The inner life
Relaxation Response
Direct answer
Relaxation Response: The relaxation response is Herbert Benson's name for the body's calming reaction, the opposite of fight or flight, which he found simple meditation could bring on.
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At a glance
- Also called
- Benson method
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Transcendental Meditation, Mantra, Mindfulness, Breath Awareness
The relaxation response is Herbert Benson's name for the body's calming reaction, the opposite of fight or flight, which he found simple meditation could bring on.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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What is the relaxation response?
The relaxation response is a physical state: slower breathing, lower oxygen use, a slower heart and looser muscles. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, proposed in the 1970s that it is an inborn counterpart to the fight or flight reaction and that many traditions had found ways to trigger it.
His method was deliberately plain. Sit quietly, relax the muscles, and on each out-breath silently repeat a word such as one, returning to it when the mind wanders, for ten to twenty minutes. He argued that prayer, mantra and breath counting all share these elements, and that no particular belief or word is required.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Meditation.
What sets Relaxation Response apart
Benson's idea is a claim about the body, not a practice with a lineage. He held that the calming seen in meditators comes from four ordinary ingredients and so belongs to no tradition. That stripped-down reading made meditation acceptable in hospitals, and drew criticism from meditators who said it left out everything the practices were for. Later he added what he called the faith factor, reporting that a word with personal meaning helped people keep the habit.
- Named by: Herbert Benson, Harvard cardiologist (1935 to 2022)
- Book: The Relaxation Response, 1975, with Miriam Klipper
- Four elements: quiet place, comfortable position, mental device, passive attitude
- Measured signs: lower oxygen use, slower breathing and heart rate
- Counterpart: the fight or flight reaction described by Walter Cannon
Often mistaken for something else: Transcendental Meditation is a taught technique with its own mantras; the relaxation response is the bodily state Benson said that technique and many others share.
The story behind Relaxation Response
Benson measured practitioners of Transcendental Meditation with Robert Keith Wallace, and they reported falls in oxygen consumption and heart rate in papers of 1971 and 1972. He set out the idea for general readers in The Relaxation Response, written with Miriam Klipper and published in 1975, which became a bestseller. The fight or flight reaction it answers had been described by the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon early in the century.
Why Relaxation Response matters
Relaxation Response was an early and widely read account of meditation in plain physiological terms, and opened the door through which later clinical programmes walked.
How to read Relaxation Response
Doctors and writers use the phrase for the bodily calming common to many practices, when they want to speak of it without religious terms.
Relaxation Response in practice: an example
A man waiting for a scan closes his eyes and repeats the word one on each out-breath until his shoulders drop.
Where readings of Relaxation Response go wrong
Relaxation Response describes a short-term bodily state; calming down is useful, and is not the same as treating the cause of an illness.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- the relaxation response, Herbert Benson relaxation response, relaxation response technique, relaxation response meaning, Benson method
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is the relaxation response?
A state of slowed breathing, heart rate and metabolism that Herbert Benson described as the body's built-in opposite of the fight or flight reaction.
How is the relaxation response brought on?
Benson named four elements: a quiet place, a comfortable position, a mental device such as a repeated word, and a passive attitude towards distractions. He suggested ten to twenty minutes, once or twice a day.
Is the relaxation response the same as meditation?
It is the bodily effect Benson found in several kinds of meditation and prayer, not a tradition of its own. Meditative traditions have aims, such as insight or devotion, that the term does not cover.
