and now it's my pleasure to introduce Dr Herbert Benson Dr Benson is the mindbody Medical Institute associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director edus of the Benson Henry Institute for mindbody medicine at Mass General Hospital a Pioneer in the field of mindbody Medicine Dr Benson's work has helped bridge the gap between spirituality and medical science he has written several books and innumerable papers on the subject including the bestselling book The relaxation response a term he coined to describe the precise opposite of a stress or fight ORF flight response Dr Benson's new
book relaxation Revolution co-written with William Proctor details his recent work on the subject of Mind Body medicine much of it in conjunction with colleagues in the field of genetics the book describes the surprisingly powerful impact of the relaxation response on even the molecular level and outlines possibilities for treatment of conditions ranging from anxiety and depression to Parkinson's disease thank you Rachel it's indeed a pleasure to be here at the Harvard bookstore and to see so many friends and colleagues here uh what I'll speak to tonight is the relaxation Revolution medicine is remarkable in what we
can do to save and prolong people's lives how many of you would not be here to today if it were not for medicine or surgery could I have a show of hands your young young audience and about 40% of you you know um lives were saved by this but you have to remember as good as our surgery is as good as our medicines are 60 to 90% of visits to doctors are in the Mind Body stress related realm poorly treated by drugs and surgery so what do we do um we have within us an innate
capacity that's the opposite to the opposite of the fight ORF flight response and that's called the relaxation response the relaxation response is nothing new people have practice techniques that have brought it forth for Millennia because to bring it forth you have to break the train of everyday thinking and traditionally people have done this through a repetition the repetition could be a word a sound a prayer a phrase or a movement when other thoughts come to mind you disregard them those thoughts and come back to the repetition now this is started with with uh meditation in
the 7th 8th Century BC in India it went on to be practiced for example with yoga Tai Chi Chiang with repetitive Jewish Christian and Islamic prayers they all evoke the relaxation response but traditionally over at least in the West in the last 150 to 200 years we have separated the Mind from the body largely because of Renee dart's separation of mind and body and that was largely a political that was largely a political decision because he wanted the body and the church wanted the spirit and so that separation occurred then what occurred was this separation
was reinforced by some of the most incredible discoveries that were due to science um for example um early Discovery came from um English Sailors sucking on limes to uh prevent scurvy hence limey then uh later um Jenner in England discovered that injecting people with cowpox could prevent against small poox an incredible Discovery then the L some of the largest ones came about from Louie pastor recognizing that diseases are caused by bacteria that he showed that Anthrax in animals could be caused by a bacterium and then um Robert Cog in Germany was able to define the
specific bacteria and tetanus became treatable if you were scratched with a rusty nail and you would develop tus you would die well co uh developed anti-us toxin then in in um Canada insulin was discovered and diabetics who would off die an awful death keto acidosis could be kept alive not cured by daily injections of insulin then the big one came along in that Fleming in London at St Mary's Hospital discovered penicillin pneumonia became curable if you had the if you developed pneumonia and you were over 50 you had close to 100% chance of dying um
penicillin took care of that penicillin could also cure syphilis and then uh a a scientist at Merk sharp and Dome found that from soil samples strepto another antibiotic could be uh um um could be uh produced and tuberculosis the white death became curable and all of this was reinforcing the fact that you didn't have to worry about stress if our medicine continued with its discoveries of oh cataract surgery the blind could be cured by biblical standards this is a miracle well here we are medicine went on to develop believing that only drugs only surgeries would
work and but there were always glimmers of the fact that the mind could be affecting the body a lot of the work started right here at Harvard with Oliver Wendell Holmes him him pointing out the importance of Dr patient relationships William James who lived very close to here found that um the mind was Inseparable from the body and then we found early in our work that meditation led to a response that looked exactly opposite to the fight ORF flight response and it was done at the Very Room at Harvard Medical School in which the fight
ORF flight response was discovered by William B Canon 60 years before and it made no sense that Transcendental Meditation would be the only way to do this so we found that as I just pointed out that techniques had existed for millennia that did this and so we started applying it to stress related conditions and a very large literature now literally of thousands of papers have shown that these techniques can effectively treat any condition that's caused or made worse by stress anxiety um often with medications now but anxiety mild and moderate depression insomnia high blood pressure
all forms of pain not not if they're stress related they could be effectively treated it's virtually Curative of tension headaches for example but still Mind Body Work was not being accepted that was sort of it was building upon the pejorative don't worry honey it's all in your head it's really not important and that separation of Mind from body was was being continued so the Technologies over my own career of 40 some years was always developing and we were using the latest Technologies to see whether we could better Define this mindbody reaction that we had label
the relaxation response uh frequent fmis came along and work done uh by Sarah Lazar for example at uh Massachusetts General Hospital show that there is a specific quieting of the brain in certain areas of the brain less activity less noise when the relaxation response was being evoked and then she found that the brain actually became thicker thicker as people got older when normally it became thinner as we get older we forget things and what have you well the brain became thicker and people evoking the relaxation response then the last 10 or so years we've been
attempting to answer the question does the relaxation response alter your genetic activity what do we what do what we talk genes genes are the fundamental building blocks of the body or enzymes all our biochemistry based on are based on genes for example and it's changing second by second by second not changing the genes but the genes activity INF influence activity in your brain and that activity in turn influences your body you are a different person today for having seen me talk these several moments what you've learned has changed you and it changes things are changing
simultaneously uh as things are learned and sure you're not going to change the genes themselves that they determine whether you're are male or female whether you've got dark hair or light hair whether you're tall or short sure the influ the environment influences that but the basic genetic structure you inherited your genes what we measured was the genes activity what we did this was done in collaboration with um uh Dr tuvia liberman and other people at the Beth Israel um um uh Deacon's hospital we took patients who had been evoking the relaxation response for years on
an average of oh um 9 years the range was from 20 years to about 4 years they were using different techniques to evoke the relaxation response some meditated different forms of yoga mindfulness Transcendental Meditation breath meditation different forms of prayer um yoga Tai Chi but they've been doing it regularly for some um on an average of nine or so years we match them with people who are of the same gender same age same race and same education and looked at the activity not the genes the activity of every single one of their genes to see
whether there's a difference measured in all 40 to 50,000 genes and lo and behold there was a difference the difference and which Gene were they genes were being turned on and turned off in a fashion that one was acting exactly opposite to the gene those genes that were turning on that were turned on or turned off by stress genes that controlled inflammation in the body were being tuned down in other words there would be less inflammation and the genes looking at the very life of cells the the the the length of Life of cells were
were consistent with cells getting uh living longer nice that that was a statistically significant change then we took the that was what's called a cross-sectional study looking at match controls amongst different people then we took the controls who had never before evoked the relaxation response and had them evoke it in a standard method we use routinely for 8 weeks and compare them to themselves before versus after and lo and behold there were the same genes activity the same genes expression changing in the same fashion in the same genes to a lesser extent showing that the
longer you do it the more the more active these genes are actively these genes are appropriately changed and the probability of that occurring by chance was one in 10 billion so this was now showing us that the mind can affect the body and the whole cartisian split really has very little validity and this whole concept that mind body is soft that mind body is woooo land really there's validity to this now to the fact that the mind and control genan activity now that's what we call in our book William Proctor William Proctor is a graduate
both of Harvard College uh where he was a Mna in history and also um uh Harvard Law School bill went on to Vietnam where he became a a a lawyer in in the Jag and then decided Well he didn't want to be a lawyer and wrote books and I had the Good Fortune of working with him um many years now I am a very poor writer thank I would not be here if it were not for people like William Proctor well what what we call this the the the phase one of what we're calling the
Benson Henry um uh um the Benson Henry um protocol evoke the relaxation response and remember I said at the beginning of the talk that your mind's quieter after you do that it's less active less noise more receptive to new facts coming in that can be used therapeutically for example you all have memories before you had an issue whatever your issue is of being without that problem be it rheumatoid arthritis be it insomnia be it a PMS uh what have you and what you can do is evoke the relaxation response and in the mind as the
mind in that quiet mode you then can visualize what it was when you were well you can remember Wellness you're still wired in your brain for that and those changes to the extent that a mindbody reaction is causing the issue it can be corrected by remembering Wellness another name for remembered Wellness is the Lebo effect so you can turn on in a positive fashion the um the capabilities of your memory let me give you a dramatic example of how that operates say you have you had an injury to your left hand frightfully painful and your
left hand was was there painful for years then either to surgery or an injury you lose that left hand even though you don't have a left hand your brain is interpreting you have a painful left hand because it's been wired you can dewire that by this same process remember it what what it was to be without a painful left hand so we cover many different illnesses in the using this two two-step process phase one the relaxation response phase two visualization at the B Henry Institute uh for mindbody medicine at MGH we use this very process
in What's called the relaxation response um uh resiliency program we open the mind and then substitute not only visualization but also cognitive restructuring uh um uh group support and I'm proud to say due to the influence of one of the people here today Dr David Rosenthal who's head of Harvard University Health Services we're also doing this with students and faculty a a at Harvard University what I want to end with now is the fact that you have within yourselves not only the capacity to be stressed out but also the capacity to counter that and you
can effectively use this inborn capacity and effectively treat any disorder that's being caused or exacerbated by stress and we are not saying you should not use medications or surgeries there are things that mind B that that are far more powerful in many diseases than are the Mind Body effects they should be used in conjunction and I think you'll have you will experience Better Health and well-being because of that thank you you stressors vary in intensity some things are absolutely frightful losing a a spouse losing a child losing a parent developing hearing the words I'm sorry
you have breast cancer um there are many other stressors that for many are equally powerful you're fired um we're out of money um oh my gosh the the oil is still gushing forth from that well uh those are stressors you can't change those stressors what you can change is your bodily's reaction to them so whether it's minor or major you can by evoking this process and break through breaking the train of everyday thought and visualizing thing uh help the condition will it cure your stress no but it protects your body and your mind against its
frightfully harmful effects oh what I'm saying Breaking the train of everyday thought is a way of opening your mind that's phase one that's where cognitive therapy then comes in in other words with your mind more open more receptive you're more able to listen to what the therapist be it a psychologist a nurse a physician a social worker what what they're teaching so it should be in combination does that mean you shouldn't use medications of course not uh they're often the most important most important feature remember most of us phys most of we Physicians have been
educated in the reductionistic model drugs and surgeries and it's changing now it is Mark changing be and that's why the book is entitled relaxation Revolution to to not change the B but to bring about another feature and many Physicians are frustrated by their inability to help a person who's coming back repeatedly they've run out of tests we've run out of tests we've run out of surgeries we've run out of pharmaceuticals they would welcome this and we at The Institute in the earliest days for you know when this work started 40 years ago about a third
of Physicians would accept it a third were ambivalent and another third outright rejected it that's that's ridiculous that's new age well the science has changed a lot of that and that's one of the reasons this book was written to show that there's now scientific data and if your physician share this with your physician we have often found at the early stages of this that those who were ambivalent would not prescribe it to their patients but often started with their own family first in other words they wanted to see whether it's working or not and I
think with what's occurring today in terms of Cost Containment this work is made self-care that's cheaper it's something you do for yourself when're not saying turn away from what you need and for the long term um people at our Institute for example Marilyn Wilshire have centered on educating our children starting at at preschool going right on through college we we're doing this at um at um Harvard University and then teaching them how they can counteract the harmful effects of stress and perhaps prevent excessive alcohol excessive drug abuse violence and of course anxiety and what have
you you have to start at the very fabric of society so you don't you aren't wired to believe that only pills and surgery can work and with respect to your field with nutrition we use the opening the mind opening for example in our cardiovascular programs to teach appropriate nutrition you see it's applicable to all of these different condition conditions that you wish to change because of the very innate um capacities of the brain to change itself yes feedback is not what we're talking about because feedback takes a specific um event say a pain and has
you uh do various Maneuvers to get rid of that pain and then feedback what you're doing doing but biof feedback is a way is another way to is another approach that whose effects could be maximized by utilizing the relaxation response to open yourself to it in other words it's you mentioned how biof feedback would use a rem remembering a given trauma well that that's that's cognitive restructure so you see you do the relaxation response and then bring about um um uh appropriate um memories to break through the um uh issue of the trauma you could
desensitize people the very same way in fact there are several aspects of the book which speaks specifically to how you can get rid of phobias through this same process in other words evoke the relaxation response and remember yourself in gradual steps without the phobia it's not a question of one being better than another it's what you choose what you will be mo you as an individual and others would be most comfortable with for example right now mindfulness meditation is very popular but it's one of scores of techniques we've showed gen the genetic expression in mindfulness
meditation is the same as other meditation but let's say some people don't like sitting quietly then yoga is a better approach some people are quite religious believing in something rightfully Beyond themselves for them a repetitive prayer Hail Mary full of grace a Maria uh Shalom Lord is my shepherd oh is what they would choose and what we do at at our inst Institute is give people a schoras board of choice to have them choose one that they determine is the best for them they're more likely to do it it would be malpractice if we taught
only prayer w i mean what how do you deal with a atheist or an agnostic or it would be uh equally inappropriate not to teach a prayer to someone who believes in their particular religion that's why it applies to all cultures so whether you're saying you know uh say a given culture and you're a fundamentalist belief the words Lord Jesus opens the door but you wouldn't have a Catholic using Lord Jesus they would use um Hail Mary full of grace or a person who was not religious using the word love or peace or gentle the
fundamental the price for this is not in dollars and cents the price for this is the time it takes to do this once or twice daily for 10 to 20 minutes that is the issue you to have these changes you have to put in the time massage needs to be better treated touching there's something to this I mean you just watch primates and you know we touching is very important and I don't think it's been adequately studied does it evoke the relaxation response I don't know but we have shown for example Dr B Chang that
acupuncture is enhanced if it's done simultaneously with the relaxation response so you can use combinations find although I'm not speaking specifically to you find something that your father believes in and would be comfortable in doing and is capable of doing let me show you how to evoke the relaxation response very briefly this is voluntary okay in other words what are its side effects side effects of you all be very careful of what I say after I evoke you evoke the relaxation response because it's going to get in better th this has been used for good
and evil uh what follows in a Christian Services prayer the sermon open the door get the message in but look what Jim Jones did with this in the Guana jungles convincing people at drinking cyanide Lo lace Kool-Aid was appropriate behavior I'll just take you through the instructions very simply and not for a prolonged period of time just what it is and this is voluntary if you choose to do this for a medical reason please check out with your physician and healthare professional each of you choose a word a sound a prayer or a phrase the
number one the word peace the word gentle the word calm um if English is not your original language please do choose the word in your original language uh if you're religious Hail Mary full of grace if you're Spanish Portuguese um um uh Italian that becomes AA um Lord is my shepherd Our Father Who Art in Heaven Make a Joyful Noise unto the Lord the Shamar prayer the prayer in In Tibetan Buddhism om pme hung hail Jewel of the lotus om choose that okay now take things off your lap and this is where Harvard bookstore management
steals [Music] pocketbooks okay close your eyes and relax all your muscles starting with your feet your calves your thighs shrug your shoulders around roll your head and neck around now sit at ease without movement and breathe slowly now each time your breath is coming out say silently to yourself your chosen word or sound or prayer or phrase and you're going to find all sorts of other thoughts coming in your head that's normal they're natural and should be expected when they come don't be upset but simply say oh well and come back to your repetition now
I'm going to let you do this just for a minute or two at the end of which time I'll ask you to keep your eyes closed but then start thinking regular thoughts but now on your out breath the focus other thoughts oh well and back F now keep your eyes closed keep them closed but just start thinking your regular thoughts and now slowly slowly open your eyes was that brief interlude upsetting for anyone even for two minutes did any of you notice any changes anyone anything I didn't I wouldn't expect you would but at any
rate that's to be done if you choose to do this approach 10 to 20 minutes once or twice a day genetics right now is a very intensively studied field initially we spent a lot of money we the government and private people ventner and others spent a lot of money to define the genome believing that we would come up with specific genes that would predict a specific disease for example cancer that has not worked out the complexity of genes are such that one in the vast number of cases Gene one gene equals specific disease has not
worked out because genes interact with each other and when genes activity is turned on turned off then you find that the second it is changing it changes another around it as it changes it itself so the very complexity is such that you can't look at it in a reductionistic fashion you have to look at whole patterns changing and the statistics of this are very complex but now it's beginning to evolve just two weeks ago in science a prominent magazine it was shown that if you repeatedly bring forth a certain Gene's activity you may change that
Gene enough so you can pass the change genes um structure onto your children this is all in going under study now but it's highly complex but we know we can change patterns of this and almost as quickly as a new technique comes up we have to restructure we for example have found that when you evoke the relaxation response you have this pattern of gene expression very exciting and you look at these are normals then you look at certain cancers certain Lomas and what have you that have their expression and lo and behold for some of
these cancers the expression of the relaxation response in normals is different from those with cancer right now we'll be studying does relaxation response affect the expression of a cancer itself but that's years away before we get to that but it's opening that kind of possibility you see we have an expert here in the audience David do you think it ever possible that um Mind Body could affect genomic structure I I don't think so myself pardon anything is and that's the har the head of Harvard University Health Services say you're you're right I mean let me
bring up something that we don't all want to hear and it belies all of medicine we're mortal you know we try and cure but frequently we're dealing about with a process that's in depending upon your religious belief but that's incurable so our main job is to stay as live alive as long and healthy as possible but one shouldn't blame medicine because not not everyone lives forever we've got an issue there we're not going to solve it today how many of you jog jog how many of you have experienced the runner's high the runner's high is
the relaxation response brought about by the Cadence of your feet that's the repetition it occurs normally in the third or fourth mile it will occur in the first or second mile if you focus left right when you start off when you do so and I'm shouting at you now keep your your eyes open oh the area let I I'm a cardiologist by training early I was concerned that um uh blood pressure elevations could be due to stress there was no literature on it so I returned to Harvard Medical School from which I had recently graduated
to set up an animal model for stress induced high blood pressure we used uh skinners BF skinners oper in conditioning and found lo and behold we could train monkeys to develop hypertension then some young people came along and said why you fooling around with monkeys study us we we practice Transcendental Meditation and that's how it got started 40 years ago again under Marilyn Wilshire of our Institute we have training programs where we train trainers uh her model in schools is to train the teachers to themselves but first to have them experience it themselves so they
could be by by by their very existence the model and then uh this is extraordinarily popular and now occurring in many schools throughout the nation from we've done studies for example in the uh South Central a Angeles in inner city area where the riots started in La that level of basic Community whereas Marilyn tells it the children do not expect to live beyond teenage virtually 75% of them know someone either a relative or a friend who's been murdered and so for them it works there but it's also a major program now at Philips exiter where
students at that level perhaps their worries are they going to get into Harvard or what have you so it's it's that's where it should be going on at these oh yes it should be frankly it should be a daily practice think back a generation or two or three that you know and I'll bet your parents great par uh or or uh parents or great grandparents were doing a technique on a daily basis we have gotten so busy and overwhelmed and we're trying to that the stressors are overwhelming and what's our treatment for it get busier
so you don't have to think and we're just grinding ourselves up with this and that's why you you should know this early in life just as the example you pointed out you remembered that saying the number one could break whatever issue you were having that's why it should be learned early one of our thought good point one of our earlier supporters was Norman Cousins and he was heavily into ethical culture yes groups of all kinds have come to us be they religious or secular the point is again and I'll end with this it's an innate
human capacity that we have that will protect us against the harmful effects of stress and then at that point you can take take it and sell it and sell your philosophy and convince others so so with that thank you for the bookstore for having
