The Relaxation Response and Panic Attacks

Part 2

If you ellicit the relaxation response regularly you'll notice benefits fairly quickly - typically within a few weeks. But it does need to be a regular practice.

I suggest you set aside a short period of time a day to practice the relaxation response to reap its benefits.

A lot of people recommend twenty minutes twice a day or even more.

That’s great and will work very well for you if you can actually do it. But if you’re anything like me there’s no way that you’re going to be able to sit still for that starting out. It’s remarkable how much our minds wander.

It turns out they are very wild, most untamed.

For me, it worked out much better to have smaller goals.

Five minutes or so was a good place for me to start. I think it's more important to be consistant than to try to force yourself to start off with long sessions before you've practiced for a while.

Here’s what I suggest:

Make a commitment to practice the relaxation response daily for at least four weeks.

Now don’t use this plan as an excuse to abandon the plan if you happen to miss a day. The commitment means you’re going to do it regularly for long enough to see what might result.

So let’s imagine that you’re willing to commit five minutes a day to experience the relaxation response.

You do have five minutes to try to counteract all the tension of the day, don’t you? How sad if you don’t think you have even five minutes to let go of tension. Yet I've had people tell me that. Then they wonder why they feel anxious.

Begin With Muscular Relaxation

Find a comfortable place to sit. Begin with a little of the muscular tension/relaxation we talked about earlier to get unwound and focused.

Start at your feet and legs work your way upwards. As you focus on each muscle group, tense them, hold the tension, hold it even longer, squeeze the muscles even tighter, then let the tension go.

Relax and let the tension release from the same places you held it tightly.

It’s interesting that most of us would have trouble relaxing a muscle on command but no difficulty tensing it. By tensing the muscle first we focus our attention on it more clearly and make it easier to subsequently relax it.

Progress through your whole body, tensing then relaxing all your muscles.

You can imagine breathing in relaxation and breathing out any tension.

Focal Point and Passive Attitude

Next, pick a focal point. I suggest using either your breath or a word or phrase you repeat silently to yourself.

If you use your breath, breathe naturally and just observe it.

If you use a word, make it something neutral such as “one” or something meaningful and calming for you, such as “peace” or “the Lord is my Sheppard”.

Whatever your point of focus is, simply keep your attention there. Don’t be surprised if you find that thoughts immediately intrude. In fact, expect it.

When you do find yourself thinking about something else other than your focal point, let that thought go and just return to your focal point again.

Do that for a few minutes once or twice a day to begin. If you want, you can then gradually increase the length of time up to about twenty minutes.

But even a few minutes will give you great benefits. You’ll also be training yourself to enter a relaxed state more readily.

I think you can see how this might be handy if you have a tendency toward panic attacks and anxiety problems.

The relaxation response is yet another tool you can use to retrain your physiology and start to free yourself from anxiety and panic. I think you see how this could also be used with diaphragmatic breathing for double benefit.

I also think it works well as a support for one of the best "panic-busting" programs I've found. Read my review of this program here.

Panic Away System