The Relaxation Response:
A Bio-Behavioral Perspective
Or why common explanations for Benson's 'The Relaxation Response' and Meditation are mere metaphor, and wrong......
.....and a practical procedure that can prove it.
A first principle in the literature of stress, widely conveyed in popular metaphor and psychological theory, is that muscular tension is the result of reflexive mechanisms of 'fight or flight' initiated by objectified stressors, and that the antithesis to stress, namely relaxation, is due to equally reflexive mechanisms or a 'relaxation response' initiated by focused attention or meditation.
Nonetheless, there is no empirical evidence that demonstrates that muscular tension is controlled by the same neuro-psychological and reflex like processes that initiate other emotional elements of the 'fight or flight' response such as fear, anger, and panic, or that 'attentive' processes elicit relaxation. Rather, much evidence demonstrates that tension and relaxation are primarily controlled through non-reflexive processes of learning. The following articles present this very contrarian argument, which also demonstrates how the explanations behind the efficacy of meditative procedures, from TM to the relaxation response, are false. The Cinderella Method presents a new and more effective procedure for the control of relaxation that provides an easy and practical test for this hypothesis.
