Stress Management: The Relaxation Response

HERBERT BENSON: Let me show you how to evoke the relaxation response. So if you will, just close your eyes and relax all your muscles starting with your feet, your calves, your thighs. Shrug your shoulders around. Roll your head and neck around. Great. Wonderful. Now, sit without movement and just focus on your breathing. But breathe oh-so-slowly.

Each time your breath is coming out, say silently to yourself the word, calm. And you're going to find all sorts of other thoughts coming to mind. Those thoughts are natural. They should be expected.

But when they occur, don't be upset. But simply say, oh, well. And passively, come back to the word, calm. On each out breath, calm. And as the other thoughts come to mind just, oh, well. And back to calm.

ALAN ALDA: This is a simple basic form of meditation. The sensors confirmed what I was beginning to feel, that I was more relaxed.

HERBERT BENSON: Now, just slowly, slowly open your eyes. How was that?

ALAN ALDA: It's nice.

HERBERT BENSON: You get into it nicely. What did the physiological changes show?

WOMAN: I think the most dramatic one was your muscle tension, measured right here. Before, it was so high, it was off the screen. And after about a minute and a half, it came down quite nicely.

HERBERT BENSON: This is how you can use the mind to affect the stresses of the body. And to the extent that any disorder is caused or made worse by stress, to that extent, we can use this as a therapy.

ALAN ALDA: Is there a difference between what you might call chronic stress and momentary stress? I mean, is it good for you to have short bursts of stress that you can handle?

HERBERT BENSON: The more the stress, the more efficient you are, the more productive you are, but to a point. When it gets too chronic, and then performance and efficiency start dropping off. And that's what most people are experiencing.

ALAN ALDA: John Goddard is one of the beneficiaries of Benson's relaxation therapy. Once a victim of panic attacks, depression, and high blood pressure, he's now mentally stable and off his blood pressure medication. He says his daily meditation is responsible.

JOHN GODDARD: It's given me my life back. I was at hiding in my house for 12 years. I was so frightened. And now, I'm out in the world. I'm actually working, again. It's just so fantastic.

ALAN ALDA: This is northern India, the foothills of the Himalayas. And the year is 1981. The scenes were filmed on visits led by Herbert Benson to track down experts in Tummo yoga.

It's practiced by Tibetan monks who had followed the Dalai Lama here when he was exiled. Benson, knowing that the Dalai Lama's reputation for openness, got permission to investigate.

HERBERT BENSON: For years, the practice of Tummo has been a secret within Tibetan Buddhist practice. And you allowed the West have studies of this for the first time. Why is that?

DALAI LAMA: Benson, as you mentioned, this is a practice usually regarded as a secret doctrine and also very is a private thing. But I feel—as usually, I believe and also explained to people that we are believing our emphasis on the reasons and facts.

It is something true, something fact. And the investigation taken through meditation and investigation table through instrument may reach the same point.

ALAN ALDA: The Tummo meditation experts live alone in unheated stone huts at high altitude. Benson was able to bring some into town for tests. He was astonished to learn what they were capable of.

HERBERT BENSON: What their are monks can do in Tummo yoga is essentially naked in midwinter in 40 degree Fahrenheit temperatures, take a sheet measuring six by three feet, dip it icy water, wrap themselves in that sheet.

You and I will go to uncontrollable shivering and perhaps even die. They can get that sheet steaming within three to five minutes. We've been studying that for 20 years.

ALAN ALDA: Benson and brought back now famous film of the Tummo monks drying their ice-cold sheets. For them, it's, of course, an essential religious ritual designed to create a fire which burns away all traces of improper thinking. For Benson, it was simply astonishing. And in fact, he found with these tests that monks could at will raise the temperature their extremities, fingers, and toes by as much as 15 degrees.

At the same time, they don't increase their heart rates, he found. So somehow, they must be deliberately opening up their blood vessels, increasing the flow. I'm no Tibetan monk, but after my relaxation sessions, the idea of warming yourself up didn't sound out of the question to me.

Three-quarters of the way through, trying to repeat the word calm, I felt warmer.

HERBERT BENSON: Exactly, that's a common response. You see, the stress hormones lead to vasoconstriction. That's just what we were measuring, muscle tension. When you evoke the relaxation response that way, what then occurred, that the hormone was counteracted. And that led to a warming of the skin.

ALAN ALDA: But how exactly are the stress hormones counteracted? Usually the fight or flight stress response is beyond our conscious control. It just starts and stops automatically. Somehow meditators tap into the part of the brain that controls the switches. And you don't have to be a Tibetan monk to do it.