Well I understand that the, as it were, root causes are actually the things that contribute to it are reasonably well known and they include salt, if you’ve got a high salt content in your body, and also stress seems to be regarded by most people as a major contributing factor or a thing that can make it worse. And since it’s connected and I don’t know that I understand the exact connection but, well obviously it’s connected with your blood circulation and thus with any tendency of the arteries to harden or any constriction of the blood vessels, therefore all the stuff about cholesterol and so on and the kinds of diet that create those effects. I see those connections but as far as I can tell the exact reasons for this mechanism to go out of kilter in the first place are not very well known. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s what I think and understand.

I did kind of learn a bit about how to do the relaxing technique and on the whole I’ve found that’s quite beneficial in various ways. There are times when you’re sitting on the train or you’re sitting you know I’m sitting in my room, I’ve got 10 minutes before a tutorial and instead of doing a piece of work for those last 10 minutes I sometimes go into this routine and I think that’s quite beneficial generally.

In fact I’ve found it also puts me to sleep so I sometimes do it to go to sleep but apparently then it doesn’t help your blood pressure, but if it helps you to sleep that’s good too [laughs], it’s all something gained you know.

I’m sitting here, this is a good chair for doing it in and you can, you just gradually consciously relax every part of your body, you go through from your feet and work all the way up one of those things, just let, just concentrate on the muscles and feel are they tense, let them go, and then you go into a routine of taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly, a long slow breath, and as you let it out you’re supposed to say some ritual phrase which you say each time the same phrase over and over.

Some people do it with music and other things but actually I think this question of saying something to yourself and choosing a phrase which in some way is soothing is part of it and I think that’s one of the reasons it works for me. I remind myself that I need some peace you know and I have one or two phrases or words of my own choice that actually are like little kind of prayers of a non-religious kind if you like. It’s a bit like that but it’s a little ritual expression of your need for peace and to be nice to yourself as it were and to take yourself out of the usual hurly burly and pressure of life.