Well Being Program 6: Thinking Better
Interactive Transcript
Click on a word to move the video to that point.
Deepak: Well being is something we all
desire. But staying healthy and feeling good
can be quite a challenge especially with the stresses
that pervade every aspect of our lives today.
eating healthfully are two essential steps to well
being. In this series you'll learn
about a third step; relaxation.
Not just sitting around but some specific activities
that trigger your body's relaxation response.
You'll learn about the importance of deep relaxation
for reducing the harmful effects of stress
along with a series of easy to do relaxation
skills. And through our weekly questionnaire
you'll gain an awareness of how stress my be
affecting you. So get a paper and pencil ready
and join us as we take the next step
to well being.
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our ability to think. Hopefully we can think ourselves
out of the toughest situations.
But what if stress actually worsened our ability to think
and made situations harder to handle? In this program
we're going to learn how stress affects our mental
capabilities and this weeks questionnaire will help you
recognize signs of stress on your thought processes and
you'll find out what you can do about it.
Response Institute in Toronto is a pioneer in the teaching
of relaxation skills for stress management.
body's nervous system to some threat or challenge.
Our whole being goes into a defensive threatened
state in which our normal thinking process is bypassed to
enhance our ability to react quickly. Under stress
we're only alert to opportunities for immediate defense
of action. Have you ever noticed how your mind goes blank
when you're in a threatening situation?
or take an exam or when you've got too much to do and
too little time; often in those situations
we lose our ability to concentrate, to remember what we know
quite well. Under stress we often have
difficulty learning or listening to other people or
coming up with new solutions. The stress reaction
is essential in truly threatening situations but it
obviously get in the way of our ability to handle many of the situations
in our life; situations that really aren't threatening
but which we perceive or assume to be threatening.
If we consciously turn off the body's stress reaction
by turning on the body's relaxation response
then we tend to perceive things in an nonthreatening
light and our thinking returns to normal.
the learning process and it affects the persons ability
to concentrate and also to retain what they've
learned. I think that we can reduce that stress by
paying more attention to the leaning environment and
how we organize the learning
process. I think we can do that at school, in our offices,
at home or wherever learning is taking place.
adaptive in the face of stress is to be
more flexible. I think in the face of
either a major single stressor or
multiple stressors over time
--in other words the accumulative affect of stress--can render
an individual incapable of problem
solving--incapable of productive thinking.
concentrate on a task for an extended
period of time.
stress; I'm not able to focus as
intently on
a conversation or on something that I'm reading and
I don't remember as much.
You start off across the room to do something
and you can't remember what it was you were going to do or
you begin a sentence and can't remember how
you were going to finish it. When you're doing that in front of thirty people
that's an extremely stressful situation.
to stress or a particular stressor
is tied with how we appraise it. If we
appraise it in terms of--and let's use the example
of the speaking engagement--if you say to yourself
"This is an important speaking engagement. I know
I'm a good speaker. I can go up and entertain this
audience and I can deliver a competent
address" then chances are the level of
tension you experience will be quite different than if your
mental attitude about the speaking engagement
were one of, "This is a hostile audience;
I know most of these people know as much or more about
this topic than I do. This is going to be
extremely difficult for me to pull off."
sets about the same event and in the
latter example we often sabotage our own
efforts to succeed. We need to
assess what the stressor is, we need to look
at what the resources are that we have
and then we need to select virtually
a style of relating to this that is going to be most
adaptive to us.
Generally speaking most people rely on
relatively few ways of handling the stresses and frustrations
of their lives so we aren't
flexible enough in meeting the challenges of our lives.
When we feel things are out of control our
tendency is often to grab on tighter and
control feels more comfortable to us, it's more
familiar to us, when in many situations maybe
the adaptive strategy for dealing with a stressor is
to let go.
many times of losing control and being
afraid of letting go but
I went with the feelings and
I was a better person for it.
long time in my life I felt that being in control
was the way to be and if I was
to be in control
of the things around me
then I would be okay. But I came to
realize when I got into stress management
that letting go was the answer not
controlling. It was letting your body relax and
letting tasks go by
that weren't important and then you could manage stress better.
I'm reading material or I want to motivate myself
or I want to synthesize something
where I need to make a decision I do it much better when I'm
relaxed.
I want you to imagine for the next few minutes...
is Super Learning. This relaxation based approach
helps students deal with the affects of stress
on their thinking processes and it appears to produce
dramatic increases in their learning abilities.
school I can see children who just fall
apart on tests or exams; children who function normally
on a regular day-to-day classroom
activity. To reduce the stress the students are
taught to relax and that improves the learning
process and makes it easier both to learn
and also to remember.
As a teacher I use it all the time;
first of all I try to be aware all the time of the learning environment that I'm
bringing the students into so it's a pleasant place to come to
and hopefully stress is reduced while
the students are learning.
--or try to be aware of that--during tests and
exams. If you make it a regular
pattern of learning then all of a sudden the
results start shooting up. A lot of the high school
students I work with have patterns of
fifty and sixty in education and
for on tests or exams and now they are up in the high nineties
because they've learned how to cope with that kind of stress.
So we could make incredible changes in the learning
process if we looked at how stress affects
education and I also think we can do it at any age
level; this is not something just for children.
new styles of coping are being taught
and we certainly have the technology
and the information to do that.
I think if we try to make the distinction between
the state of relaxation
as opposed to tension or being stressed
and the process of relaxation a lot of people
say, "Well I'm going to go home and veg out and just relax."
Well by vegging out that's the process of relaxation but
you're not really doing anything very relaxing you're just
kind of sitting watching something.
you may be sitting watching something that's making you fairly
tense. The state of relaxation
is where the focus ought to be. How do we
get from a state of feeling stressed
to a state of relaxation
and the issue here is to institute things
specifically designed to
help us relax--to help us undo the
tense state we're in. That can be fairly
--I think--simply looked at and
accomplished.
whom I consider myself to be. If I'm thinking well
the rewards are obvious; projects go well, people
think well of me, and I think well of myself. But
if I'm not really thinking well the costs really aren't
that obvious at all; who's to say that a project could go
better. Now I know that stress affects my thinking;
is there a way that we can become more aware of the effects
of stress on our thinking?
thinking well we see it as a personal
strength; when we're not thinking well we see it as a personal weakness.
And we often don't want to admit to ourselves that
inability but it's quite interesting to
be aware that stress is not an
event out there--stress is an internal event--and
it really has a dramatic effect on our overall thinking capacities and
let's illustrate that by going to a questionnaire.
we'll mark these questions with a yes or a no.
Don't be concerned if you don't have pencil or paper
handy just pay attention to the issues
because I think you're going to be surprised.
If I can just draw your attention to the first question:
"Do you have difficulty concentrating?"
You find you sit down to read something in the evening
and you read it three or four times before it sinks in,
you find other thoughts impinging.
focus, the concentration; now many people see that as a personal
weakness and really don't even connect it in any way with
stress and yet poor concentration is
really very much directly related to high stress levels.
at inappropriate times?" Yes or no?
Do you find that your boss is talking to your and your mind is
wandered off to somewhere else? You want to avoid
difficult or unpleasant situations by letting
the mind wander off? Do you find that happening more and more
frequently? Yes or no?
racing thoughts?" You get into bed and your mind
races away or you find throughout the course of the day you
just can't stop the constant ever present flow of thoughts.
Yes or no?
Next question: "Do your friends and colleagues
complain that you seem preoccupied?" Do you find
yourself worrying about the same nagging issues; your mind just
doesn't seem to shut off? You come home after work
and your wife and children are talking to you, you don't hear them
because you are preoccupied carrying on the activities of the
day. Yes or no?
"Do you sometimes have difficulty making
decisions?" Yes or no?
Do you have fears of making decisions
--coming to choices? The mind has so many factors
are flowing around inside your head that you just really can't
stop and make the decision; yes or no?
Next question: "Is your memory
not as good as it should be?" Have you always prided yourself
in having a really good memory and suddenly finding that it's not there for
you? You keep forgetting names, faces, telephone numbers,
you're forgetting messages to call,
you're forgetting to pick things up on the way home from
work; are you finding that's happening more and more readily? A lot of
people don't seem to recognize that there is a direct
relationship between memory and stress.
subjective and I'm not sure how to score myself on this one.
I have bouts of poor memory but not very
often; how should I rate myself?
helpful if you sort of took the perspective of a coworker
or a spouse and how would they rate you on
this test; does that help?
judgments?" Judgment has a lot to do with
intuition or gut feelings which are aspects of the brain
that are governed by the right hemisphere--the creative
intuitive side. When we're under stress
--when we are in a survival mode and feeling defensive
and threatened--our thinking tends to be dominated by the
left side of the brain; the logical, analytically, rational
side. As a result we're not in
balance; we tend to not be able to access the
full range of mental capacities. We tend to really
ram things through.
question: "Do you have difficulty
falling asleep?" Do you find that you toss and you turn
and it takes you an hour, half an hour, three quarters of
an hour, an hour and a half to fall asleep every night? Do you find you wake
up several times in the course of the evening? Yes or no?
"Do you believe that things usually turn out
for the worst?" Yes or no?
Do you find yourself feeling
pessimistic, fearful a great deal of the time?
A lot of people don't realize that stress is
really very much an aspect of a fear state and if you're locked into
chronic stress it tends to have an affect on your overall
judgments and your attitudes and people tend to
become more pessimistic.
"When you have too many things on your mind
do you often feel confused?
Yes or no? Under stress
you often find you can't organize things in your mind.
Everything is a clutter. When you're under stress
you often feel that you're in a corner; you find
that under stress your
senses become more heightened but your ability to think is more
diminished. Next question: "Do you have
difficulty finding solutions to problems?" Yes
or no? Are you just finding you're not as
creative as you'd like to be? When you're under stress
you tend to be more locked into the analytical
rational way of thinking and your creative intuitive side
is diminished.
stress tends to be a major impediment
to creativity. Next question:
"Do you have trouble absorbing new information
quickly?" You find when you're under stress you have a hard time listening,
focusing, finding your memory isn't what it should be.
In fact whole systems of accelerated learning have been
developed to use relaxation as the foundation
to help people learn more effectively. Research
is really quite clear in showing
the more stress you have the more it impedes
ones memory, focus, and concentration,
Next question: "Do negative emotions
such as anger and frustration frequently inhibit
your ability to think clearly?" Yes or
no?
the father of the concept of modern stress discovered
that every time we experience a negative emotion--anger,
fear, hostility--it tends to set off
adrenaline in the bloodstream--what sets off the body's
stress mechanisms. So the more negative emotions
you have the more stress you're likely to experience and stress
impedes effective thinking.
The last question: "Do you have a problem
focusing your attention on one thing for a long period of
time?" Do you have a low attention span?
Are you impatient, do you have trouble concentrating; yes
or no?
test. I had a lot of yeses and
probably my wife would throw in a few more too but
I found it to be particularly interesting because this
questionnaire is the first one that really spoke to
me. I had an awful lot of yeses.
it's an implication--a sign--that
stress is playing a significant role
in impairing your overall thinking capabilities.
So I would just want to highlight that for you. Now
I'm glad you found a test that spoke to you and
that's why in each of these programs we're offering
a different questionnaire to look at different aspects
of stress--different causes--
so that people will find at least one entry point for
them to appreciate the extent of how stress is
affecting them.
I can actually do
something about what
I thought was a personal weakness.
again the proof is in the pudding. You do
it--I don't promise that after a few weeks of
working with relaxation you're going to develop a photographic
memory (although I'm not precluding that)--I'm saying
though that generally research has quite clearly
demonstrated that concentration
memory--just overall thinking functions--are
enhanced by working with relaxation.
For those of you at home
you get much more out of this program by actually doing the exercise with us rather
than just watching; so follow along with us.
Close your eyes.
We are going to start by taking a deep breath. Inhale through
your nose filling your lungs. Take a deep
breath, hold it for a moment. Imagine the number
three and then as you breathe out
let your whole body relax. Just let go of all the
tightness, all the tension; it's a letting go.
Let's do that again.
deep breath,
hold it for a moment, imagine the number
three and then as you breathe out just
let go of all the tightness, all the tensions. Relax your facial
muscles, your jaw, your neck and
shoulders, arms, hands,
stomach. Now take another deep
breath, hold it,
imagine the number two,
and then as you breath out just allow your mind to
relax; let your mind become clear and calm,
peaceful, tranquil,
serene. Let's do that again. Take
a deep breath,
hold it, imagine the number two,
and as you breathe out
just allow your mind to relax. Let your mind become
clear and calm. Imagine if you will a blank screen in front of your
eyes.
inhale, hold it, imagine
the number one and then
as you breath out just let go. Let your emotions
relax and just allow yourself to dissolve into a nice
comfortable, warm pleasant state
of relaxation; it's just a letting go.
I'm now going to count from ten
down to one and as the numbers descend by
one just allow yourself--permit yourself--to become twice
as relaxed as you were at the previous number so when you get to
the number one you will be more relaxed than you've ever been.
imagine now the number ten and just let
go and just allow yourself to become twice as relaxed as we
move down to nine.
Then twice as relaxed again as we move down
to eight. It's just a letting
go of going deeper and deeper into relaxation.
Seven; twice as relaxed again now as
we move down to six. Really letting
go; giving yourself the permission to let go as we move down into
five. Going deeper and deeper into
relaxation; four. Letting go more
and more; three.
Twice as relaxed now as we move down to
two.
going to a deep, healing, pleasant, balanced state of
relaxation; just let go.
Just focus your concentration for a moment into your
chest and mentally locate your
heartbeat.
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Focus your awareness into your thumbs and
see if you can mentally pick up or locate the
pulse in your thumbs.
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Now take a deep breath
and hold it for a
moment and exhale
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and very, very slowly,
little bit by little bit, just slowly, slowly
slowly open your eyes.
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wandering and imagining the numbers was difficult.
exercises it takes practice. To do it the first time
like this...I mean you now know how to do it
though and I would certainly recommend that as you work with deep
states of relaxation with the home study package and the tapes that
we have you'll start to develop an ever deepening
awareness--a body knowledge--of relaxation
that you'll be able to access very quickly with a method like
the one we just learned.
my mental abilities?
It's a very simple exercise; you'll find at first
it may not but as you practice, as you work with it,
as you go deeper into developing an
ever enhanced body awareness of relaxation
you'll find you'll be able to access it more and more
quickly with techniques like this.
I would recommend that you would find
--if you work with the relaxation--you'll find that the home study package
which involves a series of audio tapes which will guide
you into deep states of relaxation. You'll develop that
body awareness--that body knowledge--and then
with techniques like the one we just learned you'll be able to
go deeply into relaxation really quite quickly just about
anywhere and just about any time.
exercise that I was in such a restful state I thought
I was going to fall asleep; is that possible?
they are going to sleep and in fact they are not they are rather going into deep
states of relaxation.
Out of the biofeedback research they discovered there are basically four different
brain wave states that we all experience. When you're driving
when you're working you're producing rapid brain waves called beta
waves but just the very act of closing your eyes
you start to produce bursts of slower brain waves known as
alpha brain waves.
alpha brain waves until the age of about six or
seven and super leaning techniques really involve
alpha brain wave learning. Alpha brain
waves are the predominant brain waves that come
out of the relaxation response. People think
"Wow I was so relaxed I went to sleep." I say hang on; sleep
is characterized by very very slow brain waves known as
delta waves and it's an unconscious
and when you're producing alpha your mind is very
alert and your body is very relaxed. It's as if your body goes to
sleep but your mind becomes hyper alert so that people
for example can be aware of the pulse in their
thumbs.
you tend to go into a deeper state that's not quite sleep
and it's not the same kind of mental
alertness; it's a state known as theta brain
waves and people often think they go to sleep. You're not going to sleep but
rather going into that deep state of relaxation. But both alpha
and theta are characteristic of the relaxation
response.
how are they useful; can we function?
drive but the theta state is an extremely creative
state. In fact it has been suggested in some research that
almost all the major scientific breakthroughs occurred
to scientists in the theta state. They may have been working on
problems for years but just as they were waking up in the
morning--you know when you're in that half asleep half alert
state, a revelry state, lot's of images come into the mind--that's
theta brain waves and it seems that many if not most of the
scientific breakthroughs occurred to scientists in that state.
Suddenly the "ah ha" experience just as they are waking
up or just as they are falling off to sleep. For most people though
they achieve this state only haphazardly.
With these techniques you can start to certainly achieve alpha
at will and with a bit of practice be able to access the
theta brain wave state also at will.
life when I'm not in the theta or alpha state?
you feel the benefits for hours. I recommend to people
that fifteen to twenty minutes
a day of deep relaxation will stand you in good stead for
the whole day.
able to access these states faster?
practice; it's not a pill it's a skill.
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desire. But staying healthy and feeling good
can be quite a challenge especially with the stresses
that pervade every aspect of our lives today.
Everyone is aware that regular exercise and
eating healthfully are two essential steps to well
being. In this series you'll learn
about a third step; relaxation.
Not just sitting around but some specific activities
that trigger your body's relaxation response.
You'll learn about the importance of deep relaxation
for reducing the harmful effects of stress
along with a series of easy to do relaxation
skills. And through our weekly questionnaire
you'll gain an awareness of how stress my be
affecting you. So get a paper and pencil ready
and join us as we take the next step
to well being.
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We all take pride in
our ability to think. Hopefully we can think ourselves
out of the toughest situations.
But what if stress actually worsened our ability to think
and made situations harder to handle? In this program
we're going to learn how stress affects our mental
capabilities and this weeks questionnaire will help you
recognize signs of stress on your thought processes and
you'll find out what you can do about it.
Eli Bay, director of the Relaxation
Response Institute in Toronto is a pioneer in the teaching
of relaxation skills for stress management.
Eli: Stress is an instinctive automatic response of the
body's nervous system to some threat or challenge.
Our whole being goes into a defensive threatened
state in which our normal thinking process is bypassed to
enhance our ability to react quickly. Under stress
we're only alert to opportunities for immediate defense
of action. Have you ever noticed how your mind goes blank
when you're in a threatening situation?
You're about to give a speech
or take an exam or when you've got too much to do and
too little time; often in those situations
we lose our ability to concentrate, to remember what we know
quite well. Under stress we often have
difficulty learning or listening to other people or
coming up with new solutions. The stress reaction
is essential in truly threatening situations but it
obviously get in the way of our ability to handle many of the situations
in our life; situations that really aren't threatening
but which we perceive or assume to be threatening.
If we consciously turn off the body's stress reaction
by turning on the body's relaxation response
then we tend to perceive things in an nonthreatening
light and our thinking returns to normal.
Lorne: I have not doubt at all that stress affects
the learning process and it affects the persons ability
to concentrate and also to retain what they've
learned. I think that we can reduce that stress by
paying more attention to the leaning environment and
how we organize the learning
process. I think we can do that at school, in our offices,
at home or wherever learning is taking place.
: What we need to do if we are to be more
adaptive in the face of stress is to be
more flexible. I think in the face of
either a major single stressor or
multiple stressors over time
--in other words the accumulative affect of stress--can render
an individual incapable of problem
solving--incapable of productive thinking.
Sheila: I couldn't focus, I found it very difficult to
concentrate on a task for an extended
period of time.
Paul: I really lose concentration if I'm under
stress; I'm not able to focus as
intently on
a conversation or on something that I'm reading and
I don't remember as much.
Peter: You just lose it.
You start off across the room to do something
and you can't remember what it was you were going to do or
you begin a sentence and can't remember how
you were going to finish it. When you're doing that in front of thirty people
that's an extremely stressful situation.
: How we react
to stress or a particular stressor
is tied with how we appraise it. If we
appraise it in terms of--and let's use the example
of the speaking engagement--if you say to yourself
"This is an important speaking engagement. I know
I'm a good speaker. I can go up and entertain this
audience and I can deliver a competent
address" then chances are the level of
tension you experience will be quite different than if your
mental attitude about the speaking engagement
were one of, "This is a hostile audience;
I know most of these people know as much or more about
this topic than I do. This is going to be
extremely difficult for me to pull off."
Contrast those two kinds of mental
sets about the same event and in the
latter example we often sabotage our own
efforts to succeed. We need to
assess what the stressor is, we need to look
at what the resources are that we have
and then we need to select virtually
a style of relating to this that is going to be most
adaptive to us.
Generally speaking most people rely on
relatively few ways of handling the stresses and frustrations
of their lives so we aren't
flexible enough in meeting the challenges of our lives.
When we feel things are out of control our
tendency is often to grab on tighter and
control feels more comfortable to us, it's more
familiar to us, when in many situations maybe
the adaptive strategy for dealing with a stressor is
to let go.
Brenda: I experienced the sensation
many times of losing control and being
afraid of letting go but
I went with the feelings and
I was a better person for it.
Cheryl: I think for a
long time in my life I felt that being in control
was the way to be and if I was
to be in control
of the things around me
then I would be okay. But I came to
realize when I got into stress management
that letting go was the answer not
controlling. It was letting your body relax and
letting tasks go by
that weren't important and then you could manage stress better.
Don: I do know that if I'm relaxed and
I'm reading material or I want to motivate myself
or I want to synthesize something
where I need to make a decision I do it much better when I'm
relaxed.
[speaker]# Okay now that you're nice and relaxed
I want you to imagine for the next few minutes...
Deepak: One of the new strategies for adapting to stress on the thought process
is Super Learning. This relaxation based approach
helps students deal with the affects of stress
on their thinking processes and it appears to produce
dramatic increases in their learning abilities.
Lorne: In the classroom and elementary
school I can see children who just fall
apart on tests or exams; children who function normally
on a regular day-to-day classroom
activity. To reduce the stress the students are
taught to relax and that improves the learning
process and makes it easier both to learn
and also to remember.
As a teacher I use it all the time;
first of all I try to be aware all the time of the learning environment that I'm
bringing the students into so it's a pleasant place to come to
and hopefully stress is reduced while
the students are learning.
I'm especially aware of that
--or try to be aware of that--during tests and
exams. If you make it a regular
pattern of learning then all of a sudden the
results start shooting up. A lot of the high school
students I work with have patterns of
fifty and sixty in education and
for on tests or exams and now they are up in the high nineties
because they've learned how to cope with that kind of stress.
So we could make incredible changes in the learning
process if we looked at how stress affects
education and I also think we can do it at any age
level; this is not something just for children.
: What is happening here is that
new styles of coping are being taught
and we certainly have the technology
and the information to do that.
I think if we try to make the distinction between
the state of relaxation
as opposed to tension or being stressed
and the process of relaxation a lot of people
say, "Well I'm going to go home and veg out and just relax."
Well by vegging out that's the process of relaxation but
you're not really doing anything very relaxing you're just
kind of sitting watching something.
In fact
you may be sitting watching something that's making you fairly
tense. The state of relaxation
is where the focus ought to be. How do we
get from a state of feeling stressed
to a state of relaxation
and the issue here is to institute things
specifically designed to
help us relax--to help us undo the
tense state we're in. That can be fairly
--I think--simply looked at and
accomplished.
Deepak: Thinking is so connected with
whom I consider myself to be. If I'm thinking well
the rewards are obvious; projects go well, people
think well of me, and I think well of myself. But
if I'm not really thinking well the costs really aren't
that obvious at all; who's to say that a project could go
better. Now I know that stress affects my thinking;
is there a way that we can become more aware of the effects
of stress on our thinking?
Eli: Well you know when we're
thinking well we see it as a personal
strength; when we're not thinking well we see it as a personal weakness.
And we often don't want to admit to ourselves that
inability but it's quite interesting to
be aware that stress is not an
event out there--stress is an internal event--and
it really has a dramatic effect on our overall thinking capacities and
let's illustrate that by going to a questionnaire.
Deepak: So I should pick up paper and pencil now?
Eli: Please and
we'll mark these questions with a yes or a no.
Don't be concerned if you don't have pencil or paper
handy just pay attention to the issues
because I think you're going to be surprised.
If I can just draw your attention to the first question:
"Do you have difficulty concentrating?"
You find you sit down to read something in the evening
and you read it three or four times before it sinks in,
you find other thoughts impinging.
You just can't have the
focus, the concentration; now many people see that as a personal
weakness and really don't even connect it in any way with
stress and yet poor concentration is
really very much directly related to high stress levels.
Next question: "Do you find yourself daydreaming
at inappropriate times?" Yes or no?
Do you find that your boss is talking to your and your mind is
wandered off to somewhere else? You want to avoid
difficult or unpleasant situations by letting
the mind wander off? Do you find that happening more and more
frequently? Yes or no?
Next question: "Do you experience
racing thoughts?" You get into bed and your mind
races away or you find throughout the course of the day you
just can't stop the constant ever present flow of thoughts.
Yes or no?
Next question: "Do your friends and colleagues
complain that you seem preoccupied?" Do you find
yourself worrying about the same nagging issues; your mind just
doesn't seem to shut off? You come home after work
and your wife and children are talking to you, you don't hear them
because you are preoccupied carrying on the activities of the
day. Yes or no?
Next question:
"Do you sometimes have difficulty making
decisions?" Yes or no?
Do you have fears of making decisions
--coming to choices? The mind has so many factors
are flowing around inside your head that you just really can't
stop and make the decision; yes or no?
Next question: "Is your memory
not as good as it should be?" Have you always prided yourself
in having a really good memory and suddenly finding that it's not there for
you? You keep forgetting names, faces, telephone numbers,
you're forgetting messages to call,
you're forgetting to pick things up on the way home from
work; are you finding that's happening more and more readily? A lot of
people don't seem to recognize that there is a direct
relationship between memory and stress.
Deepak: Eli these questions are quite
subjective and I'm not sure how to score myself on this one.
I have bouts of poor memory but not very
often; how should I rate myself?
Eli: Well yeah it's a subjective response; you might find it
helpful if you sort of took the perspective of a coworker
or a spouse and how would they rate you on
this test; does that help?
Deepak: Yeah.
Eli: Next question: "Do you frequently make poor
judgments?" Judgment has a lot to do with
intuition or gut feelings which are aspects of the brain
that are governed by the right hemisphere--the creative
intuitive side. When we're under stress
--when we are in a survival mode and feeling defensive
and threatened--our thinking tends to be dominated by the
left side of the brain; the logical, analytically, rational
side. As a result we're not in
balance; we tend to not be able to access the
full range of mental capacities. We tend to really
ram things through.
Next
question: "Do you have difficulty
falling asleep?" Do you find that you toss and you turn
and it takes you an hour, half an hour, three quarters of
an hour, an hour and a half to fall asleep every night? Do you find you wake
up several times in the course of the evening? Yes or no?
"Do you believe that things usually turn out
for the worst?" Yes or no?
Do you find yourself feeling
pessimistic, fearful a great deal of the time?
A lot of people don't realize that stress is
really very much an aspect of a fear state and if you're locked into
chronic stress it tends to have an affect on your overall
judgments and your attitudes and people tend to
become more pessimistic.
Next question:
"When you have too many things on your mind
do you often feel confused?
Yes or no? Under stress
you often find you can't organize things in your mind.
Everything is a clutter. When you're under stress
you often feel that you're in a corner; you find
that under stress your
senses become more heightened but your ability to think is more
diminished. Next question: "Do you have
difficulty finding solutions to problems?" Yes
or no? Are you just finding you're not as
creative as you'd like to be? When you're under stress
you tend to be more locked into the analytical
rational way of thinking and your creative intuitive side
is diminished.
So without question
stress tends to be a major impediment
to creativity. Next question:
"Do you have trouble absorbing new information
quickly?" You find when you're under stress you have a hard time listening,
focusing, finding your memory isn't what it should be.
In fact whole systems of accelerated learning have been
developed to use relaxation as the foundation
to help people learn more effectively. Research
is really quite clear in showing
the more stress you have the more it impedes
ones memory, focus, and concentration,
Next question: "Do negative emotions
such as anger and frustration frequently inhibit
your ability to think clearly?" Yes or
no?
The late Dr. Hans Selye
the father of the concept of modern stress discovered
that every time we experience a negative emotion--anger,
fear, hostility--it tends to set off
adrenaline in the bloodstream--what sets off the body's
stress mechanisms. So the more negative emotions
you have the more stress you're likely to experience and stress
impedes effective thinking.
The last question: "Do you have a problem
focusing your attention on one thing for a long period of
time?" Do you have a low attention span?
Are you impatient, do you have trouble concentrating; yes
or no?
Deepak: I had no problem in scoring this
test. I had a lot of yeses and
probably my wife would throw in a few more too but
I found it to be particularly interesting because this
questionnaire is the first one that really spoke to
me. I had an awful lot of yeses.
Eli: Well again the more yeses you have the more
it's an implication--a sign--that
stress is playing a significant role
in impairing your overall thinking capabilities.
So I would just want to highlight that for you. Now
I'm glad you found a test that spoke to you and
that's why in each of these programs we're offering
a different questionnaire to look at different aspects
of stress--different causes--
so that people will find at least one entry point for
them to appreciate the extent of how stress is
affecting them.
Deepak: What you seem to be saying is that
I can actually do
something about what
I thought was a personal weakness.
Eli: Yes and
again the proof is in the pudding. You do
it--I don't promise that after a few weeks of
working with relaxation you're going to develop a photographic
memory (although I'm not precluding that)--I'm saying
though that generally research has quite clearly
demonstrated that concentration
memory--just overall thinking functions--are
enhanced by working with relaxation.
Deepak: And what kinds of things are we going to do this time?
Eli: Well get comfortable in your chair. Sit up straight.
For those of you at home
you get much more out of this program by actually doing the exercise with us rather
than just watching; so follow along with us.
Close your eyes.
We are going to start by taking a deep breath. Inhale through
your nose filling your lungs. Take a deep
breath, hold it for a moment. Imagine the number
three and then as you breathe out
let your whole body relax. Just let go of all the
tightness, all the tension; it's a letting go.
Let's do that again.
Take another
deep breath,
hold it for a moment, imagine the number
three and then as you breathe out just
let go of all the tightness, all the tensions. Relax your facial
muscles, your jaw, your neck and
shoulders, arms, hands,
stomach. Now take another deep
breath, hold it,
imagine the number two,
and then as you breath out just allow your mind to
relax; let your mind become clear and calm,
peaceful, tranquil,
serene. Let's do that again. Take
a deep breath,
hold it, imagine the number two,
and as you breathe out
just allow your mind to relax. Let your mind become
clear and calm. Imagine if you will a blank screen in front of your
eyes.
Take another deep breath,
inhale, hold it, imagine
the number one and then
as you breath out just let go. Let your emotions
relax and just allow yourself to dissolve into a nice
comfortable, warm pleasant state
of relaxation; it's just a letting go.
I'm now going to count from ten
down to one and as the numbers descend by
one just allow yourself--permit yourself--to become twice
as relaxed as you were at the previous number so when you get to
the number one you will be more relaxed than you've ever been.
So
imagine now the number ten and just let
go and just allow yourself to become twice as relaxed as we
move down to nine.
Then twice as relaxed again as we move down
to eight. It's just a letting
go of going deeper and deeper into relaxation.
Seven; twice as relaxed again now as
we move down to six. Really letting
go; giving yourself the permission to let go as we move down into
five. Going deeper and deeper into
relaxation; four. Letting go more
and more; three.
Twice as relaxed now as we move down to
two.
And finally as we go down to one you're
going to a deep, healing, pleasant, balanced state of
relaxation; just let go.
Just focus your concentration for a moment into your
chest and mentally locate your
heartbeat.
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Focus your awareness into your thumbs and
see if you can mentally pick up or locate the
pulse in your thumbs.
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Now take a deep breath
and hold it for a
moment and exhale
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and very, very slowly,
little bit by little bit, just slowly, slowly
slowly open your eyes.
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Deepak: I had a little more trouble with this test; my mind kept
wandering and imagining the numbers was difficult.
Eli: Again with all of these
exercises it takes practice. To do it the first time
like this...I mean you now know how to do it
though and I would certainly recommend that as you work with deep
states of relaxation with the home study package and the tapes that
we have you'll start to develop an ever deepening
awareness--a body knowledge--of relaxation
that you'll be able to access very quickly with a method like
the one we just learned.
Deepak: And will this exercise improve
my mental abilities?
Eli: Well this exercise is one of many.
It's a very simple exercise; you'll find at first
it may not but as you practice, as you work with it,
as you go deeper into developing an
ever enhanced body awareness of relaxation
you'll find you'll be able to access it more and more
quickly with techniques like this.
I would recommend that you would find
--if you work with the relaxation--you'll find that the home study package
which involves a series of audio tapes which will guide
you into deep states of relaxation. You'll develop that
body awareness--that body knowledge--and then
with techniques like the one we just learned you'll be able to
go deeply into relaxation really quite quickly just about
anywhere and just about any time.
Deepak: There was a point while I was doing this last
exercise that I was in such a restful state I thought
I was going to fall asleep; is that possible?
Eli: Well it's indeed possible. Although a lot of times people think
they are going to sleep and in fact they are not they are rather going into deep
states of relaxation.
Out of the biofeedback research they discovered there are basically four different
brain wave states that we all experience. When you're driving
when you're working you're producing rapid brain waves called beta
waves but just the very act of closing your eyes
you start to produce bursts of slower brain waves known as
alpha brain waves.
Children are producing predominately
alpha brain waves until the age of about six or
seven and super leaning techniques really involve
alpha brain wave learning. Alpha brain
waves are the predominant brain waves that come
out of the relaxation response. People think
"Wow I was so relaxed I went to sleep." I say hang on; sleep
is characterized by very very slow brain waves known as
delta waves and it's an unconscious
and when you're producing alpha your mind is very
alert and your body is very relaxed. It's as if your body goes to
sleep but your mind becomes hyper alert so that people
for example can be aware of the pulse in their
thumbs.
But as you become more experienced with relaxation
you tend to go into a deeper state that's not quite sleep
and it's not the same kind of mental
alertness; it's a state known as theta brain
waves and people often think they go to sleep. You're not going to sleep but
rather going into that deep state of relaxation. But both alpha
and theta are characteristic of the relaxation
response.
Deepak: These deeper states--the theta and the delta--
how are they useful; can we function?
Eli: Well as function you wouldn't want to work or
drive but the theta state is an extremely creative
state. In fact it has been suggested in some research that
almost all the major scientific breakthroughs occurred
to scientists in the theta state. They may have been working on
problems for years but just as they were waking up in the
morning--you know when you're in that half asleep half alert
state, a revelry state, lot's of images come into the mind--that's
theta brain waves and it seems that many if not most of the
scientific breakthroughs occurred to scientists in that state.
Suddenly the "ah ha" experience just as they are waking
up or just as they are falling off to sleep. For most people though
they achieve this state only haphazardly.
With these techniques you can start to certainly achieve alpha
at will and with a bit of practice be able to access the
theta brain wave state also at will.
Deepak: Once I've learned to access them what part will they play in my daily
life when I'm not in the theta or alpha state?
Eli: Well I mean when you go into the healing states
you feel the benefits for hours. I recommend to people
that fifteen to twenty minutes
a day of deep relaxation will stand you in good stead for
the whole day.
Deepak: Will I get better at it; will I be
able to access these states faster?
Eli: Oh yeah but with
practice; it's not a pill it's a skill.
Deepak: Thanks very much Eli.
Eli: A pleasure.
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Program Length: 26:50 min
About the Program:
Program 6 Thinking Better, shows how relaxation can help you break out of a cycle in which thought can create stress, and stress can interfere with thinking processes such as learning, memory and problem solving.