Autogenic training: what it is for, how it is done and benefits

It was developed by the German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz, also thanks to his predecessors Abbé Faria and Émile Coué, and was disclosed for the first time in 1932. Studying the psychosomatic responses of some subjects immersed in a hypnotic state, J.H. Schultz noted that certain sensations are associated with precise physiological changes in the organism.

Autogenic training involves the repetition (initially guided, then autonomous) of mental visualizations responsible for the induction of psychophysical relaxation. It is based on the passive concentration of body perceptions (eg heaviness and heat of the arms, legs, etc.), further facilitated by the "self-suggestion. The main feature of autogenic training that differentiates it, for example, from hypnosis, is to make the patient autonomous and therefore independent operator.

Autogenic training is mainly used to improve emotional management; in the clinical setting it is useful to relieve certain psychosomatic disorders induced by stress (whatever the cause) and, in the sports field, to improve the athlete's approach to performance (especially in competition). The most indicative example of the usefulness of autogenic training in sport is undoubtedly the application in underwater apnea.

Biofeedback practitioners integrate elements of autogenous visualization and combine them with simplified versions of parallel techniques. Elmer Green, Steve Fahrio, Patricia Norris, Joe Sargent, Dale Walters and other members of the "Menninger Foundation", have incorporated the autogenic training technique of "perception of heat in the hands" by obtaining a thermal biofeedback on the same body district.