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The Ornish program incorporates 1 hour of stress management daily, in these recommended increments:
All you need to get started is a mat or a carpeted floor, and lose clothing. Stretch slowly and gently, do not force. If you feel pain, stop. Hold each stretch only as is comfortable.
The exercises are described on pages 146-162 of the Ornish book. There are also pictures
that make the learning easier. A book on basic yoga will also do. The stretches
recommended are these:
* Head rotations
* Shoulder shrugs
* Resting position
* Back stretch (Cobra Pose)
* Leg lift I (Half Locust Pose)
* Leg lift II (Full Locust Pose)
* Forward stretch I (Head-to-knee Pose)
* Forward stretch II (Forward bending Pose)
* Shoulder stand (full or modified)
* Chest extension (Fish Pose)
* Half spinal twist
* Cross-legged stretch (Yogic Seal)
* 12-part movement (Sun salutation)
Another good system of stretches is described in Dr. Fulford's Touch of Life, by Robert C. Fulford, DO (1996). This is a very interesting book about the practice of osteopathy by an extraordinary doctor. The exercises were designed by him and another doctor with the aim of augmenting the life force (pages 173-184).
"For a moment, think of each muscle as if it were a pendulum. The easiest way to get a pendulum to swing over to one side is by first pulling it to the other. Deep relaxation is a simple yet powerful technique based on this phenomenon. A muscle will relax more profoundly if you first tense it."
Lie on your back and close your eyes. Find a comfortable position. Then begin by tensing body parts in sequence. Start with one feet: breathe in, tense the feet for a few seconds, the relax. Then each leg, then arms, buttocks, belly, torso. Bring the shoulders up to your ears, then relax. Wiggle your head to relax the neck. Then tense the face and relax.
As you lie there, Ornish recommends to just watch feelings and thoughts as they come and go. Focus your awareness on breathing. You can imagine yourself breathing in healing energy.
Changes in your body affect your breathing. When you exercise, you breathe faster and deeper.
Changes in your mind affect your breathing. When you are anxious, your breathing is rapid and shallow.
Changes in your breathing affect your body. When a baseball pitcher winds up to throw, he first takes a deep breath. It helps him perform better.
Changes in your breathing affect your mind. When you are tired, a deep breath can make you more alert. When worried, a few deep breaths can help to calm you down."
Ornish believes that breathing also acts as a bridge between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and will rebalance the two (in chronic stress, the sympathetic side is chronically overstimulated). Breathing also helps to re-energize a person, and this energy can be used in healing. [Deep breathing eventually brings me to one of those big delicious yawns when the whole lungs _really_ fill with air...]
He recommends the following breathing techniques. (Dr Weil recommends a similar technique.)
ABDOMINAL BREATHING: sit or lie with your back straight. Place your left hand on your abdomen, your right hand on the chest. Then breathe deeply via the diaphragm -- let your left hand rise, while the right hand moves only a little.
DEEP BREATHING: Proceed as above. Then, when your belly fills with air, proceed to fill your chest also. On the exhale, reverse the process, letting the chest empty first. Take about twice as long for exhaling as for inhaling.
BELLOWS BREATHING: Using abdominal breathing, exhale fully and inhale fully. Then exhale a small amount of air, and inhale sharply. Do this rapid breathing at about 2 per second. End with a gentle, full exhalation, inhalation, & exhalation.
ALTERNATIVE NOSTRIL BREATHING: Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Exhale fully. Close right nostril with your thumb, inhale slowly through the left nostril. Close left nostril, exhale through the right one. Inhale through the right one, and switch. Continue the pattern.
DR WEIL'S YOGIC BREATHING: Lying with back straight, inhale through the nose at the count of 7, hold at the count of 7, and exhale at the count of 7 through the mouth. Pause briefly, and repeat several times.
"The _concept_ of meditation is very simple. Anyone can do it.
Peace -- and stress -- begin in your mind. Meditation is the process of quieting your mind. When your mind is quiet, you feel peaceful. You lose your sense of separateness and isolation. You may even experience your higher self.
The _practice_ of meditation can be very challenging, though, for it is not very easy to quiet one's own mind. There are many, many ways of calming your mind, both secular and religious. All of them involve increasing your awareness and control over your own mind."
The instructions for learning to meditate are too complicated to describe here. Again, many sources (books and tapes) out there are available, notably the one by Dr Kabat-Zinn. Also, classes are often available locally at ashrams, churches, hospitals, and holistic centers.
Directed visualization is one where a person pictures being in some place, examining the details of that location (looking at colors, hearing the sounds, etc.) and then, when reaching some comfortable and safe spot in this imaginary landscape, picturing some helpful goal regarding the disease. Some people picture their healthy cells killing the cancerous cells. One can imagine dilating the blood and lymph vessels, carrying healing oxygen to the tissues. Or one can "see" the cancerous cells waking up to their proper function, living out their allotted life-span, and dying as they should. Or one can imagine calming an overactive immune system, with the nodes slowing down their activity and shrinking. Each person can invent their own "story."
Receptive visualization involves similar imagery which is however approached with some problem or question in mind. As one moves through the imaginary landscape, one looks for a benevolent being or object that may have some advice to offer. One approaches it with respect and asks if it has any information to communicate; clarifying questions often follow.
"Your mind may think in words, but your body responds to images as though they were happening right now. Try it and see. With your eyes closed, imagine that you are holding in your hand an intensely yellow, plump, juicy, ripe lemon. Imagine now that you are dropping it on a table, and "listen" to the thud it makes. Visualize that you are taking a sharp knife and cutting the lemon in half. Take half of the lemon and bring it up to your nose, scratch the surface with your fingernail. Imagine what it smells like. Finally, visualize you are biting into it. By now, your mouth probably will be salivating as though you really were biting into a ripe lemon.
Your mind talks to your body using such mental images. This dialogue is going on all the time -- sometimes in healing ways, sometimes in harmful ways... Likewise, your conscious and unconscious mind communicate with each other by using imagery. Many professional athletes find visualization to be a powerful tool to enhance their performance. It can produce measurable changes in the body."
Researched and written by Vera Bradova © 1998
Updated 9-10-1998
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