What Is The Relaxation Response, And How Can It Help Ease Stress?

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Question: What is the relaxation response, and how can it help ease stress?

Answer:The relaxation response is a way of activating a part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the opposite of the sympathetic nervous system, which is that "fight-or-flight" response. When that's activated, we're ready to fight or flee. When we're more relaxed, the opposite, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated.

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Now, in the Western life, we're constantly overactivating the sympathetic nervous system. It's kind of like being on the starting line of a race and you're all pumped up ready for the gun to go off, but the gun never goes off and that process continues. And that can have a negative influence on our health because our immune system actually works better when we're more relaxed.

So, a simple way to stimulate that relaxation response is just to do some slow, deep breathing. That's, by far, one of the best ways because when you do a deep, abdominal belly breath that stimulates the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve is one of the main stimulators of this relaxation response. Our body does it naturally when we take a deep sigh. It's trying to tell us something. Now, if we can take 10 or 20 deep sighs a day with intention to help relax the body, that's a great way to stimulate the relaxation response.