Dr. Herbert Benson is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Behavioral Medicine section of the New England Deaconess Hospital.He is the founding president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute and author/co-author of over 100 scientific papers and more than 80 books, including the groundbreaking and bestselling title; The Relaxation Response., published in 1975.

Dr. Benson along with his laboratory colleagues, is responsible for a great deal of award winning research pertaining to the human stress response, in particular, our complimentary, innate reaction that he christened “The Relaxation Response.” During his medical work with Hypertension, his interest was triggered by the realization that his patient’s blood pressure readings read distinctly higher as a result of the anxiety involved in visiting the Doctor. This “white coat syndrome” discovered in the late 60’s concretely connected stress and hypertension and it was demonstrated that even a monkey could be taught to control their blood pressure purely with brainpower alone.

Herbert is without a doubt, one of the world’s leading authorities on stress and its effects on health and is recognized as the most significant contributor to the education of health care providers relating to stress and its ill-effects, in teaching hospitals around the world.

His research even extended to the very first scientific study of the effects of meditation in 1981 which took place in the Indian Himalayas, actually sanctioned by The Dali Lama himself. He found that the Tibetan practice of meditation, just like the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, (TM for short) which was popularized in the 60’s in part due to the interest shown by the Beatles, was actually responsible for a critical rebalancing of Homeostasis that optimizes the functioning of the human organism and provides numerous essential health and cognitive benefits.

These principle findings resulted in the development of a westernized approach to triggering many of the same biological enhancements without the need to devote one’s life to the study and practice of meditation.

Dr. Benson’s research began over 30 years ago and his findings have been proven to have helped millions of people overcome the ravages of the numerous stress-related illnesses that comprise today’s most serious and widespread health problems, stress.

An advocate of natural healing, Dr. Benson teaches medicine at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital and is the Director of the hospital’s Division of Behavioral Medicine and Hypertension section.

His invaluable understanding of the human sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system’s capabilities has not only benefitted the medical field and the millions of stress sufferers fortunate enough to discover his therapeutic approach, his scientifically based principles have lead to a much greater understanding of how the management of stress can improve many other facets of human existence.

By reducing the level of stress that we experience by utilizing his discovery of the powerful biological trigger of the Relaxation Response, it has been proven that we can greatly increase our mental function, enhance creativity and productivity and even boost athletic performance.

With an understanding of simple techniques to manage stress, we learn how to effortlessly enter “the zone” during competitive sports such as golf and tennis and tap into a sense of great harmony that stands to benefit us immeasurably in every aspect of our currently over-stressed lives.

Elicitation of the Relaxation Response can decrease blood pressure, improve cognitive functioning, boost the immune system , optimize metabolism and reduce the side-effects of almost any illness or disease known to man including AIDs. There are no ends to the benefits of Dr. Benson’s discovery, it is only a shame that his principles are not presented as part of every school’s curriculum since they are undoubtedly essential skills that every human on this planet can easily integrate into their lives and flourish from.

We owe much to this remarkable man and we can all stand to gain from a daily serving of The Relaxation Response, a simple technique that takes moments to learn and mere minutes to perform.