Relaxation is always essential to support mind-body balance and especially for cancer patients and cancer caregivers. Relax and rest to bring your physical body calm and restorative space for healing. Balance your activity with passivity. A passive state is not lazy or selfish. Rest supports alignment and attunement to your body, mind, and spirit. Self-care through relaxation is a necessity. Give yourself space.
How does relaxation impact health and healing?
Relaxation is not an option, but a requirement. Relaxing and resting stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system to restore and repair your physical body. Pressing your pause button will help you reset your system. Relaxation techniques help create an inner balance of body, mind, and spirit helping people find their center. In a relaxed state, you have better clarity, make better decisions, and take better care of yourself.
What are some relaxation techniques?
Use relaxation techniques in many ways. The goal is for you to find techniques that give you the deepest level of relaxation. Optimal forms of relaxation may change based on your needs and life circumstances.
Breathing
Balanced, deep, rhythmic inhales and exhales help regulate and relax all of the functions in your body. Focusing on breathing moves people into a more relaxed state.
Quiet Time, Silence, and Stillness
Quiet time with soothing music, silence, a cup of tea, bath, reading a book, exercising, and engaging what you love invites balance. Noise and busyness can be stressful. Many people move from one activity to the next without pausing to connect with themselves and life. Give yourself the space of silence and stillness to relax and restore.
Sleep
A restful and deep sleep is absolutely necessary for relaxation. Sleep supports health and healing through cancer in many ways.
Exercise and Movement
Exercise and movement provide relaxation to body, mind, and spirit. Another movement technique that may help you relax is to tighten muscles throughout your body and then release the tension.
Do what you Love
Shift your focus. Move your attention in a lighter direction. Do what brings you joy.
Meditation
Meditation is a combination of relaxation and self-awareness bringing people calm and relief during times of stress. Devote time to sit quietly and be with yourself. Breathe deeply and relax your body. Feel roots from the ground helping to support you.
Spirituality
Spiritual reflection and connection can bring deep relaxation.
Essential Oils
Use essential oils such as lavender through aromatherapy to bring calm and relaxation.
Emotions
Zest, joy, coping styles, and emotional expression can help people relax.
Beliefs
Habits of mind are powerful constructs. The mind brings people to a heaven or hell. Beliefs unconsciously drive our decisions, attitudes, feelings, coping patterns, life choices, and more. Learn how to relax through healthier beliefs.
Imagery
Mental images can either create or prevent relaxation. Learn more about how to use imagery to support a relaxed mind-body.
Nutrition
Healthy foods support wellness and relaxation. Unhealthy food choices create havoc in the entire body. Learn what to eat and what not to eat.
How do you relax?
Reflect on the ways in which you relax. What brings you calm? What brings you stress? Learn more about stress and strategies to reduce it.
If you rarely relax, you are not alone. Many cultures today are overwhelmed with activity. The busyness is a huge distraction from our natural state that supports health and harmony. Slowing down, resting, and following your flow supports health and healing. What is crowded versus spacious in your life? Move into empty space.
What are some specific health benefits of relaxation techniques in general and for people with cancer?
“Physiologically, relaxation means a reduction in the sympathetic nervous system excitation that marks the fight-or-flight response and a decrease in the level of stress. According to almost 40 years of research, much of it done by Herbert Benson and his colleagues at the Mind-Body Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School, relaxation can be powerful medicine. A small quantity can produce significant levels. Relaxing 15 to 20 minutes, twice a day, can lower levels of adrenaline and cortisol; decrease blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration; enhance immune functioning; and balance the activity in the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
Regular relaxation has yielded impressive results for people who have cancer: decreased levels of stress and increased immune functioning; decreased pain; fewer side effects from chemotherapy; and decreased anxiety, improved mood, and less suppression of emotions. Generally speaking, brief use of relaxation has only short-term effects, whereas ongoing practice throughout and beyond the course of conventional treatment is likely to produce more lasting benefits.”
-James S. Gordon, MD, Mind-Body Medicine and Cancer, Integrative Medicine in Oncology, Hematology/Oncology Clinics of North America
For More Information
- Center for Mind-Body Medicine
- Comprehensive Cancer Care: Integrating Alternative, Complementary, and Conventional Therapies by James S. Gordon, MD
- Integrative Oncology by Donald Abrams, MD and Andy Weil, MD
- Preventive Medicine Research Institute
- The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better, Live Longer, Lose Weight, and Gain Health by Dean Ornish, MD
“Relaxation techniques utilizing abdominal breathing, muscle relaxation, autogenic suggestions, and simple imagery are the most widely used, easily learned, and generally useful mind-body techniques. Because stress is such a common experience in cancer, reducing it through regular relaxation practice allows a patient to interrupt obsessive worry, regain some sense of control, and create periods of respite from the ongoing challenges of cancer and its treatment.”
-Martin L. Rossman, MD and Dean Shrock, PhD, Mind-Body Medicine in Integrative Cancer Care chapter, Integrative Oncology
