What is autogenic training?

Autogenic training is a skill that will help you tune in to the necessary wave. You can say that this is an ability, through which you can concentrate on the desired object. This skill is very important for people of those professions, when you need maximum concentration: pilots, athletes, artists, doctors before complex operations.

Applying this method, without the help of a psychologist, you get a state of complete relaxation, which in turn will help you survive a difficult or very crucial moment in your life. In addition, it will be easier for you to restore your strength, remove stress or tension, relax without taking a pill, stop the pain or eliminate the feeling of excitement before the exam.

From a scientific point of view, autogenic training is an active psychogenic, psychotherapeutic, psycho-prophylactic method. Its direction is to restore equilibrium in the system of self-regulating homeostatic mechanisms.

At the heart of this direction are elements of autodidactics or self-education, self-hypnosis and muscle relaxation. It is also one of the components of hypnotherapy. Autogenic training has one of the differences from hypnosis in that the patient is actively involved and participates in the therapy process. In the case with the use of hypnosis, he is given a passive role.

German physician Johann Schultz for the first time in 1932 proposed the use of this method as a curative. In Russia, they were only interested in the late 1950s.

The therapeutic effect is achieved through the management of recovery reactions. As a result, the tone in the parasympathetic department of the nervous system rises, which regulates the activity of all internal organs and is responsible for the metabolism that takes place in the body. Autogenic training helps neutralize the stress reactions of the individual.

Some scientists boil down to the view that this technique weakens the activity of the hypothalamic and limbic regions of the brain. According to the classification of I. Schulz, there are two divisions. This is the "lowest" and "highest" degree of autogenic training. In the first case - a set of exercises aimed at self-hypnosis and relaxation. In the second patient enter into a trance of varying depth and intensity. The highest level of autogenic training in Russia was first developed and described by M. Schefet in 2003.

Autogenic training, corresponding to the first, "inferior" classification, includes six steps, which are practiced alternately:

• Exercises that work to relax the muscle tone - or "heaviness";
• Which act in a special way, expanding the vessels of the skin - "heat";
• Normalizing heartbeat - "pulse";
• Produce a uniform and spontaneous breathing system - "breathing";
• Normalization of blood circulation in internal organs - "solar plexus";
• The cessation or easing of headaches is a "cool forehead".

"Switching" is the basic concept that I.Shultz introduced into exercises of the lowest degree. Autogenous training, using this exercise, reduces the activity of the cerebral cortex. This condition is close to the doubt - the first stage of hypnotic sleep.

There are five categories of such training:

1. Is based on an indifferent attitude to the irritating factor - neutralizing (arresting allergic reactions, with diffuse spasm of the esophagus and other problems);
2. Activates the occuring hidden processes of a mental nature (helps with enuresis, etc.);
3. Removes dependence - withdrawal-directed;
4. Paradoxical;
5. The softest - supporting, stimulates the development of only positive qualities of the patient.

These trainings are shown with neurasthenia, neuroses, psychosomatic diseases, functional disorders. They also provide a good result in the treatment of bronchial asthma, angina pectoris, constipation, gastric ulcer.

Positive results with compulsive syndrome, delirium, vegetative crises, somatic attacks were not observed.