Relaxation is an important health practice that helps to unwind after a hectic day or a physical and mentally demanding activity. Regular relaxation exercises help to alleviate stress and anxiety. Just like the benefits of physical exercise come gradually, the benefits of relaxations are also incremental and come gradually. All one needs is a reasonable 15-30 minutes of relaxation daily. Unfortunately, people have little knowledge of how relax and those who know how to relax do not do it regularly.
There are great methods of relaxation that can be practiced regularly. It only takes a little effort and about fifteen to thirty minute of deep breathing and flexing of body muscles from the toes to the head.
The first step in this relaxation process is to make early preparation. Take a few minutes before leaving your office to ensure that everything is in order and that no critical task remains pending. Keep away all files that you have finished using and will not require then for the next day’s tasks. Then get some pace and quite before you get home. You can switch of you phone and buy everything you need for the day such as groceries. This first step is critical to any relaxation process.
Organizing everything and ensuring that there is no disturbance by unwanted calls, helps your mind switch off from the stressful activities of the day. When you get home, you can take a shower to freshen up.
The second step in this relaxation process is to get comfortable. In this step, the participant must take a moment to listen to his thoughts and body. This can be done by concentrating on what one is thinking and what the body is feeling (Bisong & Powell 36). This step is critical because thoughts can get in the way of relaxing, especially if you did not organize everything during the first step. To avoid the influence of thought, visualize a blackboard at the back of your mind and imagine noting down all the thoughts on the blackboard. This process ensure that as you get comfortable, you put all thoughts aside and will retrieve them once you are through with the relaxation process.
Third closes your eyes and allow your breathing to become slow and deep. Then, let your mind drift backward to the most safe and tranquil place you have ever been. Recall all you can on what you could see, feel and hear back then. Remembering a place of tranquil in details makes one to relieve the experience. Memories come flooding the individual feel like he or she is ate the same place s/he had the experience. This step is important because good memories are therapeutic and help to eliminate discomfort or tension. Discomfort and tension can hinder the relaxation process, but once you eliminate them, you get a relaxed feeling. The process is effect, but the effectiveness increase if the subject was relaxed, calm, or free of stress at the time he experienced the experience he is remembering. Therefore the choice of the memories is very critical.
The fourth step is to push the relaxation further. You can achieve this by taking a voyage through you body and enabling your muscles to get as relaxed as possible. First, focus on your feet up to the ankles. Continuously wiggle your feet and toes to enable them relax. Then allow the relaxation wave to flow into the calves muscles. Continue the process through the thigh muscles. As the muscles relax, they become stretched and encourage increased inflow of blood, which makes the muscles heavier and warmer. The legs increasingly become relaxed as the relaxation feeling grows. This process works because flexing the foot and legs muscles stretches increasing their ability to accommodate more blood, which brings along more nourishment for the muscles and tissues.
The next step is to target the upper body. Concentrate on the spine muscles and feel the relaxation shift into the stomach. This pushes a warm sensation throughout the rest of the body. It is very easy to move the relaxed feeling from the abdomen to the rest of the body. The best way to do this is to start with the chest muscles since they are close to the abdomen and can easily pick up the wave of relaxation from the stomach. Concentrate on the chest muscles and each time you exhale, the muscles of the chest relax more. When the chest muscle get adequately relaxed, move to the shoulders.
Allow the feeling to move into the shoulder muscles wiping any tension or tightness away. The shoulder muscles will become loose and limp, and allow the relaxation to flow into the arms and hands making them limp, warm and heavy.
Once the shoulders, hands arm and hand are relaxed, move the relaxation into the neck muscles, front, sides and back. To do this, imagine your neck muscles as a collection of rubber bands that stretch and contract. Next relax the muscles of your face by allowing your jaws, sides of the face and cheeks to hang, limp and loosen. This process allows them to relax by ensuring that the relaxation wave moves up through the neck into the face and jaw muscles. After face muscles, relax your eyes and nose then the forehead and the scalp. Then take a slow, long and deep breath, to cleanse the rest of the tension.
Deep breath is an important component of relaxing. In fact, there is a relaxing process the solely depend on breathing. The importance of breathing is the reason why deep, slow and long breaths are necessary at the start, thorough out and at the end of this relaxation process.
In conclusion, the above procedure achieves relaxation by loosening muscles, easing all the tightness and tension and facilitating enhanced flow of blood. Relaxation starts with the feet since they are easy to flex and wiggle and it is easy to drive the relaxation wave upwards. From the feet relax the calf muscles then the thigh muscles. Afterwards, move to the spine muscle then abdominal muscles followed by chest muscles. From the chest muscle relax the shoulder muscles and allow the relaxation to flow to the arms and hands. Then relax the neck, face, eyes, and nose and scalp muscles. Finally, finish with a deep, slow and long breath similar to the one you started with.
Work Cited
“A Relaxation Process.” Web. 16 November 2012 <http://www.gavilan.edu/tutor/documents/ARelaxationProcess_001.pdf>
Guo, Bisong, and Andrew Powell. Listen to Your Body: The Wisdom of the Dao. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2001. Print.
