Real Relaxation by Konstantin Koss

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The past days I’ve been intensively looking into various relaxation techniques I could find on the web to widen my horizon.

Next to the most popular relaxation techniques I wrote about yesterday, I also found some good fewer known relaxation techniques. For example this “Diassociation Technique“. Let’s have a look into it:

“Mental Stress Release Technique

There may be moments in life which are hard for you. Heavy responsibility and multiple pressures from the outside make it difficult to cope. The high tension puts us in panic mode and we become frustrated as we scramble in a haphazard attempt to do our job.

Prolonged stress response seriously damages your health. Your hair falls out, you might go bald; you become old and haggard-looking; your perfect California body becomes a sack of potatoes. How sad is that? To age not because we partied ourselves to death, but because we worried ourselves to the grave. Mental stress is an enemy you have to learn to defeat.

Stress Release Technique: Disassociation

Before you attempt this technique, spend a few minutes to quiet your mind. You can do this by sitting in a relaxed position with your arms on your lap or by your side. Close your eyes and begin breathing slowly through your nostrils. Focus your attention on the breath.

Anything else that comes to mind, let it go and bring your attention back to the breath. You will find that as you continue this process for a few minutes your breathing becomes shallower and shallower, the thoughts entering your mind slow down, and you feel calmer with more peace in your heart. Now you are ready to use the following technique:

All you have to do is imagine you have died. When a person dies, there are no more worries and responsibilities to handle. The soul is free to travel to heaven and continue into its next life. Now I’m not asking you to die… just imagine it. See your body lying there lifeless while you feel your soul floating upwards to connect with the heavens.

See all the memories of your life drop way down below you. From this higher viewpoint, you can see all the events of your life which have shaped you. Your past, present, and future form one continuous line of memories below you. […]”

It clearly falls under the category of visualisation. I keep encouraging you to try out various relaxation techniques to see, which one fits you best.

Oh and did you know … every human fear basically comes down to the fear of death, Siegmund Freud already found that out. Dealing with the fear of death is actually dealing with the foundation of all other fears you might have. And did I already mention that fear is the cause of stress?

Have fun exploring.

Konstantin Koss

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If screaming happens to be a little to radical of a technique for you, there are of course alternatives. I already told you about the Progressive Muscle Relaxation Technique or “PMR” for short, but there are a couple of other relaxation techniques that have been proven to work.

Dr. Duffy of the Psychsense blog has recently put up a good summary of major relaxation techniques. Here he explains:

“Did you know that there are at at least four major relaxation techniques to reduce stress. Most people have a particular favorite. I often think that when people tell me they have not had success with relaxation techniques it is because they have not found the one that is right for them! We all respond differently to suggestion.

I personally have tried all 4 before I decided which one is best for me. […]

• Progressive Relaxation […]
• Meditation […]
• Autogenetic Training […]
• Visualization […]”

Click on the above link for details.

I have personally also experimented with all of these relaxation techniques as well andfound every one of them to have value. But instead of telling you what I have experienced with those relaxation techniques, why not just pick up Dr. Duffy’s thread and encourage you to try out and see which one fits you best?

Sincerely,

Konstantin Koss

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Last time I wrote a guide to my favorite relaxation technique: the primal scream. But why does this work so well?

The primal scream releases stuck emotion in your body.

Whenever something bothers us, our primal roots actually want to scream out and fight the obstacle. This is still embedded in the basic animalistic parts of the brain.

Actually repression is the exact cause of the thoughts that are running rampant in our heads when we experienced some type of emotional, social or other type of abuse. (Read: your collegue was a prick)

Now, this doesn’t sound very plausible at first if you think about it. You are not repressing when someone just unloaded her anger on you and now you are freakin’ upset at them. You are feeling those emotiones, you are not repressing. Or are you?

Well, your primal instincts would rather have that person’s face smashed in with a stone and not taking physical action is repression to those instincts.

The word repression somehow got a bad vibe to it. Of course repressing in modern society is highly desirable, don’t get me wrong. On the one hand we do not want instinct-driven animals everywhere, but on the other hand this is a violation to some deep burried roots.

Also, notice what happens when you got a stress-reaction. Your blood starts flowing less into your head and digestive tract and exponentially more into your muscles. Your heart beats faster, spreading more oxygen into your cells. It’s the same reaction like when running or doing any other sports activity.

Think about it, someone merely insults you and your body gets ready for hardcore physical activity, for fight or flight.

But you just keep restraining yourself and keep the fight in your head. That’s why you keep mentally battling them when going to bed, that’s why stress stores up in the body. And that’s why abreactive primal therapy works so well, it get’s you physical. Screaming out your anger is what your biology wanted to do in the first place. (And screaming is just one part of primal therapy.) That’s also why working out is so effective in calming down.

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There is a relaxation technique I generally recommend over all others, and that is the so-called “Primal Scream”. It does not only set free any subconsciously stored up stress and anger, it can also massively benefit your overall health and wellbeing. Plus it is an absolute no-brainer to do and makes you the most weird person around. (wink)

This relaxation technique was invented by Dr. Arthur Janov and is mostly used in neurosis therapy behind closed doors, out of obvious reasons.

The technique involves actually the most obvious thing. You yell at the top of your lungs.

Actually, you’ll want to prepare a little more. Start like this:

1. contemplate everything that is bothering you in your life in any way
2. deliberately amplify all of your feelings as much as you can
3. start screaming everything out while still trying to amplify the feelings
4. scream untill you feel the feelings slip away

By the way, when you start laughing after this you’ve got the most desireable outcome. But anyway you will feel instantly much lighter.

Since just screaming where you are with neighbors/co-workers/random people around makes you a very weird person, you can just

• seek out a place in the wilderness
• or scream into a pillow

You will see instant results! Surpressed anger and stress is actually the cause of many major health imbalances and this could not only save your mental health, it could prevent you from serious heart-attacks, liver disease and physical headaches.

(Photo by Pσrcelαΐηgΐrl°)

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(By the way, you can not only scream out your anger, but also shout out this post to your friends with the buttons below)

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I just got a private comment about how odd it is that I blogged a nice relaxation “quick-fix” and the very next day in the very next post I go on to “show long-term strategies and go on to bash quick-fixes”.

Let me get this straight. Both kinds of advice got their place.

When you are really stressed right now and are boiling under your skin, then you probably won’t be ready to access your mind calmly and assess for yourself what went wrong.

You are still in fight or flight mode and your biology won’t let you get a straight thought because it still percieves danger. That’s where the calming relaxation techniques and the before mentioned sauna comes in.

But then you have not learned anything and the next time when this situation arises, you will go through the same. The only thing to avoid this is to learn your lessons and graduate above letting the situation bother you, so to speak.

First we treat the symptoms, then the root causes.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact me.

Konstantin Koss

Popularity: 6% [?]

Stress in the workplace is one of the top topics when it comes to stress-management because oddly enough most stress occurs in the workplace environment. To understand that we first have to understand …

The Primal Roots Of Stress

The animal in us humans has a basic paranoia build in. Have you ever tried to pet an unknown cat and it ran away? It’s basic self-protecting paranoia. And as evolved we humans want to see ourselves, we still run on the same basic “operating system”.

Stress is the basic fight or flight reaction that gets triggered when we see ourselves in danger.

This is key!

Different Kinds Of Stress

You have surely heard of that one before. There are two kinds of stress: constructive stress (eustress) and destructive stress (distress). Constructive stress is very healthy in the workplace since it gives you a drive towards success, keeps you excited, and can lead to a creative state of flow.

The primal reaction reaction to danger is what is referred to as distress. The human biology doesn’t care anymore about getting any kind of work done, it just wants to fight or flight.

That’s when you keep thinking about what a prick your co-worker/boss is and can’t concentrate on your work anymore.

Out Of The Stress-Consciousness

Now I could give you the same old … (cowdung) advice that you get anywhere concerning stress-management. Take a vacation, spend time with your family, work out, volunteer for charity work, get together with your friend and eat healthy.

Poof, all your problems will be gone. Next client please. (…as if …)

Sure, that advice has its place and you will feel much better after a good workout, for example. But let’s not kid ourselves, the next day it will be the same old story … again!

Fact is: You will never get out of being stressed by other people or circumstances in your workplace as long as you percieve them as being danger.

Even if this is unconscious.

The perception of danger is the turning point of eustress (productivity) crossing over into distress.

Making The Unconscious Conscious

Now is the time for some good self-honesty. And this is where it gets hard translating personal coaching into online advice. Let me try it anyway.

1. Remember the last time you got into some seriously uncomfortable stress in the workplace
2. Do what you would do naturally and review the major troubles in that situation
3. Now let’s shift your focus from the situation or person (well, where did I know from that it was outside of yourself …) to yourself. Which of your beliefs play into this trouble?
4. What are you afraid of? If you don’t know, just guess. What could you maybe afraid of? Make a list of possibilities without judging. It’s not necessary. When the situation occurs next time you will be able to point more and more in the direction of which of your guesses was the most accurate. Trust me on that one.
5. Really picture in your mind what the worst possible outcome of the situation may be.
6. What would you do given the circumstance that the worst case scenario really happened? Could you deal with that in any way?
7. What is the most probable outcome of the situation?

Our goal is to get more and more of our common sense into our animalistic fear-reactions. For example, when the stress arises from meeting a deadline or you will loose your job, this can be a very scary situation to be in.

But the only way to get out of being paralyzed by the stress ahead is in fact to get less outcome-dependent. This is the big irony of the universe since independence from the outcome usually produces better outcomes.

Don’t just skim the above steps and go “Yeah, yeah. Done that”. Take. Your. Time. and really do this analysis. I can promise you it will get you further in the long run than any vacation-workout-volunteering-quickfix.

To combine productivity and relaxation, simply avoid destructive stress in the workplace, which proves to be a much harder task than it might sound. Eustress is the flow you are looking for to happily being productive at work.

Sincerely,

Konstantin Koss

PS: Feel free to contact me concerning your specific issues IF you’ve done the above and can report me your results.

(Photo by meyshanworld)

Technorati Tags: Stress in the Workplace, Workplace, Stress Management, Stress, Distress, Stress Release

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Generally for stressed out people that come to me and really need something right away to get out of a current stress-mindset (yes, it’s all just a mindset), I advice going to a sauna over anything else - including massages, relaxation techniques and meditation practices.

It’s the king of the quick-fixes and if you’ve ever been to a Sauna you will know that incredible relaxed feeling after getting out.

Since this works so well, quite a few people are looking to buy a sauna for themselves. Good idea if you can afford it, I say.

What you should know about the different kinds of saunas is that if you go for a finnish sauna it will take some time till it got heated up and you can jump in there. Finnish saunas work by getting stones to store up the heat that they later radiate out over the air or the smoke produced by throwing water on the stones.

An even quicker quick-fix is provided by infrared saunas, that work by emitting far infrared electromagnetic radiation just like our dear star sol, the sun does. This works by merely pressing a button.

Additionally to the incredibly relaxed feeling after getting out of the sauna, infrared saunas are said to have a wide range of additional health benefits. Including:

• illness and skin disease treatment
• weight loss
• improvement of the immune system
• pain release
• strengthening of the cardio-vascular system

Note that most of these infrared sauna health benefits are not scientifically proven! In my opinion, the focus thould be on the subjectively increased amount of energy and decreased amount of stress in your body. Additional benefits are great if they occur.

In conclusion, when you want to decide for a type of sauna to buy, consider the above made points. Many of the health benefits occur for finnish saunas also. If you are really stressed out right now and need some release, go for a sauna in your area by all means.

As for the warnings: Consult with your physician before using a sauna. There are many physical conditions that make the use of saunas potentially dangerous.

(Photo by keko)

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For me the hardest part starting out with this blog is to decide what of all the ideas floating around in my head to write about first. Let’s just make this a series.

I’m gonna blog regularly from now on about massage therapy in a “how to” way, to enable you dear reader

• to either decide for yourself which massage to get from a professional
• to try out different things in a friendship or relationship context
• to better act out your existing professional education with additional tips

To start out, I recommend watching this instructional video, it covers the basics of massage therapy in mere 8 minutes.

This video was rated “not suitable for minors” on youtube, but are there actually people who have a problem with their kids seeing a naked back being massaged?

Stay tuned for next wednesdays first episode of the “How to Massage Series”, featuring the classical swedish massage.

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Above photo by exfordy.

A while back when I learned to guide the relaxation technique called “progressive Muscle Relaxation” or PMR I noticed that it was one of the most effective tools in relaxation therapy to get people out of a stress-mindset and also to release muscle tension stored up in the body. And most importantly: people don’t fall asleep when doing it.

The way it works is simple: If you want to be really serious about it (not necessarily recommended) you lay down somewhere on your back. You could also get comfortable in a nice chair or even d this in your workplace if you got 3 minutes alone somewhere. I like to advice “however it feels comfortable to you”.

Getting started, concentrate on an isolated part of you body. Let’s start with your right hand.

Now comes the progressive part. You make a fist and tense up your hand as strongly as possible, about 7-10 seconds. You can also count in your head and with each count try to tense up even stronger.

Now when you reach 10 it will feel very uncomfortable and you let loose completely, and continue feeling into your hand. feel into it and notice the difference between tense and relaxed and keep tracking the feelings for some moments. I won’t give you a specific time for that, or you would do more counting than relaxing.

Repeat the above up to 3 times, then we go to the next muscle in order: your right hand and arm.

When making a fist naturally your lower arm already tenses, now we go up to the upper arm. The technique is the same as above: 7-10 seconds tensing, then letting loose and feeling into the difference between stressed and relaxed, repeated 3 times.

Then you get to your complete right arm including your shoulder (press against something if you can’t tense your shoulder muscle).

Let’s make it a complete list:

1. right hand (fist)
2. right hand and arm
3. right hand, arm, and shoulder
4. left hand
5. left hand and arm
6. left hand, arm, and shoulder
7. both hands, arms and shoulders
8. both hands, arms, shoulders and neck
9. tense your face. You are alone, aren’t you? If this makes you laugh, good!
10. both hands, arms, shoulders, neck and face
11. back isolated
12. back with previous muscles
13. chest isolated
14. chest with previous muscles
15. butt isolated
16. butt with previous muscle
17. upper thighs isolated (you can take both right away or start with right like the arms)
18. complete legs
19. legs , feet and toes
20. The Grand Finale: Altogether!

Note that there are two shools of PMR, one where you isolate each muscle (first hand, then only biceps, then triceps, etc.) and one where you add muscles till you tense and relax your whole body. I had better experiences with the latter so I put it here. For the former method, check out Wikipedia.

There is one important note I have to and want to emphasize:

Before practicing PMR, you should consult with your physician if you have a history of serious injuries, muscle spasms, or back problems, because the deliberate muscle tensing of the PMR procedure could exascerbate any of these pre-existing conditions.

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I am amazed time and time again how effective the internet is when looking for information. The only problem is that it seems to be really hard to find quality information and see through all those spammers clogging up the net.

Let’s take one of my favorite topics: Stress Management. I spent quite some time on the internet to find quality ressources so I would like to share some really good findings with you.

Proactive Workplace Stress Management - Moving Your Organization … - Statistics Canada recently reported that stress-related absences cost employers $3.5-billion annually, and that health costs for employees reporting high levels of stress are 50% above …

STRESS - A lecturer when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. …

Skills for Stress Management - Time management skills can allow you more time with your family and friends and possibly increase your performance and productivity. This will help reduce your stress. Try these strategies:. * Save time by focusing, delegating, …

Stress Management and Modern Lifestyle - Despite all the conveniences available to us in this technologically advanced age, we have to still suffer stress in our lives. Stress management provides comfort and release from these problems that tends to affect our physical, …

Stress Management Techniques - Title: Stress Management Techniques Category: Diseases and Conditions Created: 7/18/2006 Last Editorial Review: 4/10/2008.

-Konstantin Koss

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