Relaxation methods Effect, instructions and tips

Relaxation techniques and regeneration techniques in the overview
Relaxation is a state of mind and body, the opposite of tension. Tension is not negative, but a change of arrival and relaxation is part of a healthy body. However, if the tension is in the center, then it leads to health problems such as inner agitation, headaches, back problems, fears and lack of concentration.

Relaxation methods should trigger a relaxation reaction. This manifests itself in the nervous system as the parasympathetic nervous system becomes active, and the sympathetic decreases in activity. In the body this means: the muscle tone decreases, the reflexes decrease, the heart beats slower, the blood pressure in the arteries sinks. We use less oxygen and the skin loses its conductivity. For the psyche, to relax: we can concentrate better and differentiate our perceptions better, we become calmer and feel better.

contents

• How do relaxation procedures work??
• What do we need relaxation procedures for??
• Why is stress a problem today??
• Atemtherapien
• endurance sports
• Sit back and enjoy
• Alexander Technique
• To look into the distance
• Autogenic training
• meditation
• Progressive Muscle Relaxation
• sauna
• pause
• Take your time
• regeneration
• Sleep
• recreation
• breaks
• Think of beautiful things
• smile
• shake
• Act out anger
• Explode at work
• Warm foot bath
• Compare negative
• Place of silence
• Relaxation by heat
• Idleness is the beginning of relaxation
• When are relaxation procedures suitable?
• No mysticism

How do relaxation procedures work??

The psychologist Björn Hussman writes on the website of the German Society for Relaxation: "Common core element of the relaxation and mindfulness-based procedures is the so-called tophotropic reaction (relaxe response), in which the brain metabolism, the nervous system and the entire organism in the direction of body-soul relaxation "switch"."

The more frequently relaxation techniques are practiced, the faster negative stress can be reduced. (Image: fizkes / fotolia.com)

The goal of all relaxation methods is to train the relaxation reactions to stabilize in the central nervous system. The more we practice such a procedure, the easier it is to relax, and the easier it is to initiate it. When we are in stress mode, we can quickly soothe it with the appropriate exercises.

The procedures can influence both the physical as well as the psychological level. The progressive muscle relaxation is an example of a technique that has the physical processes, so the tension of the muscles in focus. As the psyche and the body are linked during relaxation and relaxation, relaxation of the muscles also has a psychological effect. The same applies vice versa. Autogenic training, for example, is a psychic technique that in turn affects bodily functions.

All evidence-based procedures share three elements: Rituals direct the affected person to certain zones of perception. If there is a relaxation, the participants observe it attentively (mindfulness) and thereby strengthen it. Autogenic training, for example, is about muscle-relaxation or heat during vascular relaxation, while yoga is about tensing certain muscle groups and then releasing them.

All relaxation methods include concrete exercises to re-activate the body and psyche.

A goal of the techniques is not only that they directly reduce the level of stress, but also that the affected understand how body and mental states influence each other. So they learn to influence psychic states and the body at will.

Not only do they feel less physically strained, they also gain confidence in the experience of self-controlling stress-related discomfort rather than being exposed to them and feeling that they are the passive victims of their condition.

What do we need relaxation procedures for??

Regular relaxation techniques help to find a healthy balance, psychologists talk about mental health. They strengthen the health and the regeneration and strengthen the robustness against stress.

Relaxation methods can, among other things, relieve circulatory problems and chronic fatigue. (Image: Syda Productions / fotolia.com)

They are not just preventative. Studies have shown that the procedures are useful for alleviating or reversing the following: sleep problems, chronic fatigue, anxiety (other than anxiety and / or major depression), psychosomatic tension, gastrointestinal or circulatory problems.

In addition, they complement various therapies as accompanying measures, from the REHA clinic to psychiatry and from cancer therapy to eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa (anorexia). Psychologists assume that relaxation procedures can make a valuable contribution to personality development.

Why is stress a problem today??

Stress is not pathological - on the contrary. It is a natural alarm mode of evolution. When the brain receives the signal that threatens danger, the organism releases dopamine, adrenaline and cortisol. The immune system is now inhibited, but the reactions are in full swing.

In the past, when people were physically working, the physical response consumed this surplus of stress hormones. However, this physical exhaustion is usually missing today. We feel our heart rate rise, as well as the blood pressure, we have problems with digestion and headaches, our shoulders are tense, we sleep too little and irregularly. This stress can make us sick.

Not everyone has the opportunity to relieve themselves physically in these stress states to run the city park or to chop wood. Massage, sauna, yoga or progressive muscle relaxation offer alternatives that can be integrated into today's work routine. The basis is, as banal as it sounds, a relaxed state of mind.

A good massage ensures deep relaxation and helps reduce stress. (Image: puhhha / fotolia.com)

Atemtherapien

Some relaxation techniques start with breathing. The goal is to consciously perceive the process of breathing. Instead, practitioners focus on breathing in such a way that they displace other sensory experiences. For example, they close their eyes, do not speak during the exercises and do no other activities. By focusing on the breathing and at the same time by deep inhaling and exhaling the blood pressure and pulse rate decreases.

endurance sports

Endurance sports intervene at the biological origin of tension, a reaction of the brain, nerves and muscles that leads to an increase in "performance hormones". Endurance run, long bike rides, but also swimming or strength training are excellent for breaking down these hormones. Also ideal are sports that demand the highest level of fitness and self-control, such as boxing. But not everyone likes that.

Archaic people would have acted out physically if they had run away as a stress reaction or plunged into a fight. Today, this is especially important for people who need to work intensively mentally without exerting physical effort. Mental effort combined with physical inactivity is an excellent combination to develop stress symptoms.

Those who use an office job are the best places to exercise before they experience the symptoms of a stress disorder, such as high blood pressure, anxiety, irritability, or vague anxiety.

Sit back and enjoy

The easiest way to relax is to see fewer and fewer people. They are forced to always bring "full performance" and yet never be satisfied; forced by real or alleged demands in the job, intensified exploitation, but also by beauty ideals and ideological decals of eternally young, eternally dynamic "success types". In addition, there are incompatibilities of "a healthy family world" and a day-to-day work that consists of competition and enforcement. The result is a permanently high stress level, which can not be picked up in the hamster wheel.

This chronic and disease-inducing tension can be broken by taking time off - no matter what the others say. Turn off the phone one evening, be reachable for no one. Visit a museum, walk in the woods or loll on the sofa, read, do what we enjoy - enjoy the day.

Regular timeouts are important in order to compensate for the stress in everyday life. (Image: contrastwerkstatt / fotolia.com)

Alexander Technique

The Alexander technique starts with recognizing the causes. The users ask for it, causing tension, pain or sleep problems. What unfavorable habits we care for?

Here, in everything they do, users learn to pay attention to how they do it in order to recognize harmful habits they were previously unaware of. This approach is useful against stress because our brain stores habits because it knows them, regardless of whether they are useful habits.

It's also about movements. With the Alexander Technique, we notice if we are tensing our muscles too much when we are sitting in front of the screen, if we are experiencing inner restlessness, etc.

Failure (of harmful habits) and pausing are essential components of the Alexander Technique.

To look into the distance

Today, many people are working on the screen. This can lead to a special form of tension, namely the eyes (also the shoulders and the back). Relaxing here at short notice is easy, and yet many leave it: you just have to look out the window in between, watch the action outside, or fix a certain object. So relax your eyes.

Autogenic training

Autogenic training is a self-suggestion. The participants learn to enter a light trance state, as well as to get back from it. In this state of trance, they engage themselves with memorabilia that serve to recover.

meditation

Meditation works like autogenic training on the psyche. Many cultures use meditation as a religious practice. However, such is not the case when relaxing. The desired state is what spiritual practitioners call "emptiness," "oneness," or "rising in the here and now." Among writers and philosophers, meditation is a synonym for deep and undisturbed reflection.

In meditation, focus is taken from the hectic outside world and instead focused on the inside. (Image: lightpaper / fotolia.com)

Similar to the breathing techniques, it is also about fading out external stimuli, in meditation this means focusing on inner states. Even without sharing the religious background, Samantha meditation is apt to enter a state of relaxation.

Here the meditators concentrate on a single object. This can be a word or a picture inside. It aims to expose the flow of thoughts and calm the psyche.

Medically, regular meditation is a way to relieve stress. Neurobiologists confirm a change in brain waves, a deep breathing and a reduced tension of the muscles.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

If you do not believe in psychic techniques with a religious background, Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation is recommended. Here you relax muscle groups and tighten them again, and vice versa. This relaxation training is easy to learn, use in everyday life and also relieves symptoms associated with stress such as high blood pressure or headaches.

sauna

When taking a sauna, switching between heat and cooling ensures a stable immune system, reduces excessive blood pressure and compensates for the metabolism. For the muscles, the temperature change means: The heat expands the blood vessels, the cold pulls them together. The organism is only running at full speed, then it relaxes.

Sauna is a good remedy for constant stress. In this case, the nerves have adjusted to stress as a normal condition. You have a hard time letting go and a conscious "I do not want to have stress" brings little, because the nervous system is "conservative" once it has a pattern imprinted.

The advantage of the sauna is that it sends an impulse to the body from outside, to which the body has to react. Tension only keeps up if it builds up slowly, which you can observe yourself. When you suffer from stress, nervousness, anxiety, and concentration problems get bigger and bigger as they begin to creep. The cold shower after sauna tenses the muscles abruptly - now the body can not help but relax abruptly afterwards as well.

If you have no time or desire to have a sauna, you can achieve a similar effect with hot-cold alternating showers. However, you should after the ice-cold shower but dry with a towel dry, so that the heat can rise back into the body.

The sauna is an ideal place to unwind and provides relaxation of body and mind. (Image: BillionPhotos.com/fotolia.com)

pause

We can trigger the tension "by ourselves" by bowing unreasonably to unreasonable demands and allowing ourselves to be free. For example, if we think we can never do enough to please our boss, even though we are working through the weekend, we are putting ourselves under pressure.

Even fears like "I can not do that" or constant anger about work that we "actually" do not want to do, but also do not clearly say "no" lead to a stress mode, for simple evolutionary reasons: fear and hate are not purely psychological phenomena. Rather, they ensure that our "danger hormones" increase. Regardless of the task, the stress level increases.

It is even more problematic if we can not solve a current problem: we are furious or worried because we do not earn enough, or because we wait for the answer of an authority. The stress level is increasing and we can not fix the cause of the content right now.

Here it helps to stop and to first make your own state clear. That alone relativizes the anger and anxiety associated with the situation. Then it's time to analyze the situation, maybe even write it down and reflect on how best to deal with your own strengths and weaknesses, and accept the reality.

Do you feel that your stress level is increasing because a certain colleague keeps you upset? Can not you fall asleep because you worry about aspects in your life? One technique to relax now is to lean back, take a deep breath in and out, and cheer up with phrases like "others have already done that," "I'll fix it.", Etc.

Many people feel guilty and feel guilty when they are not "productive." (Image: underdogstudios / fotolia.com)

Take your time

Especially in today's society, tension is more and more caused by incitement - by the feeling of permanently having too little time for the things that have to be "made." More and more people feel "guilty" when they have to wait or just have nothing to do. So they can not use such valuable phases in which they could relax. Instead, they have a guilty conscience, not being "productive," and that, in turn, creates stress - a negative spiral leads to inner agitation and sleep disturbances.

Instead, you should use voluntary or "forced" breaks and waiting times to relax. If the train does not come and they arrive late without their own help, that's no problem. On the contrary, you can look out the window, start a new book, have a coffee in peace or watch the birds on the train track. Instead of meaninglessly building up stress, you can reduce it.

regeneration

Regeneration and relaxation go hand in hand, with regeneration medically meaning someone heals. When we are sick or exhausted, we consume energy. This energy is not there at the touch of a button, but it builds up slowly. We need a rest period.

Sleep

The entrepreneur Arianna Huffington writes: "Our corporate culture consists of stress, sleep deprivation and burnout." It can be supplemented: all three are mutually dependent. Acute and chronic lack of sleep lead to lack of concentration, lack of performance and memory problems. With prolonged sleep deprivation can lead to delusions, which are often associated with anxiety. Lack of sleep increases susceptibility to stress with all its symptoms.

To regenerate after a stress, there is no better way than to sleep. Tense muscles relax, increased blood pressure drops.

recreation

In the capitalist world of work, recovery primarily served to regenerate manpower. But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights formulates recovery as a fundamental right.

breaks

In addition to sleep, breaks are the best way to regenerate. Even in a job with extreme stress factors such as surgery, a study of the Medical Hannover 2011 showed that short breaks during an operation made the doctors more efficient; they suffered less stress and made fewer mistakes. They released significantly less stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and testosterone than their colleagues who did not take breaks.

Tension can often be alleviated if something nice is thought of. (Image: Antonioguillem / fotolia.com)

Think of beautiful things

Stress as a physical reaction to stress, anxiety and anger can be reduced by positive suggestions. Our thoughts and images in the mind shape our physical condition in this case.

For example, you can close your eyes and remember beautiful experiences: your last kiss, an evening around the campfire, situations in which you were happy. Our brain works with impressions and does not distinguish whether the impulses that arrive "really" correspond to the current situation.

smile

"Smile it" acts on people who feel bad, often like a mockery. Nevertheless, to relax, it is an effective technique. But you should not just smile a little, grin wide and grimace your face. This relaxes facial muscles that are tense during stress.

Smile has a physical component: when we smile, the facial muscle presses exactly on the nerve that sends a positive mood to the brain.

shake

You can also shake yourself: the arms, the legs, the whole body. Remember to shake out your negative feelings. "Purely physical" also relaxes such a shaking.

Act out anger

Tension arises when we build up trouble. Then our whole body can cramp. To avoid this, we can allow anger and seek a framework for it. It is well suited to chop wood or otherwise break ewtas, for example a cardboard box.

We think of the event or the person who caused the anger. We clasp the ax, the hammer or the club, yell out everything we want to say and strike.

Then we put down the "weapon", stretch ourselves and take a deep breath.

Small exercises in the workplace help to avoid tension. (Image: Robert Kneschke / fotolia.com)

Explode at work

When we work at the desk, we put on different muscles and move too little. If your job allows, you can do some push-ups or jump in one place while holding your arms up.

You can also fold your arms behind your shoulders while sitting and turn right or left.

Warm foot bath

Lack of exercise during work at the desk causes insufficient circulation and coldness of the feet. Relax with a warm foot bath.

Compare negative

If you are tense for fear of a situation, it helps to say "there are worse things" and to imagine this worse. Or you imagine exactly what the worst thing might be after a failed exam or a failed interview and realize how they would handle it.

So you can take stressful situations your horror.

Place of silence

Often we unconsciously tap into everyday life because we are surrounded by a noise level, and our brains work to disentangle it, even though we do not want to actively focus on most of those sounds.

To relax, you can do something that is becoming rarer in this day and age: Find a place of silence, a place to retreat to. This can be a forest lake or an allotment - they themselves know which place of power they like most.

Relaxation by heat

Heat causes the blood to flow through the body. If your body is tense, or you feel stressed, a hot water bottle under the blanket will help as well as an electric blanket or a warm pillow in the neck.

Warmth is very beneficial if you feel strained or stressed. (Image: Alena Ozerova / fotolia.com)

Idleness is the beginning of relaxation

Plan lazy hours or lazy days. They do not take any action in these hours or days, no appointments, no appointments. Whether you are walking in the woods or lying in front of the TV is up to you.

When are relaxation procedures suitable?

Relaxation procedures are generally suitable for anyone who wants to reduce stress, get to know his body better or wants to feel good.

Inappropriate are people with control. Even with certain mental illness, the techniques hardly work: This is especially true for psychosis or manic states. These can even get worse.

For example, relaxation techniques may help with mild anxiety, but if you suffer from psychiatric anxiety disorder, you will not replace therapy.

Even if you use the exercises to avoid inconvenience, they are counterproductive: if you do not pay the phone bill, the phone will also be turned off if you relax instead of transferring the money.

No mysticism

Esoteric Schwurkleiei and Hokuspokus selling charlatans ensure that Entpannungsverfahren apply as a kind of secret ritual for Chosen with special abilities. It is not so. To learn these procedures, you do not need special talents.

However, they have to stay "on the ball". At the beginning there is the willingness to get involved. Then follows the discipline to perform the exercises continuously. Patience is also important - that's why the techniques are not suitable for control freaks who want to see "results" immediately.

Do not expect miracles. No relaxation process makes them a superman or a superwoman. Nor does it prevent you from experiencing crises and stressful situations over and over again in your life. But those who have learned to relax can master these crises better than before. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)

literature
Kristiane Gierra, Norbert Klinkenberg: Relaxation procedure. In: Volker Köllner, Michael Broda (ed.): Practical Behavioral Medicine. Stuttgart u. a. 2005.
J. Kabat-Zinn: Healthy through meditation. The big book of self-healing. Frankfurt / M 2009.
F. Petermann (ed.): Relaxation procedure. The practice manual. Basel 2009.

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