The Emotion Machine » Relaxation

Relaxation: Passing Time in the Lazy River

Steven Handel — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 01:08:59 +0000

Ever been in a lazy river before (like the one pictured below)? It’s a popular water ride found at amusement parks and resorts where you sit in a water tube and let the slow and gentle current drift you along.

Usually they go around in a circle, so you can basically sit there for an indefinite amount of time – not really having a care in the world. The whole experience can be really relaxing, and even a bit trance-inducing.

A good lazy river will also have some scenery (nature stuff – trees, flowers, waterfalls, maybe some animals) which can add a whole other layer of serenity.

I actually haven’t been in a lazy river in years. I know there is one at the Splish Splash in Riverhead, New York, but that’s at least a couple hours away and I haven’t made the trek yet (to be completely honest – I haven’t even been to the beach yet this summer, and that’s only 20 minutes away – yeah I’m bad).

But either way, I actually think the idea of a “lazy river” is a good analogy for relaxation. That’s because, when you’re in the lazy river, there is a healthy sense of non-striving:

You’re not trying to get anywhere.
You’re not trying to accomplish anything.
You’re not trying to control anything.

You’re just letting yourself flow wherever the water goes.

No fight. No resistance.

I think there is something incredibly useful in being able to tap into that energy every now and then.

To just relax – and not always feel like we need to go somewhere.

That’s not to say we should never try to have goals, or go anywhere important, or try to fight resistance. But I believe being able to turn off that drive every now and then is very healthy.

It allows us to take a step back, recharge our batteries, and maybe even re-examine what’s really important in our lives.

Question.

What is your “lazy river?” What activities do you do when you just want to sit back and relax? Meditate? Watch the weather? Listen to music?

Share your answers and thoughts in the comment section!

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Slow Breathing Exercise for Reducing Anxiety

Steven Handel — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:25:46 +0000

This article provides a step-by-step guideline for how to practice slow breathing in order to reduce long-term anxiety and increase relaxation.

According to research, 1 in every 5 adults has an anxiety disorder that affects their ability to function effectively throughout their everyday life.

Many of these individuals never seek treatment for their condition – not through a counselor or therapist, nor through self-help techniques that can be learned online or in books.

But while anxiety may be an inherit part of being human, it’s important to know that there are many available solutions out there to help us manage our anxiety better.

One of the most common forms of anxiety relief are breathing exercises, specifically diaphragmatic breathing (also know as “deep breathing”).

How you breathe when you’re anxious.

Before we get into how to breathe differently to increase relaxation and reduce anxiety, let’s first think about how we breath when we are anxious.

Often times when we feel anxious our breathing becomes faster and shallower. We breathe at a rapid pace into the upper part of our chest. This can then lead to other physiological symptoms like muscle tension, faster heart rate, cold hands, stuttering, and other physical signs of anxiety.

However, by reversing this process (and instead breathing slower and deeper), we can often reduce these feelings of anxiety and become more calm and relaxed.

Slow breathing exercise for reducing anxiety.

The way it works is surprisingly simple, but effective:

This is a basic outline I use for the slow breathing exercise, but you can adjust some things to fit your tastes.

For example, it’s not necessary to have your hands positioned over your chest and stomach, although I do find this easier for guiding my breathe “deep enough” into my lungs. If you do this exercise properly, your stomach should rise after a deep inhalation and fall after a deep exhalation.

You can also technically do this exercise while sitting down or standing up, but to maximize your relaxation you should really do it while laying down comfortably.

Conditioning yourself to be less anxious.

By making it a routine to practice these anxiety reducing techniques, we can begin to slowly condition ourselves to be less anxious of a person. Even just taking 15 minutes every day (or every other day) can have long-term effects on our anxiety and stress levels throughout our everyday life.

In addition to this slow breathing exercise, The Shyness and Social Anxiety System also covers 2 other relaxation techniques that can help you combat your anxiety: progressive muscle relaxation and meditation. I plan to cover both of these techniques in the near future (you can stay updated by joining my newsletter).

Questions

Have you ever used a breathing exercise to help with reducing anxiety and stress?
How does your breathing exercise differ from the one mentioned in this post, if it at all?
What is your favorite way to find relaxation?

Be sure to answer these in the comment section below!

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THE SHYNESS & SOCIAL ANXIETY SYSTEM

Check out this online course by Sean Cooper to learn more about how to face your social anxiety and shyness.

Stress Can Strengthen Emotional Memories

Steven Handel — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:51:18 +0000

There was an interesting study recently published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Researchers at the University of Montreal’s Center for Studies on Human Stress tested to see the effects of cortisol (“the stress hormone,” commonly associated with our body’s fight-or-flight response) on participant’s memories of an emotional event.

The experimenters had participants watch a video presentation of a small girl visiting her grandparents. While the girl and her grandfather were trying to build a bird house, the girl accidentally caught her hand in a saw. To increase the effect of the story, the participants were shown a picture of the girl’s hand after the incident. Objective measures of cortisol in participants’ saliva (before and after viewing the video) indicated that participants had a strong reaction to the presentation.

Three days later, the participants were brought back. One group took a placebo, while two other groups took different doses of a drug that cuts back cortisol from being released into the bloodstream. The researchers discovered that those who took the cortisol-diminishing drug were less able to recall details of the memory involving the small girl. Meanwhile, those who had average cortisol levels were more likely to remember the memory, especially the more gruesome details.

Lead researcher Marie-France Marin theorizes that this study depicts how cortisol affects the recollection of memories. Marin believes that cortisol-diminishing drugs may be beneficial in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), by minimizing the intensity of memories that triggered the condition.

Further implications suggest that our ability to relax (sometimes called “rest and digest,” the opposite of “fight or flight”) is important in our capacity to move on from emotional events and continue our lives “as normal.” In contrast, a stressful life can add to our emotional distress and increase our tendency to recall negative events in our lives. Perhaps the more stressed out we are, the more we tend to reflect on these negative ruminations. This can become a vicious cycle.

The answer seems to be pretty simple: engaging in activities that promote relaxation can be a helpful aid in overcoming memories of negative events in our lives. Exercise and meditation are two of the best known methods to help minimize stress and cortisol in the long-term. I imagine also engaging in more leisure activities, and perhaps looking at our lives from a less “busy” and more “playful” mindset, can also make drastic changes in helping us live more relaxed lives.

This isn’t to say that all stress is bad. Stress can obviously serve a useful function in motivating us to change behavior when we need to. But I also find that a lot of today’s stresses are unnecessary and unhealthy, and therefore worth eliminating. As most of us know, society is more busy-minded than ever before. There are so many distractions we experience on a daily basis, and many fairly insignificant things to worry about. In my honest opinion, most people are way more stressed out then they need to be (and often times this increases the emotional baggage they carry with them). Having a clear idea on what brings us relaxation is key to a healthy mind.

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Workload Recovery Influenced By Leisure Time At Home

Steven Handel — Sun, 22 May 2011 17:21:21 +0000

In a new study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, researchers found that the balance between housework and leisure activity played a crucial role in workload recovery and lowering stress levels.

Researchers found that in families where both spouses work, individuals who spent more time doing housework reported higher evening cortisol levels (a biochemical correlated with stress) and poorer afternoon-to-evening recovery.

While husbands often spent more time on leisure activities than their wives, the study also indicated that when husbands help out with housework this can lead to lower stress levels for wives (although slightly higher stress levels for husbands). In addition, husbands whose wives spent less time on leisure activities had better after-work recovery times.

There a couple lessons here. One is that a cooperative household where both husbands and wives share housework is better for overall reduction of stress rather than an uncooperative household (where one spouse has a significant more amount of work than the other). The second lessons is one that I frequently mention on this blog: leisure time is important for life satisfaction (and, my guess, probably overall productivity as well).

But here’s the thing. People always say they are too busy to enjoy themselves. They come home from a rough day at work to find more and more chores to do: pick up kids from school, help with homework, cook, clean, pay bills, etc. But I believe that however busy you may be, it is absolutely necessary that you find time for leisure and relaxation. Here are some suggestions to help get work done and still find time for relaxation:

Find ways to divvy up the work (have kids do small chores, carpool, etc.)

Try to only focus on tasks that are absolutely necessary.

Don’t let your inner clean freak get the best of you. Cleaning the house once a week should be fine.

Make a schedule and leave time to actually enjoy yourself.

The kinds of breaks you take are important: 20 minutes of meditation may be more rejuvenating to you than watching 2 hours of TV. Try new things and find what works best.

Conscious practice over time can build a stable routine.

Try to see if you can make some chores more fun by blurring the line between work and play.

Also lower stress levels by taking more quality breaks during your workday (start by checking out this list of 50 Stress Relievers That Take 5 Minutes or Less).

Don’t be afraid to take a 30-60 minute nap (when done right, it can boost alertness and productivity).

Again, these are just suggestions. And I realize some of this stuff is commonsense, but it’s worth reminding people about. I find people often underestimate the importance of leisure, but it’s something that – in my mind – is crucial to both productivity and life satisfaction. We need to know how to recharge our batteries. I’ve seen people just try to “push through” ridiculous work schedules; maybe sometimes it’s necessary, but it shouldn’t become the norm. Focus on smart work, not hard work, and part of that intelligence definitely includes well-spent leisure time. Enjoy yourself.

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Control and Peace

Steven Handel — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:53:36 +0000

Lately I have been noticing some common patterns between my life and the lives of others. The two themes that keep popping up are the desire to “control” something while simultaneously being at “peace” with it. While these goals seem reasonable on the surface, they can often be paradoxical in practice, sometimes even perpetuating the same conflict we initially intend to extinguish.

There is of course a balance that needs to be made. The question is: where should we make the distinction and where do we draw the lines that guide our thoughts and behavior? In other words, when it is appropriate to intervene – to seek change – and when is it better to just let things be – and accept what is.

From my understanding, people are more prone to discontent over content, which means they have a greater desire to change than to accept. It may even be in our evolutionary make-up – our desire to improve, to move forward, to have more, to gain power, to indulge; and thus we find ourselves constantly seeking higher levels of satisfaction – new plateaus – instead of being content with how things are.

This is a reflection not only of the current state of affairs in Western consumerist culture, but a facet implicit in human action as shown throughout history. It is the struggle of obtaining “happiness” – by always wanting to get to Moment B, even though we are looking for peace in Moment A.

Look around. Even the most physically and financially protected of individuals, those who live in a world of luxury, whom have no need to stress over survival nor reproduction, instead, create their own stress internally. They continue to find themselves unhappy, disconnected, always separate from what they sought. They have fallen for the paradox of control, they want to find complete satisfaction in a world of infinite desires. To do this they must seek more control of their surroundings, and to seek more control means to have more possessions, more worries, more things to hold onto and force. Yet the more we try to hold on to, the harder it is to maintain a firm grip. We all face the challenge of finding that balance.

Real peace can be thought of as a relinquishment of this desire to control. It is a state of mind that comes in many differing degrees and shades: from mere tolerance, to acceptance, to content, and even bliss.

But consciousness as we tend to experience it is it odds with this peace. Instead, we live in a world of needs and wants. We must identify, discriminate, think, value, and act to fulfill. Even the most “enlightened” of monks must attend to his or her earthly and bodily desires if he or she wishes to continue to survive. These are not avoidable realities for anyone, but understanding them can lead to a sense of maturity about the coming and going of pleasure and pain.

We can’t live life and simultaneously avoid its burdens. There is a point where peace too comes with diminishing returns. At worst, a constant seeking of more peace – more relaxation, more content, less stress – may be one of the most deceitful temptations there is. After all, to be at peace is to accept what is, but to desire more of it is to not to accept what is. Peace then becomes an addictive drug, and the search for neverending satisfaction is ultimately an illusion. This is the paradox of peace.

While we may dream of someday achieving absolute control and absolute peace over our lives, it is this dream which contributes to our own unhappiness. Neither one is reconcilable. There is a fulcrum point that needs to be practiced, a so-called middle way, a path of moderation between the extremes of sensual indulgence and the extremes of self-mortification, a balance between action and inaction, speech and silence, stress and content, peace and control.