Psychology Resources Podcast: Recent Episodes
Cristian Torres
In this podcast you will find a range of useful resources designed to assist in enhancing your mental health and wellbeing, and build individual resilience. Some episodes will provide education around specific skills or techniques, how to perform these and why. Other episodes will focus specifically on delivering guided exercises for relaxation, mindfulness, meditations, and so on. This is your one stop shop for your resilience toolbox.
This is the same recorded PMR vocal track as in S01 EP07, with a rain backing track added for those who find the rain relaxing...enjoy.
This is a guided relaxation exercise. It consists of a full 7-muscle, Progressive Muscle Relaxation exercise. We divide the body into 7 muscle groups and alternately tense and relax each muscle group, twice. It is a highly structured and completely guided exercise, progressing systematically through the seven muscle groups, with the listener constantly being reminded of how to tense each muscle group, as well as to breathe using a diaphragmatic breathing technique throughout the entire exercise.
It is important that you tense each muscle when told to do so, and then when the que to relax is given, you should release all tension at once, immediately, to obtain best results.
Initially, for say, the first month of practice, you are encouraged to listen to the full recording, sitting up straight in a chair. You should perform the exercise at least once per day for this first month, with the idea being to boost / increase your resilience over this time. Once you are confident, you may either truncate the exercise by simply working through the exercise steps in your own mind, without the recording, or you may choose to do a shorter (12 mins) version of the exercise - S01 EP03.
Provided you have done your once per day practice of this exercise, you may also use this recording while laying down in bed to aid with sleep onset.
This is a voice only version of the exercise, there are other episodes of the podcast with the same PMR recording, with different background tracks that some people may find soothing, to enhance your relaxation experience. Please explore the different versions and find the one that you find the most relaxing.
A 12 minute, detailed guided mindfulness exercise walking you through awareness of your whole body, little by little, while maintaining focus on your breathe throughout. Focusing on building your mindfulness skills in observing, not changing, and noticing with curiosity. Enjoy.
A quick and simple one-minute break from the world to check in with your breathe and what is going on around you.
A mindfulness exercise guiding you through awareness of your body from your toes to your head. Enjoy.
This is a guided Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) exercise lasting approximately 12 mins. This exercise can be done sitting up straight or lying down, and you should use the diaphragmatic breathing technique (Episode 1) throughout this exercise. Try to make sure that when you release the tension on each muscle group, you do it all at once, quickly. You should aim to practice this PMR exercise once per day for the first 30 days, and thereafter you will develop your own maintenance routine of how frequently you might do this practice. Consistent practice is the key to build resilience. Enjoy !
A guided mindfulness exercise bringing your attention to various parts of your body in turn.
This diaphragmatic breathing (DB) exercise is a guided version of a simple deep breathing exercise designed to instill the relaxation response. There are many versions of deep breathing you can learn, however, this version of the exercise is based on three broad rules of thumb. You want to make sure that you breathe:
1. Deeply: meaning that you try as best you can to keep your chest and shoulders still, while ensuring that your belly rises and falls with each breathe, thereby ensuring that you are using your diaphragm to breathe.
2. Slowly: meaning that you want to breathe is a slow and rhythmic fashion. one way to do this is to count. one example of this is to use a 6 second cycle, which slows your breathing down to 10 breathes per minute. This could take the form of 3 seconds for the in-breathe, and 3 seconds for the out-breathe. Alternatively, you can operationalise 'slow' breathing by simply focusing on extending your exhalation.
3. in through your nose and out through your mouth...optimally, not a 'deal-breaker'. You can still obtain the significant relaxation benefits from completing this exercise breathing entirely through your mouth if your nose is blocked. Alternatively, some people breathe using only their nose. Whatever feels most comfortable is fine - but many people find that breathing in via the nose and out through the mouth provides a sense of rhythm during the early stages of learning a new technique that seems foreign at first.
Enjoy the exericse...!
Aim to practice initially for at least 5 mins, twice per day, every day. the more you practice this technique, the better, and the longer you do it for, the more relaxation you will experience!
Remember to not simply use this skill when you are anxious or agitated. Rather, try to build it into your daily routine as, practiced over time, this technique will build resilience.
Once you have mastered this exercise, you can build on this skill by trying the Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) in a future episode of this podcast. Stay tuned for that episode, as that is considered by many as the 'Gold Standard' of relaxation. Optimally, as you do the PMR exercise you will breathe using this DB technique so it is well worthwhile learning and practicing this simple technique.
REMEMBER to subscribe to the Psychology Resources Podcast to receive all the new uploads, and exercises coming up.