Avoiding Seizures with Progressive Relaxation?

In the mid-1990s, my seizures were at least weekly, which met the criteria of my epileptologist’s research from Southern Illinois University’s Medical School. Having already impressed him with the thoroughness of the seizure journal I maintained, he asked me to be a test subject for his research into progressive muscle relaxation (PMR). 

Several years earlier, my seizures had been happening about every 36 hours. Because his treatment already decreased my frequency to every eight days, I eagerly accepted this chance to see if non-pharmaceutical treatment could do better.

Stress, whether physical or emotional, is undoubtedly near the top of everyone’s list of seizure triggers. My epileptologist wanted to see if a technique to condition oneself to relax could be applied to purging enough stress from the body that a person likely to have seizures might be reduced in number and/or be less severe. In addition, once a patient learns the technique, might seizures be avoided if the person willfully did it when feeling a prelude to the beginnings of an aura?

Muscle relaxation for epilepsy management

My doctor modeled his research about the technique for epilepsy on research that Dr. Edmund Jacobson had published in 1938. Jacobson had shown a method of alternately tensing and relaxing different muscle groups in the body would work for treating anxiety, migraines, and backaches, and some were wondering at that time if it could affect bipolar and insomnia.¹

My doctor gave me a pocket tape recorder to play a taped woman’s soothing, heavenly voice conveniently. Throughout a 12-minute recording, she first told me to get comfortable.  

Initially, my doctor wanted me to do it lying down 4 times a day in the morning, midday, late afternoon, bedtime, and any time I felt an aura’s onset; I had time to prepare. Once I was familiar with the technique, it was acceptable to do it sitting upright (particularly since beds or couches aren’t available in the middle of the day.) Lounge chairs and tall off-chairs became excellent for this, too, after a while.

The woman’s recording started by telling me to exhale, tense my toes and feet, relax them several seconds later, and climax with an inhalation. Moments later, the process started with the feet, followed by the shins, the thighs, and then my entire leg. 

Likewise, I did fingers, then fists, forearms, biceps, and shoulders; then my groin, belly, and breasts; and then my neck, chin, eyelids, forehead, and scalp. It concluded by telling me to tense everything at once and then relax twice. The voice told me each time when to inhale or exhale.

Managing stress and auras with PMR

I was the subject of my doctor’s research during 4 years of graduate school. Once classroom courses were completed, I moved on to an internship at The Young and the Restless, a daytime drama. It was an incredibly turbulent and stressful environment, and the only period I missed was midday. 

Following that, I was a producer in a TV newsroom, which was an even more stressful environment. Many days, it was so literally so active that I didn’t sit down for the entire day, and because of all the noise in the room, I often had to talk loudly to be heard on the phone. But I continued drilling before and after work and at bedtime.

Many people say that before anything as apparent as an aura begins, they’re able to notice a change in the pit of their stomachs, or maybe just some kind of feeling of dread or discomfort before an aura’s onslaught with tingles, Deja Vu, fear, etc. 

For me, I’ll compare it to being as subtle as what a student feels when given a test he hasn’t studied for, or the dread of realizing I forgot to lock my house before I left for a weekend; and the feelings that I’m describing aren’t ones that have loomed for hours, but are pretty instantaneous.  

My doctor’s idea was that once such an unnatural feeling was noticeable, I try doing the PMR to avoid an aura, or if an aura gave me time to prepare, I should commence PMR. Hopefully, it will stave off a full-blown seizure.

PMR's effect on seizure control

I was a hard-driving, overbearing type-A personality when I began with my doctor. Whether I was too stressed to be aware of such feelings before an aura or if my epilepsy changed with age, I don’t know. I started becoming aware of it once my PMR training began. 

Also, there was a shift in the times when my seizures occurred, to be more often when I was away from stressful environments. I asked my doctor if there was something in my subconscious that said to the rest of my brain, “Okay, if you insist on a seizure, this is a safer place. Go ahead.”

When I did feel that way in the newsroom, I went to a dining area where there was a restaurant booth I could lie on. Later, when I was still a videographer, I pushed myself away from the desk and sat upright, doing the drill without a tape recorder.  

My epileptologist admitted that it was hard to give an abstract score to just how effective PMR was during our near-decade together. However, I can say that when I felt on the verge of an aura and commenced PMR, I would wager that maybe half of the “dreads” and auras subsided without seizing, which my doctor and I figured was around a 40% improvement in my case.

Epilepsy relief and better sleep

Nearly 20 years later, Morehouse Medical School was promoting this, now called UPLIFT, to people with epilepsy in Atlanta—not researching it—and I participated. That time, a woman’s voice added the suggestion that I was surrounded by white light that I could inhale and rid myself of a “dirty” cloud while exhaling.

Medications have given me insomnia at times, and PMR is good for putting me to sleep. Playing the DVD with something that can be googled as “relaxing yoga music” is yet more effective.