there is a name for it, and it has its roots in cognitive psychology.

• Neurotic stupidity is a failure to use the real capacity of our brain due to its being overloaded by information.
• Neurotic stupidity manifests as a failure to process information needed to function well.
• Symptoms of neurotic stupidity include missing important details, having needed information readily drop out of memory, failing to pick up on important social cues, and loss of creative problem solving skills.
• Multitasking and muscular tension are major sources of neurotic stupidity.

Cognitive psychologists say we have a 2.5 bit channel capacity. Our brains can process 2.5 bits of information at a rate of 18 times per second. To get a sense of how limited this is, the average home computer can process 32 bits of information at a rate of 2-3 billion times per second. What this means is that the brain is easily overloaded, and when it overloads we drop information from our memory and miss important information necessary for problem solving and navigating though our world.

The good news is that we have an amazing ability to store information and to take information in. When our brains are allowed to operate at their best, they have remarkable capabilities. We know from years of research that memory has been shown to be almost limitless. But because of our limited channel capacity, the brain can only process small amounts of information per unit of time.

Most people would think that things we see and hear are the greatest sources of information coming into the brain. While it’s true that information from hearing and seeing can overload the brain, the largest source of information processed by the brain comes from our muscles. Muscular tension is the major source of information flow into the brain, and tension goes hand in hand with stress. It is stress and tension that clog our channel capacity, therefore, learning to relax allows us to think more clearly and concentrate more easily.

The cure for neurotic stupidity? Relaxation and self-quieting exercises.