What is Autogenic Training?

Your words can have an effect on your body. For example: When you say “it’s cold and I’m shivering,” you may actually start trembling, but if you say “It’s cold but I feel warm” you will find yourself doing just fine.

Autogenic training (AT) is a technique that teaches your body to respond to your verbal information. Autogenic training is considered a form of self-hypnosis. These commands help your body relax and control breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, and body temperature. After you learn the method, you can use it whenever you want relief from symptoms of stress, or you can practice it regularly to get the benefit of deep relaxation and prevent the effects of chronic stress.

Autogenic training consists of six exercises that make the body feel warm, heavy, and relaxed. For each exercise, you get into a simple posture (sitting in a comfortable chair or reclining), concentrate without any goal, and then use visual imagination and verbal cues to relax your body in a specific way. You can train yourself in each exercise by reading about it or watching a teacher, and practicing it.

The exercises allow communication to link the mind and the body, allowing you to manipulate body reactions that cannot usually be controlled, such as blood pressure, heartbeat, and body temperature.

AT is a safe, simple drug-free technique that helps to:

• Reduce or manage recurring stress-related symptoms such as sleep problems, anxiety, mild depression, fatigue, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), high blood pressure, and chronic pain
• Increase general confidence and well-being
• Increase energy and creativity
• Improve performance in sport, music, theatre, classroom, and boardroom
• Reduce the likelihood of serious illness in the future

When the results of 60 studies on autogenic training were analyzed, it was found to be beneficial for the following conditions:

anxiety disorders

insomnia

pain disorders

fatigue

hyperventilation

irritability

asthma

irregular heartbeat

irritable bowel syndrome

headache

migraines

racing heart

heart disease

cold hands and feet

thyroid

hypertension

constipation

ulcers