Online Class: Relaxation 101

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

Meditation 101: Learn How to Meditate

Buddhism 101

Stress Management

Course Motivation

Stress and relaxation are often mentioned in the same breath.

"I'm stressed!" Your friend, spouse, partner, or doctor answers, "Then you need to relax more."

But how do you do that? It sounds so easy, doesn't it? The truth is, however, that we need to learn to relax because it is not something that we do naturally. 

Learning to relax after having been raised in a Western culture such as the United States is a very, very difficult task. Most people do not have a consistent form of relaxation that works. Most of us don't even know what it feels like to be relaxed and completely at peace.

Even worse, even when we think we're relaxed, our physiologic markers like heart rate, breath rate, and blood pressure indicate that we're poised for action. When we are in a constant state of readiness, our bodies fatigue and fail us, leading to greater incidence of stress-related illnesses.

The 21^st Century

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently called stress the "health epidemic of the 21^st century." More than 70 percent of all illnesses can be attributed to stress as a causative factor. This results in billions of dollars spend on medical care to treat illnesses caused by stress, to say nothing of the billions of man-hours lost for people unable to report to work for headaches, backaches, upper respiratory illnesses, and GI upset like irritable bowel and heartburn. Add to that the ever increasing profile of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer that can also be linked to stress and we have a boiling cauldron of disease caused by one single word:stress.

It is almost impossible to believe that a single factor can contribute to so many illnesses. If that is the case, what would/could happen if we could somehow manage the stressors in our lives? Obviously, "Learn to relax," is the answer. However, we must first understand what stress is, how it affects us, how it helps us, and when it begins to hurt us.

In this course, you will discover a world of ideas that you may have heard about, but have never considered to be "right" for you. Every lesson will provide you with information about stress, disease, and how to combat the negative effects of both. Not every behavior modification will work equally well for everyone.

The purpose of going in to all these relaxation techniques is to raise your awareness to the things that hurt, you so that you can then begin to help and heal yourself. 

We will begin by defining stress and how it appears in our lives in the 21^st century.

The Definition of Stress

Stress can be defined as a number of things. One of the most common that is used in medical school is to have you imagine what life would be like if you were a caveman. Imagine what life might be like when you are having a breakfast of berries and leaves with your family. Suddenly a saber-toothed tiger appears and your physiology changes dramatically. Your breathing changes, your heart rate increases, your hormones begin to surge, specifically epinephrine; it is the typical fight-or-flight response. Not so bad, right? True, not all stress is bad. An acute stress response can actually save your life, moving out of the way of an oncoming car, the acute stress response gives your body the necessary ability to move quickly. 

There is nothing wrong with the fight-or-flight response. Without it, the human race might not be around today. The problem with the fight-or-flight response, is that in the 21^st century, there are no saber-toothed tigers. And yet, our bodies respond in a similar fashion any time we feel that we are confronted with a stressful situation. 

What makes it so difficult is that for some people, even the doorbell ringing or the sound of a telephone triggers the fight-or-flight response. And if something that minor triggers it, how long is it before the response dissipates? You're beginning to see, aren't you? The very response that was designed to protect us is the very same response that is now killing us slowly, because chronic stress causes chronic illness. 

Ever since the 1950s, Dr. Hans Selye, a stress expert, defined stress as something that happens to us, and that stressors are a stimulus or event that produce our stress response. In doing so, he popularized the term "stress" as something that happens to us. He defined stress as, "the nonspecific response of the organism to any pressure or demand."

Let's say, for example, that you were a zebra. You're grazing on the plains, and when the tiger comes after your group, your heart rate increases, you breathing changes, you're charged with adrenaline, and you run like crazy to get away from the tiger. Once the tiger's gone, what happens? If you're a zebra, you'll settle down, your heart rate slows, your breathing returns to normal, the adrenaline is absorbed, and you resume grazing. This is considered to be an acute stress response. Once the danger is over, stress levels and all physiologic markers return to normal.

As a human being, we are aware of danger and we can often predict it. This means that we're often on a higher level of alert than a zebra would be. Spring forward to the 21^st century and the number of stressors we experience have increased exponentially. This means that we're facing a chronic condition of an increased stress response and as a result, our bodies are paying a price for that.

During the time that Mozart lived, life was so quiet at night that a night watchman could announce to most of the town that all was well. We live in a much noisier world today, especially if we live in a larger city. That elevated noise level is considered a stressor. 

Those cell phones we carry cause stress. When we are awake, we are always at attention; we are stressed more often than not because we respond to all manner of alerts. We wake to an alarm. The coffee pot and microwave signal our attention. The car tells us if a door is ajar or if we've forgotten to put on our seatbelt. A 15-minute drive to work can have as many as a thousand stressors from our driveway until we turn off the ignition at work. Perhaps you take public transportation to and from school or work. You must arrive on time, fight for your seat or position, and pay attention to when you need to get off, otherwise you'll be additionally stressed trying to make up for lost time.