Meditation 6 Stress Relief Down to the Cellular Level: Relax Your Muscles

Hello and welcome to the meditation portion of the RxChill Pill Get Resilient podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Juna Bobby MD, a physician specializing in mind-body medicine, and I'm here to bring you your daily dose of the relaxation response. Learning to elicit the relaxation response is extremely helpful in decreasing stress and any stress-related conditions. Relaxation techniques are generally known to be quite safe. However, if you have any medical issues, consult with your physician and be aware that relaxation techniques never replace proper medical care. In certain psychiatric conditions, these relaxation techniques may be contraindicated. Please check with your physician. I'd like to leave you with a little quiet time for reflection at the end, so I'm asking you now to please share subscribe, and download. It would also be really helpful to me if you could leave a positive review. If you use Insight Timer, you can find me as a teacher under Juna Bobby MD. As with all meditation and relaxation audios, please find a safe and comfortable quiet place and do not use while driving or operating a moving vehicle. Welcome to Part 6 and the final part of autogenic training. This is your guide, Dr. Juna Bobby MD, and I'm so glad you're here. Autogenic training, as you know, elicits your relaxation response, the opposite of your stress response. Continue this practice on a daily basis. You're training your parasympathetic relaxation nervous system. Just like you would train for athletics or a musical instrument, we have to continue the practice to keep it alive. So you can always start back at the beginning, part 1, and by now you should have memorized wise parts of this. So each time, perhaps you'll listen only once or twice and continue the practice daily on your own. You can also use the recording as a guide anytime you need to. As you continue your practice, you may find that you can achieve this pleasant and calm state throughout your day whenever you need it. So once again, find a quiet, comfortable, and safe place to sit for the next 9 minutes. So let's begin to focus on our breath. Just close your eyes if you haven't already done so. Just take a deep breath in and exhale. See if on the exhales you can release tension in your neck and shoulders. Just settling in here. Now, without controlling your breath in any way, Just notice the temperature of the air going in to your nose and the temperature going out. Feel your breath moving you, whether it's in your back or your chest or even in your arms. Just notice the slight movement. Of your breath. Again, with the next exhale, release any tension in your neck and shoulder. And silently to yourself, repeat after me 4 times after each phrase. My arms are heavy and warm. My legs are heavy and warm. My arms and legs are heavy and warm. I feel calm. My heartbeat is calm and regular. My breathing breathes me. My stomach is soft and warm. My forehead is cool. That concludes Part 6, the final part of Autogenic Training. I invite you to sit still, for a few more minutes listening to this beautiful music, or you may end the practice here by stretching, taking deep breaths, and knowing that you can always start again from part 1. We have come to the end of our practice. Please take a deep breath in, energizing yourself, coming back to the room. Inhale once again, perhaps stretching your arms overhead, doing some neck rolls and shoulder rolls, whatever you need. Thank you so much for staying on this journey with me. Again, you can start from part 1 whenever you need to. This is a lifelong practice. And the more we elicit our relaxation response, the opposite of our stress response, we are training our brain to understand we'll be able to tap into our parasympathetic nervous system anytime, anywhere that we need to. May you be well and may you be happy.