Todays relaxation response technique is technically called Autogenic Training. It’s a technique that is credited to Dr. Johannes Schultz and was popularized in the 90’s by Dr. Herbert Benson’s book - The Relaxation Response and has to do with the power of verbal suggestion. Now these verbal suggestions called orientations, can be thought of as a type of self hypnosis. This is different than an affirmation because we are going to take the verbal suggestions into the body to help it relax, not just repeat something in our minds. Once you’ve used this phrase though and effectively calmed your body down, you should be able to pull it out in a pinch and repeat it silently to yourself and have some of the same effect. It's perfect to use when your heart is racing before a doctors appointment or during the two week wait when you find yourself extra anxious. When you use autogenic training, you are essentially bypassing your conscious mind in order to instruct your body to relax via your subconscious mind. Autogenic Training sounds so formal and stuffy though- so I decided to rename it today to verbal suggestions so you can calm the frick down.

Today's episode is brought to you by, Pregnancy Brain, by Parijat Deshpande. You can find it anywhere books are sold or at pregnancybrainbook.com.