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The Quest for Relaxation

Pick out your most comfortable chair. Sit down, loosen your tie or your apron strings, slip out of your shoes and close your eyes.

Now imagine your feet dangling in the cool, clear, blue waters of a mountain lake. Smell the sweet aroma of nearby flowers. Hear the happy songs of carefree birds. Feel the stimulation of fresh mountain air. For a few minutes shut out, as far as possible, all other thoughts, and with this peaceful scene in mind, just meditate.

Feel better? More relaxed?

WHO of us does not need to relax? According to one authority, 70 percent of the people sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms are sick simply because they no longer can cope with life’s pressures.

In addition, new studies indicate how stress and other emotions that affect the body’s immune responses and vital functions are responsible for many human ailments. Medical science is finding that the mind-body link plays more of a role in human health than previously believed and, therefore, has given a new name to the branch of medical research that investigates this mechanism​—psychoneuroimmunology. Commenting on the brain’s physiological role, Dr. George F. Solomon of the University of California says: “Mind and body are inseparable. The brain influences all sorts of physiological processes that were once thought not to be centrally regulated.”

Obviously a doctor who can help his patients to relax is serving their best interests. Doctors can make any number of fine suggestions on how to relax consciously. Some employ electrical equipment to make patients more aware of their body’s response to certain situations, thereby teaching them to control their reactions consciously. Biofeedback, for example, is a technique used to manipulate heartbeat or brain waves by conscious mental control. As long as physical relaxation is the intent, there may be nothing objectionable to some of these methods.

But what if doctors recommend, as a help to relaxation, certain TM (transcendental meditation) techniques and also Yoga or Zen? More and more of them are doing so. In 1978, for example, over 5,000 doctors formed groups in some 20 countries to encourage the medical use of TM. Another meditation technique that is particularly popular in some European countries and that is gaining interest in other lands is what is called autogenic training. But before accepting any such treatment a person should certainly know the facts.

Meditation Techniques

Meditation basically means to turn a subject over in one’s mind, to give it continuous thought, to contemplate it. But meditation techniques are frequently something else.

A former Indian guru, now converted to Protestantism, recently explained the difference to a group of German churchmen. The goal of Eastern meditation techniques, he pointed out, is to separate oneself from the world of reality and conscious thought, oftentimes by inducing a trancelike condition. In this way, as it were, a person “finds himself,” comes to grips with his problems and, with the help of “his inner self,” is able to solve them.

German doctor and author Gisela Eberlein explained it in these words: “Common to all meditation techniques is that they lead inward, [resulting in] relaxation in deep tranquillity. Yoga, transcendental meditation or autogenic training, as different as they are, still have a common goal​—self-realization.”

Some of the meditation techniques designed to lead to “self-realization” have been discussed in previous issues of Awake!a Another method not yet dealt with, but one that is known to many of our readers, especially those living in German-speaking countries, is called autogenic training. A brief discussion of it will help us to understand better how certain meditation techniques differ from “normal” meditation. This should help the reader to draw correct conclusions about similar techniques that may be advocated by doctors in his own country.

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The goal of Eastern meditation techniques is to enable a person to separate himself from the world of reality and conscious thought