Autogenic Training

It's interesting as Greenberg (2021) explained that autogenic training when it was being developed, also used hypnosis. Greenberg (2021) noted psychiatrist Johannes Schultz discovered that the patients that he had hypnotized, also developed physical sensations such as bodily warmth and heaviness in their limbs or torso. He found that the warmth experienced was related to the dilation of blood vessels and caused an increase in blood flow and the heaviness in session was a result of the muscles relaxing. This type of relaxation is brought on by autogenic training exercises and relaxation techniques so that a person can better manage stress in their lives. It's interesting that the author makes a distinction between meditation and autogenic training by describing that meditation employs the mind to help relax the body, while autogenic training works with the bodily sensations of heaviness and warmth. Hence, the body relaxes and  expands to the mind in which imagery is used for relaxation. In the readings, I realized that there was a distinction also made between meditation and autogenic training in the sense that some people are bored by meditation, and they prefer to use autogenic training as it goes from focusing on a part of a body to using imagery to relax the mind. 

References

Greenberg, J. S. (2021). Comprehensive stress management (15th ed.). McGraw Hill.