This week's episode is another practice. This time it's a follow along repeating sentence relaxation + repetition practice called Autogenic Training. I'm reading to you a script I discovered in a great overview document from the VA. I also share the research about this practice showing that it's a very effective self led activity to help with pain + fear reduction. Which of course are the two main issues with neuroplastic pain.
This week's episode is another practice. This time it's a follow along repeating sentence relaxation + repetition practice called Autogenic Training.
I'm reading to you a script I discovered in a great overview document from the VA.
I also share the research about this practice showing that it's a very effective self led activity to help with pain + fear reduction. Which of course are the two main issues with neuroplastic pain.
Here's the PDF from the VA -
https://www.va.gov/WHOLEHEALTHLIBRARY/docs/Autogenic-Training.pdf
[00:00:00] Welcome to the curiosity cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker, hypnotist trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder fat human on planet earth here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame, free curiosity.
[00:00:29] So you can feel more better. More of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live. A quick disclaimer. This podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:57] Hello, my feelers and healers. On today's podcast. I am going to lead you through a practice called autogenic training, and I'll tell you more about it afterwards. And I am, I guess I'm cheating. I don't know. I'm not making it up myself. I'm going to read to you from the VA, their office of patient centered care. And autogenic training has been a practice that has been used for a long time and it is very, very effective. It's about getting you into a deep state of relaxation, exercises that focus on six physical manifestations of relaxation in the body.
[00:01:42] So to help develop relaxation during your autogenic training time, please make yourself comfortable so that you can relax. and feel supported. Take precautions to ensure that you will not be disturbed during this training so that you can concentrate on your experience. It is recommended that you keep your eyes closed and wear loose clothing.
[00:02:06] Repeat each phrase That I will share with you four times as a general rule, saying it slowly and silently to yourself. Try and maintain passive concentration and a relaxed pace. Take about five seconds to make the self statement, and then pause for three seconds before beginning the next statement.
[00:02:31] Some individuals find that it is helpful to tape record the autogenic sequence, which is what I'm doing here, and others practice each set one at a time until they have memorized the entire sequence. You may also create your own autogenic phrases. Practice at least once a day. It can be helpful to practice at bedtime.
[00:02:55] You may find that using some of the last few sets, you can achieve a pleasant and calm autogenic state under any circumstances. Use a breathing warm up before every autogenic training practice session. You can do this by starting with a few minutes of slow breathing.
[00:03:15] Breathe in and try to lengthen the out breath to be longer than the in breath. Find and maintain a rhythmic breathing pattern that feels comfortable to you. Do this for several minutes before transitioning to the autogenic phrases. If you say the phrase and don't actually feel the results of what you're saying, take time to repeat the phrase.
[00:03:41] It may take some time before the effects begin to manifest. So what they're saying is be patient and in your patience, Be curious.
[00:03:51] So the first set is called Heavy. I'm going to say it four times. My right arm is heavy. My right arm is heavy. My right arm is heavy. My right arm is heavy.
[00:04:14] My left arm is heavy. My left arm is heavy. My left arm is heavy. My left arm is heavy.
[00:04:36] Of my arms are heavy. Both of my arms are heavy.
[00:04:47] Both of my arms are heavy.
[00:04:53] Both of my arms are heavy.
[00:05:00] My right leg is heavy. My right leg is heavy. My right leg is heavy. My right leg is heavy. My left leg is heavy. My left leg is heavy. My left leg is heavy. My left leg is heavy. Both my legs are heavy. Both my legs are heavy. Both my legs are heavy. Both my legs are heavy.
[00:06:04] My arms and my legs are heavy. My arms and my legs are heavy. My arms and my legs. are heavy. My arms and my legs are heavy.
[00:06:30] Set 2 warmth. My right arm is warm. My right arm is warm.
[00:06:46] My right arm is warm.
[00:06:53] My right arm is warm.
[00:06:59] My left arm is warm. My left arm is warm. Is warm. My left arm is warm. My left arm is warm. Both of my arms are warm. Both of my arms are warm. Both of my arms are warm. Both of my arms are warm. My right leg. Is warm. My right leg is warm. My right leg is warm. My right leg is warm.
[00:08:01] My left leg is warm. My left leg is warm. My left leg is warm. My left leg is warm. Both of my legs are warm, both of my legs. Are warm. Both of my legs are warm. Both of my legs are warm. My arms and my legs are warm. My arms and my legs are warm. My arms and my legs are warm. My arms and my legs. warm.
[00:09:03] Set 3. A calm heart. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm. My heart feels warm and pleasant.
[00:10:14] My heart feels warm and pleasant. My heart feels warm and pleasant. My heart feels warm and pleasant.
[00:10:30] My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular.
[00:10:52] Set 4.
[00:10:57] My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My arms and legs feel heavy and warm. My arms and legs feel heavy and warm. Are heavy and warm.
[00:11:45] My arms and legs are heavy and warm. My arms and legs are heavy and warm. I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm.
[00:12:11] My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me set five stomach. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm.
[00:13:02] My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My arms and my legs are heavy and warm. My arms and my legs Are heavy and warm. My arms and my legs are heavy and warm. My arms and my legs are heavy and warm.
[00:13:50] I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm.
[00:14:04] My heart. Feels calm and regular. My heart feels calm and regular. My heart feels calm and regular. My heart feels calm and regular. My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me. My stomach is soft and warm. My stomach is soft and warm. My stomach is soft and warm.
[00:14:57] My stomach is soft and warm.
[00:15:03] Set 5, cool forehead. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My arms are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My arms and legs are heavy and warm.
[00:15:48] My arms and legs are heavy and warm. My arms and legs are heavy and warm. My arms and legs are heavy and warm. I feel calm and I feel calm. I feel calm, and I feel calm. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My breathing breathes me.
[00:16:44] My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me. My breathing breathes me. My stomach is soft and warm. My stomach is soft and warm. My stomach is soft and warm. My stomach is soft and warm. My forehead is cool. My forehead is cool. My forehead is cool. My forehead is cool. Formula for calming the mind. I am calm.
[00:17:43] I am calm and relaxed. I am calm and relaxed. I am calm and relaxed. I feel quite quiet. I feel quite quiet. I feel quite quiet. I feel quite quiet. I feel quiet, relaxed, and comfortable. I feel quiet. relaxed and comfortable. I feel quiet, relaxed, and comfortable. I feel quiet, relaxed, and comfortable. My mind is quiet.
[00:18:43] My mind is quiet. My mind is quiet. My mind is quiet. I am at peace. I am at peace. I am at peace. I am at peace.
[00:19:10] I feel an inward quietness. I feel an inward quietness. I feel an inward quietness. I feel an inward quietness. I am at ease. I am at ease. I am at ease. I am at ease. My mind is serene and still. My mind is serene and still. My mind is serene and still. My mind is serene and still.
[00:20:09] That's the end of our autogenic training practice.
[00:20:13] And it's been found to be effective in the treatment of anxiety, mild to moderate depression, functional sleep disorders. According to the research regular practice of autogenic training has been found to reduce the frequency of migraine headaches and to be useful in the treatment of IBS by enhancing self control.
[00:20:36] A systematic review of six randomized controlled trials found that five of the six studies examined demonstrated statistically significant reduction in headache by autogenic training only or by biofeedback assisted autogenic training for adults 19 and older. Another meta analysis of 21 studies found autogenic training to be effective for adults stress management, decreasing anxiety and depression, and increasing the high frequency of heart rate variability.
[00:21:15] It can also be used as an important adjunct in reducing symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease. Autogenic training appears to be a promising therapy to improve psychological well being and quality of life in people living with chronic physical health problems.
[00:21:33] And then one of the researchers found that patients receiving both autogenic training and cognitive therapy for treatment of moderate depression showed the best outcome at follow up. And so some of this practice reminds me a little bit of the open focus in that we are kind of sinking in to this practiced thought, this phrase that we're practicing.
[00:22:01] And in some ways, as you practice it more and more, like I, as I was reading this, I kind of tranced myself. And I felt very relaxed. I had to kind of like hold myself upright so I could talk into the mic. And they build up weekly. So anything that we do and we practice more often becomes automated. And so the first thing I want to say about that is, you may not feel anything the first time you do it, you may not feel warmth or heaviness or emotional calm and that is okay. So sometimes the very best we can do is just imagine those things. And practice, because as we practice more often, we're teaching the brain what to experience. Autogenic training involves learning specific phrases that are repeated several times as silent thoughts.
[00:22:58] So you're just repeating them inside your head. So you can listen to the recording and just repeat it to yourself, or you can have your own phrases. And they're performed in a detached way to encourage the body to produce a relaxed feeling of warmth, heaviness, and emotional calm. And the core of autogenic training is this standard of exercises that focuses on six physical manifestations of relaxation in the body.
[00:23:27] So, as to recap, one is heaviness in the musculoskeletal system, that's when we're saying you're feeling heavy in your arms and your legs, warmth in the circulatory system, awareness of the heartbeat, slowing down the breath, relaxing the abdomen, and cooling the forehand. And as you're doing this, what you may notice is The more you do it, the more different parts of your body will just automatically invite in relaxation.
[00:23:58] Autogenic means self generating or produced from within. And I want to say that we're autogenically training ourselves in a lot of different ways. If we are creating the experience of high arousal, fear, and panic, that is also a form of autogenic training. And that's our subconscious, and we're repeating these patterns over and over and over again.
[00:24:27] And without interrupting those patterns, they are just going to be automated. So this practice of autogenic training when you ,are self generating and producing from within this new content, reflecting the ability to self produce a relaxed feeling of warmth and heaviness throughout your body by saying various verbal phrases aimed at encouraging a state of physical relaxation and emotional calm.
[00:25:00] This is essentially a form of self hypnosis, this is just self hypnosis geared towards Increasing relaxation and restoring balance in the body because the brain is kind of getting the temperature check of the body. The brain is in charge of everything, and if we are kind of revving, like, say we're a car, and we're always, Hitting the gas and revving at this very high state, then the needs of that car are going to be very specific and it's gonna burn a lot of oil.
[00:25:35] It's gonna burn fuel. And if you're always constantly like hitting the gas and then hitting the brake and hitting the gas and then hitting the brake, there's gonna be a lot more wear and tear on that car. And the same thing happens in our bodies. with our nervous system and our hormones. And so the brain is the one kind of determining what we need.
[00:25:59] And so if we're helping the brain out by creating this felt sense of calm, if we're generating a relaxed feeling of warmth and heaviness, then the brain is actually having to do less work to create a sense of homeostasis.
[00:26:17] Exercises are built up weekly in sequential order, starting with relaxing the peripheral extremities. And so peripheral means, not the trunk, right? So your arms and your legs are peripheral extremities. You can start with just doing that first, relaxing the, and feeling the heaviness in your musculoskeletal system, and then adding in warmth in your circulatory system. And that's going to add this kind of quality of attending to your heart. And if you are a visual person, you could even bring in visual cues.
[00:26:55] You can imagine, not only are you saying my limbs are heavy, but you can imagine what heaviness looks like, or if you're adding in practicing with your heart, you can even imagine your heart, but keep it simple. And relaxing the respiratory system comes next and is followed by a focus on the visceral organs and the solar plexus area, right, your stomach.
[00:27:22] And when that is calm and relaxed, that's also sending messages to your nervous system that you are safe. Because we have an enteric nervous system that is sensing the world around us. When that part feels relaxed, it is not scanning for threat all the time. It's not holding itself rigid and tight in a fight, flight, or freeze environment readiness and then cooling the forehead. And the nice thing about cooling the forehead before you go to sleep is we need the body to cool down to be able to sleep. So adding that cooling element can be really helpful. And then the final phase, which is feeling overall peace in the mind and body.
[00:28:08] And it's best done when you're sitting or lying in a comfortable position. As that allows your mind and body to switch off the sympathetic flight, fight, freeze response. Or it creates a better environment for that right when we're standing, we're often have some activation so that we don't fall over.
[00:28:29] So if you are sitting someplace, please make sure that it's sitting someplace that feels really safe. You're not in danger of falling over. And if you're noticing things that feel distressing, that are arising. You can just tell your brain, okay, I noticed that, and like, I'll check back in with that later.
[00:28:48] And then when you feel safe and you've come out of the practice, you can revisit that. Maybe sit down and do some journaling and just write out whatever it is that you noticed. The important thing is to meet yourself with gentleness and caring and curiosity and not with harshness or judgment or rebuking.
[00:29:10] You cannot do this activity wrong. And even just listening to it and imagining practicing it is a great way to start because I know sometimes it's hard to follow along things when it's the first time you've heard it. So listen to it once all the way through and then practice it.
[00:29:34] So I was going to talk about feelings and about emotional granularity. And I do want to talk about this, but I think sometimes we think too much. And I wanted to add some just like simple practices that we could just relax into that we don't need to even deeply understand for them to be effective.
[00:29:58] There's sometimes just a benefit to doing something without understanding all the things about it. I mean, I'll include this article. I'll include the PDF. I'll include the research. There is a large body of empirical data related to the psychophysiological model of change in autogenic training.
[00:30:21] A recent meta analysis explored the efficacy of autogenic training on the reduction of chronic pain, the results indicate that autogenic training can be used as an effective relaxation technique and provides pain reduction for individuals suffering from chronic pain when compared to passive and active control groups.
[00:30:44] Autogenic training was found to be as effective in reducing pain as other relaxation interventions, like progressive muscle relaxation or self hypnosis. And you can do this on your own and it was well suited to meet the different preferences of individuals. And I think that's important, which is there's not the right way to do it. There's not one right particular form. There's the way that you do it. So feeling like you have agency, that you have the ability to be creative and imagine for yourself this process to take it into your own hands and create practices for yourself to interrupt what is running on autopilot, which is all of the ways that we're scaring ourselves, which increases symptoms and really cycling through that pain, fear, pain cycle. The most important thing of pain reduction or elimination. It's really finding strategies, both cognitive and somatic, to help support decreasing fear.
[00:31:57] And when we work through fear and when we work through pain, we create a different physiological experience of being in the world. And I want that for you.
[00:32:09] I want that for you because I know that my life is different because I'm a chronic pain coach and I am not afraid in the same way that I used to be afraid. Let me just share this Instagram post that I made because when I started writing it, I was like, is this true?
[00:32:28] And the more that I wrote it, the more true it felt. And I was like, holy shit, I feel like a different person because of this work. So one of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach, I don't panic when pain happens. One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach, I am not panicking about your pain. One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach. My heart keeps growing and softening. One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach. My feelings are my treasured teachers. One of my greatest gifts of being a pain coach. It's led me to deeper connections and awe. One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach. I feel much more joyful about aging.
[00:33:18] One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach. I now believe my body is on my side and loves me and is always protecting me. One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach. It's led me to fun, weird, cool ways to play through hypnosis. One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach connections with doctors, healers, scientists, and clients who are changing our understanding of pain.
[00:33:47] One of the greatest gifts of being a pain coach. It's helping folks just like you. So some of the ways that I help people is one on one coaching. You can also listen to this podcast and all the back episodes and you can sign up on my email list where I send out information. I do a little musical Mondays email about emotions and help you find different ways to connect to a felt sense of safety and ease and who knows what even more I will be creating to share with you. So, you can go to my website, which is the curiositycure. coach, or you can go to my Instagram, which is curiositycure. coach, and you can find my email list that way.
[00:34:35] And if you want to book a curiosity call and talk about what it might be like working together one on one, you'll see in my link tree, a link to book a curiosity call. I'm super excited to talk to you. I'm super excited to hear your story. Thank you very much. Bye.