Progressive Muscle Relaxation for Stress Relief
As you are probably well aware by now, your physical body and your emotions are codependent and interconnected. When you experience stress, anxiety, panic, or fear, your muscles tense, breathes become shorter, heart rate rises, and you experience other physical symptoms. In other words, your body physically responds to the stress that you are experiencing. When your emotional stress subsides, so do the physical symptoms. However, this also works vice versa. If you can control your physical symptoms and bring your body to a state of physical relaxation, your emotional stress will be relieved as well.
It is impossible for you to feel relaxed while your body is under stress, but it is also impossible to feel stressed when your body is physically relaxed.
Based on this fact, progressive relaxation can help to alleviate stress by tensing your muscles and then quickly relaxing them. In essence, this technique relaxes you by draining your body of physical stress. In this exercise, you will tense a muscle group for about 5 seconds and then you will quickly release the tension and let the muscle group relax for about 30 seconds. You will perform the same thing with all of your muscle groups.
Lie or sit down comfortably with your arms and legs uncrossed and loose. Make sure that your spine is straight. Loosen up any tight clothes. Close your eyes and take several deep breathes. Continue breathing deeply throughout this exercise. Clench your fists as hard as you can, and focus on the feeling of tension in them. Hold this position for about five seconds, and then relax your fists suddenly. Feel the drastic difference between the tension and the subsequent release. It is important to mention that the relaxation of the muscle group has to be sudden and not gradual because gradually releasing it will only build up unnecessary tension. Let yourself relax for thirty to forty seconds.
Next, bend your arms at the elbows and flex your biceps. Again, feel the tension and then quickly release it. Tighten your forehead muscles and feel your forehead become smooth and relaxed during the release. Do the same for your eyes and lips. Do not clench your teeth though as you might damage them. Move on to your neck and shoulders and tense and relax them as well. Then, slightly tighten and release your lower back. When tensing your back, be careful not to apply too much pressure as it might cause spinal damage. Tense your lower back only a bit, and if you are having back problems, skip it altogether, and do the alternative method, described below, instead.
Flex and relax your chest. Then flex your stomach. Move on to your buttocks and thighs. Finally, tense and relax your calves as well as your toes by curling them. Be careful not to tense too much so that you do not cause a muscle cramp.
To get the best results from this exercise, repeat the tightening and relaxation of each muscle group at least twice and perform the exercise daily. Although you should feel immediate relaxation after performing the exercise, you will only begin to see the long term relaxation effects and the improvement of your overall stress level after a few months.
If your time is limited, you can do the shortened version of this exercise by eliminating or combining some of the muscle groups. For example, you can tense and relax your shoulders, arms, and fists all together.
Alternative Method
Remember that you are supposed to experience muscle tension, not pain. If you feel pain during any part of any exercise, stop or you may end up hurting yourself. If you experience pain or have a medical condition that prevents you from doing any part of the above exercise, you can still benefit from progressive relaxation using this alternative approach. If you cannot tighten a muscle group completely, tighten it just a bit. The whole point here is to feel the difference between the stressed and relaxed states.
If you cannot tighten the muscle group at all, simply concentrate on it in your mind and stay as focused on it as you can for a few seconds. Visualize the "release" of tension from that muscle group, and imagine the stress and tension from it just melting away. Perform this visualization exercise at least twice. The point here is to visualize the muscle stress and subsequent release as opposed to physically performing them.
Important Note:
If you are unsure of your medical condition or if you have any health issues that might make it difficult or prevent you from doing these exercises, you should consult your healthcare provider before attempting any of the exercises described here.
