Lesson 1

• The Relaxation Response
• Embracing Mind

The Relaxation Response

Doctors have recognized for years that stress is taking its 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. 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.

Humans, like other animals, react in a predictable way to acute and chronic stressful situations, which trigger an inborn response which 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…

Today, it is often brought on by situations that require behavioral adjustment, 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 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 harmful bodily effects, to counter the effects of the fight-or-flight response. This is the Relaxation Response.

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 measureable, definable physiologic effects on the body which will be explained.

From the collected writings of 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.

Throughout this book (The Relaxation Response) we have tried to show you that the Relaxation Response is a natural gift that anyone can turn on and use. By bridging the traditional gaps between psychology, physiology, medicine and history, we have established that the Relaxation Response is an innate mechanism within us. (It) is a universal human capacity, and even though it has been evoked in the religions of both East and West for most of recorded history, you don’t have to engage in any rites or esoteric practices to bring it forth.

The experience of the Relaxation Response has faded from our everyday life with the waning of religious practices and beliefs, but we can easily reclaim its benefits. The people of the United States enjoy a standard of living and affluence beyond the experience of the majority of the world’s people. But as individuals within this cornucopia, we are plagued by unhappiness. We seem never to be satisfied with what we have accomplished or what we possess… Because in our society we want more and we want it faster, this attitude does not leave time for relaxation or for appraising problems. When problems arise we look for quick and easy solutions. Our answer, aided by excessive advertising, is often to take a pill… yet the Relaxation Response is there and available at any time. At the present time, most of us are simply not making use of this remarkably innate, neglected asset.

‘The Relaxation Response’ Herbert Benson MD with Miriam Klipper 1975 Collins and new edition 2000 Harper Paperbacks.

Embracing Mind

We need a better understanding of the mind. That goes for those of us who follow a spiritual tradition as well as those with no such interest at all. For the former, the mind is fundamental for a clear understanding of spiritual beliefs and experiences. Whether the source is Jesus, Mohammed, Brahma or Buddha – whatever the revelation that inspires us – a mind made clear by self-knowledge will be better able to understand the message than one immersed in confusion.

Similarly, from the secular side, it is obvious that when we ignore the mind from which all our views and decisions arise, we get into difficulties. These range from our own emotional and interpersonal problems on out to the strife and suffering of war and terrorism.

Our world is essentially mind-made, and we are therefore in dire need of knowing our minds better if we are to prosper or even survive as a species. Science is a relative newcomer to the study of the mind. It has made significant progress in understanding the physical correlates of mental phenomena (the brain) and it has made many sound inferences about the mind. Yet no matter how much technical data neuro-science can extract from the brain, it has not been able to fathom the central issue, consciousness, because it does not know the mind intimately from the inside, first-person viewpoint.

In contrast the world’s contemplative traditions have little to say about the brain but have investigated the mind over several millennia. Knowledge of the mind is the forte of Buddhist contemplation.

Therefore, when it comes to the exploration of the mind-brain nexus, science and Buddhism naturally complement each other. Buddhism and science have begun to probe each other, checking to see whether a useful relationship is possible.

Buddhism, as it assimilates into Western culture, is being forced to reexamine its tenets and meditative technologies from a Western standpoint, which must include scientific principles. If science can confirm certain aspects of Buddhist psychology and cosmology, Western Buddhists, in particular, will gain greater confidence, and people openly curious about contemplative traditions will find encouragement.

From another angle, all spiritual traditions, Buddhism included, acquire over time a residue of dogmatic beliefs, superstitions, and purely cultural elements having little to do with the advancement of spiritual knowledge among their practicioners. Buddhists involvement with science may act as a cleansing influence to remove some of this tarnish.

As an empirical method of investigation, science shares the same approach the Buddha expressed about his teachings; theories must be empirically and rationally investigated, not merely accepted and turned into dogma. In the words of the Dalai Lama: When investigating the ultimate nature of reality, Buddhist thinkers take the Buddha’s words not so much as an ultimate authority, but rather as a key to assist their own insight; for the ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s reason and critical analysis.

Thus, there seems to be a reasonable chance that science and Buddhism together can advance our knowledge of the mind-brain while providing answers to questions vital to each tradition. In the 1970s and 80s teams lead by Herbert Benson, a professor of medicine at Harvard, traveled to northern India and Sikkim to study Tibetan yogis practicing a form of meditation called tummo. In this technique body heat is decreased dramatically through a specific meditative practice. This has both a spiritual and practical advantage: the mind is purified while the increased heat allows yogis to be comfortable over long periods of time in frigid caves and huts at high altitudes. The scientists witnessed naked yogis in freezing temperatures drying wet towels draped over them by using their increased body heat alone.

One practicioner showed an astounding 64% drop in oxygen consumption. Other showed increased oxygen consumption. In either case, body heat, which is normally directed away from the skin when we become cold, was manifesting on the body’s surface. Nothing of its kind had been observed previously by medical science. Studies such as these show that techniques of meditation do cause dramatic physiological changes in the brain and elsewhere and that they can be measured by scientific instruments.

Dr Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison began studying the relationship between emotions, the brain and meditation in the 1970s… His main tools are (now) MRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and an advanced electroencephalograph (EEG), a web of up to 256 electrodes that allows for great accuracy in detecting the source of electrical messages within the brain.

These tools permit him to observe and videotape changes taking place in the brain in real time. For example, a subject can be asked to generate a certain state or imitate a specific meditation practice and report his or her experience while researchers closely track the brain’s physical changes… The scientific examination of meditators has helped change neuro-scientists views on neuro-plasticity, the ability of the brain to restructure itself from experience. Formerly it was believed that the neural patterns and connections in the brain were relatively fixed in the adult human, but degraded significantly due to aging. We now know that in fact the brain can grow and redesign itself through training and other kinds of conditioning, even later in life. Mental approaches to sports training and conditioning as well as meditation have proven this adaptability. Mind (in the sense of subjectively experienced mental processes) definitely affects the gray matter of the brain.

’Embracing Mind – The common ground of science and spirituality’ B. Alan Wallace and Brian Hodel Shambala London 2008