David Spector of NSR USA wrote:
My understanding is that Benson's "Relaxation response" is a sort of simplified view of meditation involving the mental repetition of the word "one" (or perhaps including words chosen by the practitioner). There is little or no understanding of transcending ...
Not only Benson's "Relaxation response" is simplified view of meditation, but it involves breath control, making it more complicated from a technical point of view...
So, TM is simpler from practical point of view, but much richer than "Relaxation response" for the deep interpretation of the technique itself. NSR has been created to keep simplicity of TM practice (making its instruction even simpler, and less expensive) and possibly to keep the deep knowledge behind it.
Practical results of "Relaxation response" on reduction of anxiety has been modest, compared to the excellent results achieved by TM (Eppley et al., Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1989), and preliminarly by NSR (Psychological Reports, 2007).
Fabrizio Coppola
Istituto Scientia
http://www.natural-stress-relief.com