Effects of autogenic relaxation training and progressive muscle relaxation on anxiety: an EEG-based experimental study

Younger generations are shown to have a high prevalence rate of anxiety. This study examined the changes in the alpha brain signals based on autogenic relaxation training (ART) and progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) to determine their efficacy in reducing anxiety symptoms among undergraduate students. This study was a randomized controlled trial in which participants were randomly allocated to either the ART group or the PMR group. Seven supervised sessions of ART and PMR were conducted over three weeks, with each session lasting approximately 20 minutes. Electroencephalography (EEG) and Beck Anxiety Inventory scores (BAI) were used as outcome measures to assess the effectiveness of relaxation training on anxiety before and after the interventions. The study included 30 participants with a mean age of 19.60 ± 0.84 years. A paired sample t-test revealed that relaxation training significantly reduced anxiety. Additionally, ART demonstrated statistically significant effects in reducing anxiety (p=0.004), showing a greater decrease in post-intervention mean BAI scores compared to PMR. However, the difference between ART and PMR was not statistically significant (p=0.110). ART showed a greater reduction in post-intervention BAI scores, while PMR showed greater positive changes in EEG findings. The study outcome is an enhanced evidence-based physiotherapy program that may be used by physiotherapists in the neurological rehabilitation with anxiety.