Maintain the skill with regular abbreviated practice

Keep the relaxation response accessible with five minutes of daily cue-word practice after the initial training.

Why it works

Conditioned responses extinguish without maintenance — the cue-word-to-relaxation link is a learned association that requires occasional reinforcement to remain robust. Brief daily maintenance practice (two to five minutes) is far more efficient than re-acquiring the full skill after it fades, and protects against the common pattern of abandoning relaxation training after initial symptom improvement.

How to do it

1. After completing the initial training arc, schedule five minutes daily for maintenance practice.
2. Use the cue word with three or four slow breaths and a brief scan — enough to activate the relaxation state without a full sequence.
3. During stressful periods, briefly extend maintenance to the release-only level to keep the full response accessible.

Evidence

Maintenance of treatment gains following anxiety interventions is supported by long-term follow-up studies; AR specifically shows maintenance at 1-year follow-up in Öst's trials, though this reflects participants who continued to practice. (observational)

Long-term follow-up data reflect naturalistic continued practice, not random assignment to maintenance; the causal contribution of maintenance practice specifically is not experimentally isolated.

Sources

• Öst (1987), applied relaxation: description of a coping technique and review of controlled studies, Behaviour Research and Therapy

Common mistake

Stopping practice entirely once symptoms improve, which allows the conditioned response to fade before it is needed again during a future stressful period.