Over 100 years ago, Sir William Osler, the father of American medicine, stated that stress was the major cause of most diseases. As early as 1929, Edmond Jacobson reported that 80% of psychosomatic diseases (today called stress) could be managed adequately with PROGRESSIVE RELAXATION, a simple 30-minute program of systematic voluntary muscle contraction followed by conscious relaxation.
In 1932, J.H. Schultz reported the same 80% success in psychosomatic illnesses with autogenic training.
In the early 1950’s Schneider’s Brain Wave Synchronizer was reported to control hypertension as well as reduce the amount of anesthesia needed for surgery.
By 1969, the first of six volumes on AUTOGENIC THERAPY was published, with 2800 references, demonstrating remarkable success in a wide variety of stress illnesses, as well as improvement in athletes, students and business people.
By 1972 Elmer Green was reporting 84% success in treating migraine headaches with autogenic feedback training. And a few years later he demonstrated 80% success in treating hypertension.
In the late 1970’s, Herb Benson demonstrated that individuals who did 40 minutes of THE RELAXATION RESPONSE lowered insulin requirement and catecholamine (adrenalin) production by 80% for an entire 24 hours.
Now, 100 years after these safe and effective concepts were introduced, a majority of patients needing stress reduction are not even receiving suggestions for the most effective treatments ever devised.
At the same time, Americans are taking unprecedented volumes of drugs which are about half as effective as the non-pharmaceutical approaches; and the drug approach has major complications in up to 25% of patients.
The antidote for stress is stress reduction through relaxation, which can be achieved with:
- Physical exercise
- Progressive Relaxation
- Autogenic Training
- Guided Imagery with Music
- Vibratory Music
- Photostimulation with the Shealy RelaxMate II™
- Biofeedback training
- Hatha Yoga
- Raja Yoga
- Qi Gong
- Tai Chi
- And perhaps with just a good twenty-minute nap!
Functional outcomes after a traumatic head injury, epilepsy, Raynaud’s syndrome, migraine and tension headache, cataracts, anxiety, asthma, osteoarthritic joint pain, all types of chronic pain, premature ventricular contractions, eczema, hypertension, TMJ syndrome, constipation, coronary heart disease, functional sleep disorders, genital herpes, alcoholism, mild and moderate depression, asthma, primary dysmenorrhea, irritable bowel syndrome and diarrhea, peptic ulcers, adverse effects of chemotherapy, and glaucoma, and even prisoner recidivism have all been improved more significantly with these safe approaches than any other known intervention.
Although scientific articles have often concentrated on one specific technique, such as biofeedback training, in general, all the listed approaches have evidence of efficacy far exceeding most pharmaceuticals.
In my own experience with over 30,000 patients, the basic Schultz autogenic training tape and the RelaxMate have been the easiest to introduce and the most effective.
Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D. is the father of holistic medicine. He recommends autogenic focus (the basis of the Biogenics System) as part of your overall commitment to self-health. Register to download your FREE autogenic focus MP3 now.