I was just talking to a patient about the Relaxation Response, or RR  (the focused relaxation technique that I start patients off on), and we were troubleshooting some ways for her to fit in her 20 minutes each day.

What many people do is get home and sooner or later the TV is on. An hour easily goes by.

Before the TV goes on, the Relaxation Response must get done. I suggested she look at it as “earning her TV time” by doing the RR first.

It is so easy to just say, “I am only going to watch 30 minutes (or 10 minutes or whatever it is) of TV and then I’ll turn it off and do my RR.  For many people later, it is suddenly 1 or even 2 hours later. They got sucked into the TV and then there is “no more time” for the RR — it’s time to go get ready for bed or do some other tasks around the house.

What happened here? Consciously or subconsciously you traded 1 or 2 hours of your time for some TV shows. And you also traded the time that was supposed to be for the RR for a TV show.

Now, I’m not one of those people that thinks that TV is the end of the world — I watch some shows myself. But, and this is a big but, when you start to trade TV time — most of which, if you are completely honest with yourself, does not make your life better in any way — for time that you otherwise could have used to improve your health, your mind and your life…..well, that’s a problem.

And if there is no time to watch TV after doing the RR? What to do then?? Record it and watch it later. The TV schedule is not God, or even anything of real importance for that matter, and as such should not rule your life.

So before the TV goes on, you need to earn your TV by doing your RR exercise first. And then the TV can go on if you’d like.

TC