AT in the news
Here are a number of newspaper and magazine articles about AT
Published Articles about BAS
Living with a heart condition can be a stressful experience. Getting used to new medication, or making adjustments to activity levels,can leave you feeling anxious and out of control.
But what ifyou could relax on demand, no matter where you were or what you were doing? Asimple technique known as autogenic training can help you to do precisely that.
Why do you want to do Autogenic Therapy when you already have NLP and self hypnosis?” This is the question I was asked when I went to my first Autogenic Therapist for the basic nine session AT course. It is worth exploring here because AT is a fully worked out system for emotional selfmanagement and can be used as part of a course of therapy or on its own.
Losing your sight, to whatever degree, is a distressing and shocking experience. Is the emotional impact any worse in adolescence than at other times of life? Jean Cavanagh believes it may be, but that Autogenic Therapy can help.
Woman’s Own, November 2006, What’s the Alternative? Autogenic Therapy (pdf)
When Susan Noble, 62, was told she needed to lower her blood pressure, she turned to an unusual technique.
Life in the 21st century feels more stressful than ever. The evening news bombards us with stories of crime, health risks, war, economic and political instability. Both work and relationships become more demanding as new technologies and the faster pace of life put more pressure on all of us. General practitioners agree that at l east half of their patients suffer from physical or emotional problems either caused by stress or aggravated by it. The conventional remedies, medication or long-term therapy, often focus on alleviating the symptoms rather than dealing with the cause and can lead to dependency on medication or on the practitioner.
Health & Fitness Magazine, April 2006, This Month We Try…Autogenic Training, Evelyn Dale
Evelyn Dale discovers a stress-relieving therapy with far-reaching benefits for body and mind. There’s no doubt that stress can make you sick; in recent years hundreds of studies have shown it contributes to many illnesses. So is there a simple way of reducing the negative effects without resorting to medication?
Consequences of Stress Are we not stressed out just seeing and hearing the word repeated over and over again? Newspapers filled on a daily basis with stories about road-rage, violence, the breakdown of relationships, problems at work. We all feel life is more stressful in the 2lst century, but does it have to be? Stress is usually thought of as a negative and destructive force in our lives, which can eventually lead to our physical or mental breakdown.
International Therapist, Issue 68 Jan/Feb 2006, Autogenic Therapy, by Jane Bird
Every complementary therapy surely aims for the same thing: to restore good balance in both physical and mental wellbeing. The agents and methods by which this is carried out, usually involve at least a second party (therapist), if not a third (equipment, remedies, supplements), in order to give the treatment.
The Guardian, Wednesday November 16, 2005, Autogenic Therapy’s healing power, Sonia Saunders
Druin Burch’s views (The Sceptic, G2, November 10) proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the time has come for more people to learn everything they can about Autogenic Therapy (AT). That way, they can reap the benefits of what experience has proven time and again – despite what The Sceptic may wish to believe – to relieve the symptoms of stress, whether acute, short-term, chronic or involving long-term distress.
The Guardian, Tuesday June 15, 2004, ‘Medicine Man’ Column, by Professor Edzard Ernst
It’s a cheap, effective, virtually risk-free treatment for stress – so why aren’t more of us trying autogenic training?
The Independent – UK, May 3rd 2004, Become Your Own Doctor, by Karen Hainsworth
Simple Relaxation Technique Helps Ease Many Stress-Related Ailments I am not being massaged, buffed or pampered in any way, but within a few hours of starting this therapy I am relishing a delicious warmth that seeps across my aching back and into my arms. Turn the lights out, and you’d see me glow.
Daily Telegraph, October 1999, Clear Away the Stress, by Jane Alexander
Autogenic Therapy is well studied and documented and could be the answer to modern pressures.
Like many women, I sometimes feel the stress that comes with juggling a career, a family and, in my case, a farm without mains services. But when I do, I simply sit down and start muttering, ‘My right arm is heavy’.
The orthodox medical model shows disease to be a complex interaction of the host, his behaviour and his environment. Sophisticated biochemical engineering has led to major advances in the treatment of acute illnesses and some chronic ones, but we are left with a large number of disorders for which modern medicine appears to have no satisfactory solutions. In the area of chronic disease, applied technology, surgery, drugs and remedial therapies all have their place. But they are expensive, particularly drugs.
Autogenic Therapy (AT), is a complete conceptualized therapy based on the mind/body relationship, engaging mental and bodily functions simultaneously. ‘Autogenic’ refers to the self-generated process which distinguishes the method. In the Autogenic state there are EEG changes, closely resembling those of meditation, where there is an increase in alpha waves, balancing of the right and left hemispheres and an upward shift into the theta region.
Positive Health Magazine, September 1997, The best form of self-help, by Jane Bird RGN
The mind and the body and the spirit are all inter-related and interdependent. All holistic practitioners know the principle of this statement, and they all know that the human being’s innate capacity for self-healing is largely untapped. Many therapies aim to address it by stimulation, whether by outside agents such as herbs and homeopathy or by hands-on bodywork, of many differing kinds.
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.
The Times, Thursday, October 13, 1988, In training for relaxation, by Liz Hodgkinson
To many people, the term “autogenic training” has a decidedly cultish, Californian sound to it. But after 10 years of use in Britain, this technique of conscious relaxation is being enthusiastically adopted by a growing number of doctors and hospitals as an effective, non-drug way of treating a wide variety of emotional, mental and physical conditions.
The General Practitioner, 16th July, 1982, Train the mind to calm itself, by Dr Malcolm Carruthers
GPs know a lot about medication in the relief of anxiety. Medical school lectures are followed by bombardment by drug companies with literature and free samples.
There are so many drugs on the market now that you could be forgiven for wondering whether any work well.
Intensifying this anxiety is concern about side effects.
Harpers and Queen Magazine, September 1980, Hanging Loose, by Leslie Kenton
In the long term, stress destroys. It destroys health and youthful looks. So no youth preservation and rejuvenation programme would be complete without offering a means of neutralising the negative effects of stress on the body. Drug-based therapy is not the answer: the 650,000 tons of Valium consumed yearly in the world have unpleasant and dangerous side-effects, ranging from addiction to acute rage reactions, withdrawal, long-term worsening of anxiety symptoms, sub-clinical vitamin and mineral deficiencies, aggressiveness and even acute psychotic episodes. New evidence also indicates that taking tranquillisers may encourage the growth of tumours, impair neuromuscular co-ordination and even make takers more prone to road accidents. But quite apart from the detrimental effects of these drugs on mind and body, the fact that they treat only the symptoms of stress overload and do absolutely nothing towards eliminating the causes means they can never make a positive contribution to health.
The concept of stress is not new. The ancient Greeks and Egyptians talked of sleep problems, no doubt associated with their own stressful living and working situations. And more than a century ago people were already writing of “the stresses of modern living”. It seems that although we have been evolving genetically throughout time to match the developing environment, we are always lagging behind.
TOP BAS Press Releases
Information for Health Writers
These materials provided as a supplement to the more general information about Autogenic Therapy found elsewhere on this site. It includes some archive material, including articles published on AT in the press during the past 25 years. It will be of particular value to journalists wishing to write about AT.
TOP Other News
One of the Most Scientifically Proven Complementary Therapies is also the Least Known
12.10.05 – On the eve of the re-opening of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital by HRH The Prince of Wales, and after a week that saw calls for top level scientific evidence on the effectiveness of complementary and alternative medicine, members of the British Autogenic Society (www.autogenic-therapy.org.uk) are hoping for more public recognition of Autogenic Therapy.
Share on: