Once you decide that the situation is no longer in danger, your brain stops sending emergency signals to your brain stem, which in turn stops sending panic messages to your nervous system.  Three minutes after this is activated, your stress response burns out.  The parasympathetic nervous system is activated and your metabolism, heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension and blood pressure, all return to normal levels and homeostasis is achieved.

In the late 1960's, working in the same room in which Harvard Medical School's Walter Cannon had worked 60 years earlier, Mind/Body Medical Institute, President Herbert Benson, M.D., found that there was a counterbalancing mechanism to the fight-or-flight response. Just as stimulating an area of the hypothalamus can cause the stress response, so activating other areas of the brain results in its reduction.
The relaxation response is a physical state of deep rest that changes the physical and emotional responses to stress (e.g., decrease in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension). There are several ways in which to illicit the relaxation response.  To view Herbert Bensons simple six step approach, watch the Flash presentation.

Other techniques to elicit the relaxation response are:

• Progressive Muscle Relaxation- The PMR procedure teaches you to relax your muscles through a two-step process. First you deliberately apply tension to certain muscle groups, and then you stop the tension and turn your attention to noticing how the muscles relax as the tension flows away. Through repetitive practice you quickly learn to recognize—and distinguish—the associated feelings of a tensed muscle and a completely relaxed muscle. With this simple knowledge, you can then induce physical muscular relaxation at the first signs of the tension that accompanies anxiety. And with physical relaxation comes mental calmness—in any situation.  UP
• Autogenic Training- Requires considerable time and discipline to learn, has more far-reaching benefits than simple muscle relaxation.  Autogenic training teaches you to create a feeling of warmth and heaviness throughout your body, thereby experiencing a profound state of physical relaxation, bodily health, and mental peace.
• Diaphragmatic Breathing-  A simple breathing technique that we all should learn. Click on the link.
• Imaging/Visualization-  Just as your thoughts and imagination can induce the stress response, so too can it reverse it.  By imagining you are in a safe and secure place you can significantly reduce stress.
• Meditation-  The practice of uncritically attempting to focus your attention on one thing at a time. (Martha Davis 1996).
• Exercise-  Perhaps the simplest, best way to turn down the activity of our fight or flight response is by physical exercise. Remember that the natural conclusion of fight or flight is vigorous physical activity. When we exercise, we metabolize excessive stress hormones—restoring our body and mind to a calmer, more relaxed state.

Research has indicated that some precaution should be taken when considering relaxation techniques and their respective appropriate uses. Some side effects can occur. 

• Clients who suffer from affective or thought-disturbance psychosis, or use nonpsychotic fantasy excessively, relaxation may in fact exacerbate these symptoms.
• Clients who are on medication like insulin, sedatives/hypnotics, or cardiovascular should be carefully monitored.
• Clients struggling with panic states would better be suited with a more concrete relaxation paradigm.  The very nature of panic creates a diffuse, free-floating worry,  loss of control and insecurity and some abstract relaxation approaches.
• The emergence of repressed material.
• Lowering blood pressure may produce dizziness and headaches.
• Decrease in blood sugar levels may follow deep relaxation.
• Fatigue

Detailed use of these techniques and others are beyond the scope of this training. We encourage additional training to become proficient users of these types of relaxation techniques.  We recommend the Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook as part of your resource list.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

The Relaxation Response- Diaphragmatic Breathing

There are two ways to breathe.

Most people breathe in a slightly abnormal fashion. They tend to hold in their stomach, make little use of the diaphragm, and breathe using the muscles of the upper chest, neck, and shoulders. This style of breathing becomes automatic, and the body adjusts volume and rate as it does in diaphragmatic breathing.

Thoracic or chest breathing depends on the more rigid system of muscle action in the neck, chest, and shoulder area. This means that the lungs are given less room to expand or contract and that the body must work harder. As breath volume is lowered, breathing must be speeded up in order for the body to maintain its chemical balance.

Now consider when the body is going through a stress reaction and there becomes a greater need for oxygen. Chest breathing becomes hard work with less productivity.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

The diaphragm should be the main muscle of breathing, because its location in the body gives it the most room to move in a piston-like fashion. Below it are the soft organs and the belly, which can expand outward when a deep breath is needed. Above the diaphragm are the lungs, which are also soft and pliable. Other parts of the body also assist in breathing. If you tighten and pull in your stomach, you push more air out of your lungs, because you put pressure on the underside of the diaphragm-piston. If you let your stomach pooch out, the diaphragm has more room to move down into the area of the soft organs and you take in more air.

But the muscles between the ribs all up and down the chest, especially those between the more flexible lower ribs, can also work to make the rib cage bigger. Air comes in, again because there is more space to fill. Even the muscles of the neck, shoulders, and upper back assist in the breathing process. More oxygen, less effort.

The relaxation response undoes what stress has been doing to you. The relaxation response brings about decreased muscle tension, lowered heart rate and blood pressure, a deeper breathing pattern, calming of the belly, and a peaceful, pleasant mood. The problem we face in managing stress is that the stress reaction is more easily elicited than the relaxation response. The stress reaction happens immediately without any effort on your part. A loud noise at this moment would startle you, and the stress reaction would speed through your body. A stress reaction happens automatically while the relaxation response must be purposefully sought and brought under control. While the relaxation response will occur naturally as when you sit on the beach watching the ocean; hectic modern society does not give us many chances for such natural elicitation. To control our stress we must engage in an intentional practice of creating the relaxation response.

 Technique of Diaphragmatic Breathing:

This technique consists of taking three slow breaths to slow things down. Count silently and slowly to three when you breathe in (through your nose); and push your stomach out rather than your chest.  This allows you to breathe with your diaphragm and to get a deeper breath. Breathe out on a slow count of six - through your mouth.

The rhythm goes like this:

Breathe in
........1............2............3

Breathe out
........1............2............3.............4.............5...........6

Repeat two more times

Be sure that you pace your breath so that you have some breath left by the time you get to six.  If you feel light-headed, then just slow it down a bit.

Practice this several times each day and you will then have it available in a stressful situation.  This simple technique can slow and even stop the fight-or-flight response.

Conclusion

This ends the overview of stress, its sources, types, and physiological reactions to stress.  The purpose of this overview is to increase your awareness and sensitivity to stress. As you continue, you will to learn that much of this work is about managing stress reactions.  Onsite  work requires a sound understand of the fight/flight/freeze response but even if this did not happen there are or have been elevated stress levels.  Likewise, traumatic stress left unattended to can lead to significant impairment physically and psychologically. Early intervention including pre-event training, response, and appropriate crisis intervention strategies will help mitigate the effects of traumatic stress.