Progressive muscle relaxation is a fun way to calm your body and mind – you can dedicate time to doing this at home or even practice it at your desk when you need a break from work.
Progressive muscle relaxation is about first tensing your muscles in your body, and then relaxing them. Sometimes, we don’t realize just how much tension we carry in our body. This tension will often be held in your shoulders and neck, and other times it’s clenching various body parts like your jaw, whilst keeping certain muscle groups tight – almost like preparing for impact.
Progressive muscle relaxation helps by showing us just how tense and tight our body is and then it shows us just how good we feel when we relax those muscles. This is quite a focused technique. You can focus just on your hands or legs, and it can help you get a real sense of how much tension you carry in that particular body part. It is also a very good technique if you struggle with dissociation and disconnection. If you feel that your brain kind of leaves the room sometimes and you can’t really focus, then this should help you. It’s one that is really good to use under the desk at school or at home when you want to bring yourself back to the room and focus on what you need to focus on.
How it works
What you’re going to do is tense for five seconds and then you’re going to release for five seconds. You can also take a breath in while you tense and then a breath out while you relax. You kind of do a bit of both at the same time.
It can be helpful for you to do this before bed time or while you’re lying in bed getting ready to sleep, starting from the bottom of your toes and moving all the way to the top of your head.
If you are consistent with it, you will love this technique. If you do this only when you’re in desperate need for it, it might not be something you hold on to. The more you practice it when you are calm, the more it will be useful to you when you are not so calm.
Here’s what it looks like
We’re going to tense for five seconds then relax for five seconds and breathe in and out at the same time.
Put your palms together in a praying position, with your elbows facing out. Press them together while tensing your body (breathe in while you do this) and hold for five seconds. Breath out, drop your arms into your lap, and relax the rest of your body.
You can do this three or four times just to feel that tension and relaxation.
Instead of pressing your hands together, you can also press against a wall nearby or squeeze your hands into fists with your arms extended out in front of you. These are options for adults that don’t need as much imagination to loop you in.
If you are a parent and this exercise is for your kid and they need a bit more imagination, there are all sorts of things that can encourage them to tense. Ask them to pretend that they are squeezing a lemon as hard as they can, or to pretend that there is a fly on their nose to get them to move the muscles of the face.
Give it a shot and see if it works for you.
