Relaxation and Visualization Techniques: Practical Applications

By Marco Bramucci

Relaxation is a natural condition that owing to stress or excess of activity is often confined to the detriment of our health. The aim of relaxation techniques is to regain and increase our wellbeing, reducing anxiety, stress and all the problems that stem from them. Visualization is a mental technique that has been used for centuries in eastern meditation and that leverages our imaginative potential. When combined, relaxation and visualization techniques can give us great benefits, giving us the opportunity to use all our capacities, overcome our limits, reduce anxiety or stress related illnesses, and promote personal change.

The following is a list of some of the book contents:
• 2 complete and independent relaxation exercises, to start relaxing in no time
• More than 15 guided visualizations to increase wellbeing and promote self-change
• Hints to create yourself your own effective visualizations
• A complete course of Autogenic Training (standard exercises)
• Advanced applications of Autogenic Training (affirmations or self-suggestions)
• Progressive Muscular Relaxation course
• How to use mental techniques for sports and pain management.

Marco Bramucci is a Complementary Medicine operator. He studied Acupuncture and Tuina massage, and has been using Mental Techniques for more than twenty years, especially Autogenic Training, Visualization and Buddhist Meditation. This is his second book after Usa i tuoi Sogni (Use your Dreams), a course in Dreamwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marco Bramucci
• Release date: Feb 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9788826016924

Book preview

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Introduction

This book is addressed to all the people who want to make the most of their potential, overcome their limits, eliminate or reduce ailments caused by anxiety and stress, and develop a better mental and physical condition. To take advantage of the techniques that I will expose, no prior knowledge on the subject is required, therefore the book can be used by both beginners and experts.

I have written this book after more than twenty years of personal experience in the field of relaxation and visualization. I was twenty-three when I learned Autogenic Training and started using it. Since then I have applied it, together with all the other techniques here exposed, in different fields: sports, meditation, qigong, work, and of course I have used them as mere relaxation techniques. I have learned most of these methods under the supervision of teachers (martial arts, qigong and meditation masters, and psychotherapists), but also by researching and personal study.

Relaxation and visualization techniques are self-help tools that have the following goals:

increase peacefulness and concentration

reduce the level of anxiety and stress

increase recuperative powers and improve sports performances

promote personal change, byboth changing your behavior and motivatingyourself.

You will realize that using relaxation and visualization is like going on a journey inside yourself. I will give you the instructions to move around and will enable you to draw your own map of the territory.

With regard to the organization of the book, after some brief introductory remarks on relaxation and visualization, we will start with a simple but effective progressive relaxation exercise that will allow you to relax and relieve many stress-related disorders. This will be followed by another general relaxation exercise which is preparatory to the use of self-suggestions. Both the exercises will be useful for the practice of visualization, a topic that will be discussed in the following chapter, containing a series of guided visualization exercises. Then I’ll thoroughly explain two of the best known and practiced relaxation techniques: Autogenic Training and Progressive Muscle Relaxation. Compared to the first two exercises, both these relaxation systems need a longer period to be learned, but have a wider field of application and therefore you will be able to employ them more extensively. Subsequently, I will introduce some examples for sports, military or paramilitary applications, and finally I will talk about how to use all the techniques for pain management.

I advise you not to jump immediately to the part of the book that interests you the most, and highly recommend to read the entire book, from beginning to end, get an idea of which techniques may be more suitable for you, and then choose the one or the ones to practice.

Why combining visualization and relaxation techniques

The boundaries between the different relaxation and visualization methods are not clear and often these methods are similar in some way. In fact, to create a calming effect, all relaxation techniques reduce the attention to the external stimuli and direct it to the body, for example to the breathing. Another example is the fact that when we relax, some physical sensations, like heaviness, warmth or a tingling sensation in the limbs, emerge regardless of the system used to relax. So, don’t lose your patience if I will repeat some concepts or go into them in the explanation of different relaxation and visualization techniques. In part these repetitions will be useful to make the various chapters independent of each other. However, each technique has its own characteristics and particular uses, as we will see.

To get the most out of this book, I recommend to learn and master a specific technique, but also to take advantage of the others to complement your favorite one. As an example, the Progressive Relaxation exercise matches perfectly with visualization, and even greater effects can be obtained by combining Autogenic Training and visualization. Relaxation and visualization can both be leveraged to achieve a state of mental and physical relaxation, the one increasing the effect of the other and vice versa.

The main purpose of relaxation techniques is to lead us to a state of deep tranquility.

They act against the negative effects caused by an excess of activity which is normally required at work and in many other spheres of our lives. Usually we are required to be active, busy, smart and to achieve goals as quickly as possible. If we do it, they will think highly of us, but in the end complying with this way of living will make us restless, tense and unbalanced towards a way of being always on the look-out. Moreover, this unhealthy way of living becomes the norm, so even when it wouldn’t be required, we stay on the look-out. This makes us lose the ability to relax and finally it makes us loose the connection with our inner selves. Relaxation techniques tend to restore the lost balance, adding quiet to our stressful and hectic lives. In this respect, they are a means for deconditioning. It’s like to retire to a desert island for a few minutes to regain our energy, to recharge our batteries so that we can face the daily routine with greater calm, clarity and vitality.

The main purpose of visualization is self-change and in general the improvement of some kind of performance. For this technique to run smoothly, you have to perform it in a state of relaxation.  Visualization, in turn, has a calming effect and deepens the state of relaxation. That’s why, as I said earlier, the boundary between visualization and relaxation techniques is not so neat. They both calm us down.

Stress, relaxation and inner resources

We all react to stress with the fight or flight response, the same ancestral method used by the first hominids. This ancient behavior has allowed us to survive when facing real dangers, such as an attack by wild beasts. It consisted in two possible reactions: attacking and fighting the enemy, or running away from it. However, in today's society obstacles usually aren’t tangible, but are abstract instead. Fear of failure, uncertainty of the future, and so no, are our actual enemies. Nevertheless, we respond to these stressors like if they were real and material (the wild beasts), but unfortunately the fight or flight behavior isn’t appropriate nor effective in these cases. In fact, it produces an excess of stress hormones which are useful if we must attack or flee, but poisonous if there aren’t tangible obstacles. Basically if stress hormones aren’t used to fight or run away, they chronically keep on circulate through the body. Their constant presence sends to the body a danger signal to which the body responds reducing all the physiological functions that are not strictly necessary to survive, that is:

the immune system stops working properly. This explains why we get sick more easily when we are stressed.

Sexual functions are inhibited.

Growth hormone production decreases. Usually, children living in difficult situations grow more slowly.

Metabolism changes: the assimilation of sugars, immediately ready to be absorbed, is favored at the expense of the assimilation of fat. This leads to an accumulation of fat and finally to obesity.

The muscles tend to be chronically tense, causing fatigue, pain, and contractures.

Unfortunately, the negative effects are more than the ones just mentioned. The good news is that we all have a huge amount of resources and direct or indirect experiences to use and refer to, in order to solve our problems. Often these experiences and resources are not fully accessible because we are hampered by limiting viewpoints. In any case, we have much more resources than we think we have, resources that are ready to be used. Relaxation and visualization’s purpose is to access to these resources and use them. They also allow us to take a break from our hectic lives and feel the power of calmness. We don’t hear about the power of our resources very often. Most of the time we are bombarded with advertisement and commercials that describe us as weak, in need of all the products that they would like us to buy and without which we would be lost and miserable. The market needs people unable to cope with their difficulties, people who cannot make it alone, and have no control over the pain. They need people who will become happy just buying the products they would like to feed us, and continually try to convince us that we cannot manage our problems. Ads show us that a simple headache can be a huge obstacle to the pursuit of happiness, they label a period during which we feel sad