One week has passed since I wrote my blog about “Progressive muscle relaxation”, and as promised, I have experimented with the technique myself with what I think are pleasing results. I did not go too deeply into the different techniques, or use any YouTube videos for the therapy. I simply progressively tensed my muscles in several muscle groups from my feet, to my head and then my down to my arms and hands.
When I first did this, I was a little bit concerned about sore muscles. I was worried they would cramp up again, but the more I did the exercise, the more confident I felt in tensing and releasing these muscles.
After the first time I did it, I actually felt quite sleepy. I thought, maybe this is not a good thing to do before driving, but could be good to do if you are having trouble sleeping. As would be expected, areas where I normally feel a lot of muscle tension seemed to benefit the most from the exercise. They seemed to feel noticeably much more relaxed. But hang on a minute; this exercise is really not about relaxing the body; it is about relaxing the mind.
After doing the exercise several times, I realized that I would notice when muscles in my body were tensed for no specific physical reason and this helped me to relax them. It seems that my muscles are tense, like many other people do, from stress. This exercise really helped me break the cycle between the psychological stress that I am experiencing in my mind and the physiological stress that is appearing in my body. What I gained from this experience is not a magic bullet to cure stress, but it is a handy tool to reduce it.
Times when I suddenly felt stress, it felt worse when somehow the stress also manifested in my tense muscles. But I was able to reduce the tension in my muscles through this exercise, and then in turn reduce my stress, to break the cycle. The results have been great so far. I hope that they last, or even improve over time. I will continue to do the exercise and keep you updated in the weeks to come.
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