I think that everyone has a problem with stress or anxiety in some form of another and many people have found ways to deal with it. For me, exercise is something that always seems to work. It may help me in either three ways, it can help to distract me from my problems; give me time to think about my problems, or give me something new to focus on. But sometimes I wonder, am I increasing my stress in some way?
I have recently heard a lot about a therapy which goes by a number of names, one of which is called “Progressive muscle relaxation”. The idea behind the therapy is basically to tense one muscle group at a time and then release the muscle tension. You simply take the time to tense your muscles from head to toe and then relax them. I have never really engaged in this kind of activity, maybe because I think it sounds boring like many of my readers do. But apparently, according to research, it works.
Research was conducted on cancer patients using the progressive muscle relaxation technique and it was shown to improve their emotional, functional and physical wellbeing. In another study, after only 20 minutes of progressive muscle relaxation, a group of undergraduate students showed significant immediate improvement in the level of psychological and physiological relaxation.
Today I am not going to give you a progressive muscle relaxation script, or share with you a youtube video on how to do it. It sounds simple enough, but maybe it isn’t. I am going to take the challenge myself as it sounds too good to be true. I will commit to doing a session of progressive muscle relaxation training every day for a week, no matter if I feel I am stressed or not and I will let you know of my results. Maybe you would like to take up the challenge as well. Let me know how you go in the comments.
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The impact of muscle relaxation techniques on the quality of life of cancer patients
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184147
Effectiveness of Progressive Muscle Relaxation on students
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8272667/
