#herbert benson

How to deal with IT and programming stress

How to deal with IT and programming stress

Cover of The Relaxation Response

This week, I came across two interesting topics on stress.  But they involved stress in the IT and programming world.

I quit! 10 things that drove me out of IT

The Stress Of Being A Computer Programmer Is Literally Driving Many Of Them Crazy Driving them crazy

 In the IT article, the author says this: “This is the…

Originally published in 1975, Herbert Benson, M.D.’s “The Relaxation Response” and its various reprints have sold millions. Benson and his colleague had studied the Tibetan monks and their meditation practices, observing great feats, including: “Monks dressed in nothing but small loincloths, were draped in wet sheets while exposed to near freezing temperatures…within minutes, the body temperatures they produced steamed and dried the wet, cold sheets (30).” The Relaxation Response is the first of the ‘two-step process’ that causes this phenomenon. The second is to visualize your desired outcome once you’ve cleared your mind.

The Relaxation Response asks of four conditions, but only the middle two are crucial to eliciting the response. As stated in the book, one needs: “1. A quiet environment. 2. A mental device – a sound, word, phrase or prayer repeated silently or aloud, or a fixed gaze at an object. 3. A passive attitude – not worrying about how well one is performing the technique and simply putting aside distracting thoughts to return to one’s focus. 4. A comfortable position (11).” For ten to twenty minutes, once or twice daily, two hours before or after a meal, one should get comfortable, breathe slowly, relax his muscles, and focus on the mental device. After completion, one should sit for a few minutes after to return back to normal before standing. If any thoughts invade, regard them passively without worry that the process is being done wrong and return to focus (173).it should be done at a time and place that the participant feels they will reap the most benefits, whether that is at home, between class, or on the train to work (177). Using the response to fall asleep will not reap the benefits, however, because sleeping is different from relaxing (175).

The Relaxation Response is as innate in all of us as the fight-or-flight response. As a matter of fact, it evolved to help heal the body from the symptoms of fight-or-flight (56). The fight-or-flight response increases blood pressure and heart rate as a response to the rush of adrenaline in order to prepare the body for either outcome. While it is helpful in the Animal Kingdom, humans should not be using it as frequently. On the contrary, any stressful situation we find ourselves in initiates the reaction (55). For some, this means they are almost constantly in a fight-or-flight state, with elevated breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate – and it is killing them. Over 50% of American deaths are related to high blood pressure, and children are experiencing high blood pressure related diseases at younger ages than our parents (50-51). The Relaxation Response lowers heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing (56). This is the most natural and possibly most effective cure to high blood pressure. No matter the mental device, the body still slows its rate of breathing when the Relaxation Response is being performed (172). The body’s psychology and physiology both change for the better when this Response is practiced. In an age of immense stress and more medications than we can count, the Relaxation Response uses our instincts to fight our instincts. It is free medicine.