My "Journey On" Relaxation Exercise Reflection

Hi everyone,

          Welcome to my blog, Mr. Explorer of Life.  This blog was set up for the purpose of my new class at Kaplan University called Creating Wellness: Psychological and Spiritual Aspects of Healing.  This blog will start out with my reflections about a relaxation exercise that I had to listen to for the class.  As I get more accustomed to how this works I may add things that are not necessarily involved with only the class.  Take a look and let me know what you think.    

          

            Part of our work in the class this week was that we had to listen to a relaxation exercise called "Journey On" which turned out to be a very nice experience for me.  These are my reflections about it: It started out with nice relaxing music and that was the case throughout the exercise.  The man that was narrating the exercise suggested that we get into a comfortable position.  So after taking off my watch and shoes, I sat down in my favorite chair with my hands on my lap because there was not a good place for me to lie down at the time.  Then he said to take a slow deep breath and when I exhaled I should think of the word "relax", which I did.  He told us that this technique that we were about to get into is an autogenic training technique.  He told us that with this technique we should be able to make any part of our body feel very comfortable just by suggestion and thinking about it.  He said the way it would be done is that we would "move the blood flow" from our core to our arms, legs, etc., or any area of our body that we want to relax.  He mentioned to us that in a resting state the majority of the blood in our body is in our abdominal cavity and GI tract which is about 80%.  The other 20% circulates through our body in a resting state to carry a certain level of nutrients and oxygen for maintenance of the brain, muscles, and all of our organs.  The narrator said that if we decrease the tension in our muscles we would be more relaxed.  He said that our arms, and legs, etc. carry tension and that muscle tension was the number one cause of stress. 

            I thought about "moving the blood" to my arms and hands and that they would begin to feel very warm and very heavy.  That is exactly what happened as the narrator said it would!  This warmth and heaviness is because of the redistribution of the flow of blood down to the muscles, which saturates them.  So I thought about sending the blood "internally" from the body's core up into my shoulders and down into my arms and hands.  Just the thought of it began to let the blood vessels in my arms and hands dilate enough to receive more blood and as this was happening, the blood vessels in my body’s core in the GI tract area were beginning to constrict and were forcing the blood to go to these places.  With each breath that I took and with every heartbeat that I had, I got a sense of warmth and heaviness in my arms and hands and I continued to allow the movement of blood from my body’s core up into my shoulders and down into my arms and hands.  The parts of my hands that felt the most warmth were the palms and fingers because they contain the most receptors for temperature change.  I felt the sense of warmth increase in my whole arm and my hands and a profound heaviness in my arms and hands.  The narrator suggested that we should raise our arms and that it would be hard because they are content to be where they are due to being saturated with blood.  I took a comfortably slow and comfortably deep breath and as I did I thought to myself that my arms and hands felt warm and heavy. Then I took one more slow deep breath and this time as I exhaled I was thinking to allow the flow of blood to return to the stomach area where it came from.  I was going to let it return from my arms and hands and as I thinking about this I actually felt the sense of dilation in the GI tract area to receive the blood that is returning from the arms and hands. 

           

             I did repeat this process a few times until the blood was back to where it came from.  With each successive breath and heartbeat I felt my arms and hands getting lighter.  The warmth lingered for a while but the heaviness wasn’t so much at this point.  I rotated my arms towards my waist and then out again and I didn’t have any problem doing it because my arms were not as heavy as before.  Then I took one more final slow, deep breath and thought to myself that I would like to return all the remaining blood that was brought down to my arms and hands and place it back in the stomach from where it came.   Then I took one more, comfortable, slow, deep breath and as I exhaled I thought to myself all the blood is back now and even though my arms and hands felt lighter, I still felt a sense of warmth but at that moment the muscles were relaxed and my whole body felt relaxed.  The narrator reminded me that the mere thought about making a body part feel warm and heavy and more relaxed can happen just by thinking about it and the power of suggestion to control my own body is very helpful to create a sense of relaxation.  When I have times that I am tense, frustrated, nervous and stressed and I want to create a sense of relaxation all I have to do is suggest to myself to make my arms and hands or my legs and feet warm and heavy and this will begin to decrease the neuro stimulation to those muscles and allow the muscles in my body to feel relaxed. Even though I felt more relaxed, I felt very calm and very peaceful.  I didn’t feel tired or sleepy, and I didn’t feel fatigued at all and I actually I felt energized. Now as I was thinking about this I was becoming aware of my surroundings. I was opening my eyes to a soft gaze in front of me and also beginning to stretch my arms, shoulders, and hands and brought myself back to a full awareness of my environment.  It was definitely a relaxing experience and I would highly recommend it for those that are stressed out.

Craig