British Autogenic Society

Give your mind a workout:
The relaxation technique that will help banish stress for ever
Article from Daily Mail, 1995
by Jane Alexander

We all know that too much stress can play havoc with our lives and our health. It can wreck marriages and scupper careers. It's a prime suspect in migraine and many cases of heart disease, and has also been linked to cancer and a vast array of other diseases.

Although there is no simple cure for stress, an exercise technique known as Autogenic Training (AT) can help you control it - and actually turn it to your advantage. And the beauty of AT is that it takes only ten minutes a day - you can use it anywhere, any time, even sitting at your desk at work.

Put simply, Autogenic Training is a series of powerful, easy-to-learn mental and physical exercises designed to help you deal with problems and stressful situations. But while AT exercises are simplicity itself to perform, the effects can be truly far-reaching and profound.

Indeed, extensive research into AT has shown a multitude of benefits. First and foremost, people report feeling calmer and more able to cope. But there are measurable health benefits, too. AT, it has been shown, can significantly relieve tension and insomnia and lessen anxiety. It lowers both blood pressure and blood cholesterol (key factors in preventing heart attacks).

Some diabetics have halved the amount of insulin they take once AT began to take effect, and in many cases other forms of medication can also be decreased. In fact, the effects of AT can be so dramatic that people with medical conditions have to be carefully monitored while they learn it.

Doctors take Autogenic Training seriously, and in some areas AT is available on the NHS. In Dublin, it is even being used to help treat infertility, after it was found that a significant number of women who had trouble conceiving had high levels of a stress hormone, prolactin, that acts as a natural contraceptive. When they practised AT, the woman's prolactin levels dropped and a good proportion conceived.

The technique has also been used to great effect in the business world. Many airlines use the technique to help their staff combat jet-lag and insomnia, and it is used quite widely in other professions to reduce stress, improve staff communication skills and their ability to make clear, effective decisions.

So what does this mind work-out involve? Quite simply, it's a case of learning how to focus your attention through a series of mental exercises. There are three basic components. First, the art of passive concentration (quietly allowing your mind to focus on your body). Second, the repetition of certain phrases or words which allow you to 'target' certain parts of the body and induce relaxing feelings, such as heaviness or warmth. And third, putting your body into basic relaxed postures, to cut out the effects of the outside world.

For this last stage, there are three positions: lying flat on the floor in a totally relaxed position; sitting in a chair with your hands resting on the arms of the chair or on your thighs; and perching on the edge of a hard chair in a kind of slump, with the back and head hanging forward and loose.

While you're in each of these positions, you are taught how to focus on sensations in the body, for instance imagining warmth in the arms and legs. Breathing is meant to be calm and easy. You learn how to just watch your breath rather than trying to control it. The idea is that, eventually, you will not need to practise these steps - simply thinking about the exercises will make you feel calm.

But while it's relatively easy to see how such techniques might help with physical problems such as stress, how can they affect things like people's ability to make decisions?

Practitioners explain that AT exercises bring the two sides of the brain into better balance. This, they say, then allows you to use the intuitive, imaginative right side of the brain which is normally switched firmly off during waking life.

Dr Malcolm Carruthers, a clinical and chemical pathologist, was responsible for the introduction of AT to this country almost 20 years ago. He has been researching the effects of stress all his working life and is the author of several books on the subject. 'Stress is not a bad thing,' he points out. 'In the right amounts it can be the spice of life. But it's a question of how you deal with it.'

At first he thought that the answer to dealing with stress would come from chemistry. 'I thought there might be a magic pill you could take, some kind of stress-busting drug,' he says. 'But it turns out that that's a bit like turning off the fire alarm because you don't like the sound of the bells. Stress treatments have to work on a deeper level - you can't simply treat the symptoms.'

Next he researched the effects of meditation on stress and was impressed: it certainly appeared to lower blood pressure and reduce blood cholesterol. But he found that the average sufferer was resistant to what was considered 'a far-out Eastern technique'. Then he discovered Autogenic Training, which had first emerged in Germany in the 1920s, after being developed by a Berlin doctor, Johannes Schultz.

As a doctor and research scientist, Carruthers was impressed not only by the results of AT, but also by the meticulous research on the method. More than 3,000 scientific publications have run reports on the beneficial effects, making AT one of the best documented and consistently researched methods of stress relief.

'It's a bridge between alternative and conventional medicine', says Carruthers. 'It's a bit like a Westernised form of meditation, but it doesn't demand any belief systems at all. I like to call it mental circuit training.

'And it's a very flexible stress control technique. Once you've learned it, you can practise AT sitting in your office, on the train, in a parked car or lying in bed.'

The Autogenic Training system is taught in weekly one-hour sessions over a period of eight weeks. While there are books teaching Autogenic Training, Carruthers firmly advises that you learn the technique with a qualified teacher. He also insists that everyone should have a medical consultation before starting the course. 'It has to be emphasised,' he says, 'that this is not a superficial cosmetic relaxation technique. It actually works at quite a deep level. It's good medicine, but it's powerful medicine if it's properly applied.'

There are around 100 trained teachers throughout the UK, most of them qualified doctors or nurses.

Inevitably, you only get out what you put in. Some people have found AT less than satisfactory; but then, they admit, they do not practise it regularly. Given the fact that it takes no more than ten minutes a day to take your mind from a state of war to a cessation of hostilities, there's no excuse.

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