Autogenic Training _____________________________________________________________
Autogenic training is yet another technique that could be used to induce deep muscle relaxation. The technique is very popular among European athletes, but only recently has it been used by Americans. John Schultz and Wolfgang Luthein devised the technique in 1954 after they observed that subjects under the influence of hypnosis were capable of bringing about physiological changes in their bodies. For instance, Shultz and Luthe would hypnotize their subjects and give them suggestions that their arms were getting heavy. Interestingly, the suggestions caused changes in the subject’s muscle tension, bringing about deep muscle relaxation in their arms. Shultz and Luthe eventually realized that these suggestions, even without the use of hypnosis, could bring about the same physiological response, thus, the beginning of autogenic training. Autogenic training could be divided into three specific parts. First, you are instructed to tell yourself that your arm is heavy. You repeatedly say to yourself, “My arm is heavy, I am at peace, my arm is heavy.” You are then instructed on how to do this for each body part. According to Shultz and Luthe, it takes approximately three to six weeks to learn to relax specific body parts. After mastering that, the next stage involves learning to make your body feel warm using similar procedures. The suggestions of warmth cause the blood vessels to dilate just as the suggestions of heaviness cause the muscles to relax. After you become accomplished at bringing about the sensation of warmth to your body, you then practice controlling heart rate, respiration, abdominal warmth and a few other neat things. All of the aforementioned practices have been shown to correlate with relaxation. According to Schultz and Luthe, an individual who masters autogenic training will be able to adjust his activation threshold to meet the demands of competition. If the individual’s tension threshold is too high, he will be able to lower it. If it is too low, he will be able to raise it. Interestingly, Schultz and Luthe point out that not all individuals are able to use autogenic training. They maintain that in order for an athlete to achieve success with the method, he usually needs an I.Q. of over 100. The individual should also be reasonably suggestible and have the ability to concentrate intensely. They have also found that only 40 to 45 percent of individuals who use autogenic training will be able to achieve activation threshold adjustment. One of the major drawbacks of autogenic training is that a trained psychologist is usually required to help you through the initial training sessions. The psychologist should be an expert on the finer points of autogenic training if you are going to benefit from his help. There may be someone in America who fits the bill, but he will probably be harder to find than a five dollar hooker on Sunset Boulevard. Most American psychologists are just not schooled in autogenic training. Still, if you have the concentration, the I.Q. and the right help, autogenic training might be the method for you. Don’t forget, Europeans swear by autogenic training.
Biofeedback _______________________________________________
Prior to the 20th Century, it seemed that the best way to induce deep muscle relaxation was to sit in a cave for 20 years with a bed sheet wrapped around your behind and a towel wrapped around your head while you contemplated your “universal self.” Initially, the 20th
Century brought with it few innovations concerning deep muscle relaxation until western technology came to the rescue. Within less time than it takes to say transcendental meditation, American scientists had produced a machine that could teach you how to relax in one hundredth the time it would take with cave sitting. The method is called biofeedback. Biofeedback is simply an instrument that gives you immediate feedback about the ongoing functions of your biological systems such as heart rate, respiration and brain waves. This is usually done by presenting you with visual or auditory feedback that corresponds with the biological system being monitored. Actually, the method is really based upon learning principles. It’s a well-known fact that in order to learn something you need feedback. Without feedback, no learning can take place. For instance, remember when you first learned to play basketball. Initially, you had to think about everything you did. You had to be conscious of your hands on the threads of the ball, where the basket was and your body position. You might say your skill level was contingent upon cognitive awareness. You had to think about what you were doing. After considerable practice though, your shooting skills became spinal cord level. Meaning, you didn’t have to think about shooting the ball, you just did it. In nature, you might say that your shooting skill had become a reflex. Now, here is the neat part. Every time you took a shot, you learned to adjust your physical skill by responding to the feedback you got. For instance, if you shot a ball and it went too far to the left, you would get visual feedback as to what you had to do to adjust for your next shot. Eventually, through a process of trial and error, you would learn to shoot consistently good shots. Without this feedback, it would be impossible for you to learn how to play basketball. That’s why it would be impossible for a blind person to learn how to play basketball unless someone gave the blind player feedback on each shot. Actually, every skill, whether it be bowling, shooting a basketball, hitting a baseball, or lifting a weight, requires feedback. No feedback, no learning. Now get this. One afternoon this researcher named Harold Benson at Harvard University got this brainy idea that an individual could be taught to control one’s own internal organs by getting feedback from the internal organs. Benson reasoned that since overt skills were learned by process of feedback, then internal skills could also be learned in a similar manner. Then, the researcher devised a machine which would give an individual continuous feedback as to what his or her internal organs were doing. Benson informed the individual by presenting his subject with a visual or auditory stimulus which represented fluctuations in the subject’s biological system that was being monitored. For example, suppose you wanted to learn to control your heart rate by using biofeedback. First, you would wire yourself up to a digital computer which would be used to monitor your heart rate and display it on a large screen called an oscilloscope. On the oscilloscope are numbers in intervals of 10, ranging from 1 to 200 that correspond to an individual’s heart rate. If you are trying to control your heartbeat at 60 beats per minute, two vertical lines will be on either side of that number. Once you are hooked up and everything is in place, the physiograph is turned on and immediately a white dot will flash out on the oscilloscope. Let’s say the dot hinges at 72 beats per minute, which is a normal heart rate. You are now, probably for the first time in your life, getting biological feedback as to what your heart is doing. Now, through a process called idiosyncratic imagery, which is just a fancy word for mental practice, you think of something in order to raise or lower your heart rate. For instance, you might think of spending a day on a nude beach. This should make your heart beat faster if you are anything like us. Going to the other extreme, you may try thinking of sitting through a lecture on prehistoric rock formations and find your heart rate edging down to the lower end of the oscilloscope.
Assume, then, that you are visualizing yourself lying in tall green grass with the sun beaming down upon you. The sky is filled with white, puffy and drifting clouds moving lazily across the wide open sky. Through this conceptualized scenario, let’s assume that the dot on the oscilloscope now hinges between the vertical lines. Through the use of biofeedback, you are now learning to control bodily functions. With practice, you will find that you will eventually be able to remove the oscilloscope and simply listen to the auditory feedback you get from the physiograph and still keep you heart rate around 60 beats per minute. Eventually, you will be able to do the same thing without any feedback. You will be able to bring your heart rate to approximately 60 beats per minute no matter where you are without conscious effort…much the same way you drive a car without thinking about it. In a nutshell, the skill becomes spinal cord level. Now, let’s return to the analogy of you learning how to play basketball. Remember, we said that in your initial practice sessions you had to think about everything you were doing. In brief, your skill level was initially contingent upon cognitive awareness. Remember what else we said…the more you practiced, the less conscious you had to be of what you were doing until eventually, your skill became automatic and/or on the spinal cord level. At that point, all you had to do to perform your skill was to respond to a few cues in your environment. The same holds true with biofeedback learning. Initially, you have to think about everything you are doing. However, once the skill of controlling the internal organs is learned through biofeedback, it is like basketball or riding a bike, you have it for life and you do not have to learn it again each time you want to use it. The implications for biofeedback are fantastic. Think about it. If you can be taught to control your autonomic functions, you would be able to control your blood pressure, brain waves, heart rate, sleeping patterns and even digestive processes. The implications for students are equally exciting. What would it be like to be able to sleep soundly the night before an important test or to be able to unleash the awesome power of your emotions at just the right moment? It sounds like biofeedback is the perfect method for achieving deep muscle relaxation, doesn’t it? Well, that might just be the case. Biofeedback may help you learn to control your entire autonomic nervous system. Well, let’s not get carried away. Let’s just say you could very well learn to control your heart rate, brain waves and muscle tension. On the other hand, don’t get the idea that the technique is easy to learn. Very few people actually learn visceral or internal control with biofeedback. One of the major reasons that so few are able to master biofeedback is that there are very few competent people who can train you with biofeedback equipment. The research strongly indicates that the success of biofeedback training is directly proportional to the competence of the technician who is utilizing the equipment. Another thing to consider is the time element. You can’t learn biofeedback overnight. Just to learn to induce deep muscle relaxation is going to take at least forty minutes of practice a day, five days a week. In actuality, learning to induce deep muscle relaxation is much easier than learning bowel or bladder control (you know, potty training), providing that you have the right people and the right equipment with which to work. We just want to be honest with you, even with the best equipment and instructor, the procedure is still time consuming and tedious. But don’t get discouraged. If you can afford the equipment, some biofeedback machines cost
as little as $500, and you have the time, approximately 40-minutes a day, patience of a saint and know how of a neurophysicist, biofeedback can be a valuable asset to you. Now, we know what you must be thinking, “Why in the world did we go through all of this discussion of biofeedback when all along we knew that at least 99 percent of you will not have the time, the money, or the patience to use biofeedback anyway. Well, we’ll tell you exactly why…we get paid by the word. We know what you are thinking now too. Here is something else that will put a smile on your face. Despite the fact that all of these techniques are excellent for inducing deep muscle relaxation, we believe the most practical relaxation method is Jacobson’s.