Stress and tension are the enemies of relaxation.
We all carry around more tension than we realize, and as we become accustomed to it, we notice it less.
We carry it in our muscles, in our minds, in our guts, and in our relationships.
When we are tense for long periods of time, we feel irritable, withdrawn, and tired.
We lose enthusiasm for life.
The optimal solution is to reduce the Sources of stress in our lives, but on a practical level that's not always possible.
We need to make a living, support and care for a family.
Adult life tends to be stressful.
A more pragmatic approach to stress reduction is to learn to "relax on demand".
What is relaxation? Relaxation is the art of letting go.
It is the act of releasing tension from your muscles and sweeping away troubling thoughts from your mind.
Both the mind and the body need to be free from stress in order to achieve a state of relaxation.
Relaxation is more than just taking a bubble bath or lying out in the sun on a lounge chair.
You may think you're relaxed, but your shoulder muscles may still be tense or your neck feel tight-and you're so accustomed to it that the discomfort doesn't register at a conscious level.
Meanwhile, your mind is still running a mile a minute, calculating unpaid bills or the work piling up at the office.
The relaxation response counteracts the harmful effects of sustained stress, the ultimate saboteur of health.
Stress kills.
How? Stress triggers the fight-or-flight response while adrenal glands churn out the stress.
Ever heard before of the hormone "adrenaline"? Adrenaline quickens your heart rate and raises your blood pressure.
This hormone can help you adapt very quickly to challenging or dangerous situations.
But, when stress persists over prolonged periods of time, elevated levels of another stress hormone, cortisol, can cause obesity, sexual dysfunction, memory problems, reduced immunity, and depression.
Chronic stress can also make your adrenal glands malfunction, so they cannot respond properly on a day-to-day basis.
This can lower your already depleted energy levels, as well as your ability to cope with sudden stress.
Long-term stress can also dampen your sex drive by shifting the resources of the adrenal glands away from production of the sex hormone precursor DHEA and toward the other adrenal hormones necessary for individual survival (such as cortisol).
Stress actually intensifies your craving for sweets.
Stress can affect your memory by being toxic to one set of memory cells in the brain, called the hippocampus.
The hippocampus, shown to shrink in depression, returns to normal size after successful treatment of depression.
Persistent stressful life situations can counteract the beneficial effects of antidepressants and prevent a total recovery from your depression or medical condition.