Learning to regulate your stress response is one of the key elements of mental health. It is a skill that can be learned with practice. I developed this four step deep relaxation method based upon feedback from clients as to what they found to be the most efficient and reliable. It is simple and easy to remember once you have tried it a few times. And it works. Eyes are closed and you can either sit or lie down.
Step 1: Relax Your Face
Most people don’t know that there is a reciprocal feedback loop between the emotions and the face. That’s a complicated phrase to explain something very simple. That means whenever you have an emotion, your face will immediately configure facial muscles to express that emotion. It’s unconscious and automatic. There are hundreds of different facial expressions that we can make to express our mood. When you relax your face and have a neutral expression, over a period of time that feedback loop will calm down all of the emotions in your brain, regardless of what they are. And, of course, we know that emotions are complex and they can overlap each other. The good news about this is it doesn’t really matter what emotion you’re having. By relaxing your face, all of the emotions quiet down.
Step 2: Warm Your Hands and Feet
This is taken from autogenic training, which means self-generated. You mentally repeat certain simple phrases to yourself while concentrating on that part of your body. Take your time and be patient. You begin by saying, “My right hand is warm”. You imagine your right hand getting warm. You repeat this three or four times. Then you say,”My left hand is warm” three or four times. Then you say, “Both of my hands are warm”, while imagining both hands warming. Then, “My right foot is warm”, three or four times. Then,”My left foot is warm”, three or four times. Again, there’s no rush in doing this. Then “Both of my feet are warm”, and finally, “Both my hands and my feet are warm”. Now, most people, after practicing this a bit, will actually begin to notice that their hands and feet are getting warm. In fact, if you placed an external thermometer on the skin, you would find it actually does warm up.
The value of this is that we know that when you are stressed, there is vasoconstriction in the blood vessels, especially in the extremities – the hands and the feet. Your hands and feet get cold because the blood in the vessels constrict and get further away from the surface of the skin. When you warm your hands and your feet you create vasodilation. The blood gets closer to the surface, warming your skin. The only way to do that is to deactivate the stress response. You are turning on the parasympathetic nervous system and deactivating the sympathetic nervous system.
Step 3: Give into the Pull of Gravity
The inner ear is responsible for maintaining our balance. That same part of the inner ear also has a capacity to feel gravity. You do that by letting go – by giving in to the pull of gravity. You stop resisting. The most common experience is to feel heavy. You’re not actually getting heavier. It’s the feeling that your body offers you when your all of your muscles are relaxing. There’s a gentle pull on the tendons and there’s a sinking feeling. The value of this is all of your muscles are beginning to relax at the same time. We’ve known for over a hundred years that you cannot feel anxiety unless your muscles are tense. If your muscles are relaxed, it’s the opposite. You cannot feel anxiety. It’s a one-to-one correlation. This step is a backdoor approach of getting all your muscles to relax at the same time. So much faster than progressive muscle relaxation that can take 40 minutes to achieve.
Passive vs Active Concentration
The key to this success of this method is passive concentration. When you actively concentrate on something you are trying to make something happen. When you have passive concentration you are allowing things to happen. You cannot make your face relax. Trying to do this will only make your face more tense. You have to allow your face to relax. If you try to make your hands warm, they will get cold. If you try to give in to gravity, your muscles remain tense. You have to give in. You have to allow. You have to not try. This is passive concentration.
Step 4: Focus on Your Breath.
Now, of course, focusing on breath is the most common form of meditation. I suggest a bit of a twist. While you pay attention to your breath, you visualize a location in space where the air out of the right nostril converges with the air from the left nostril. It intersects at a point somewhere around a half an inch to an inch below your nostrils. So, not only am I asking you to pay attention to your breathing in and out of your nose, but also on that three-dimensional spot that exists out there. Its not a specific spot and you do not have to be accurate. Just imagine where the air converges. Now, we know through measuring brainwaves, that when a person does this, it greatly increases alpha waves. The importance of alpha waves is it cancels out the beta, and especially the high beta, which is the internal chatter. So, it helps your brain quiet down.
How to Deal with Brain Chatter
The brain can attend to one task at a time very effectively. Even two tasks are fairly easy for the brain to do. When it comes to three tasks at the same time, it requires a lot of concentration and focus. With four, it’s nearly impossible. So, I tell my clients, when you get to Step 4, you recycle back to Step 1 – your face. Chances are, by that time, your face had tightened up again, or you discovered you could actually relax it more. Then you re-warm your hands and your feet. You notice gravity again and give in to the pull. Then back to your breath and that spot below your nostrils. The pace needs to be slow, deliberate, and no hurry. The end goal is attempting to engage in all four steps simultaneously. You start with one, then try two at the same time followed by three at the same time. It’s unlikely you will achieve all four but that’s what you’re trying to do. When you have an intrusive thought, that means you’re adding a 5th Step, and I didn’t ask you to do 5, only 4. That means you’ve clearly lost focus. Don’t be judgmental, and don’t attach any emotion to it. Its normal and to be expected. Simply start over at Step 1.
Practice Practice Practice
The more you practice this, the better you will get at it, and the faster and deeper you will be able to get relaxed. You will be training your brain to develop a skill that benefits you tremendously. For those with high anxiety I have advised they spend five minutes every hour on this. At minimum, aim at practicing upon awakening and the last thing you do at night before you fall asleep. That way you start your day calm and relaxed, and end your day preparing your mind and body for sleep.