Malvan Bringing moot Moon So we're going to do a muscle relaxation practice.
So this is a long-standing practice that has a lot of evidence behind it for its successfulness in relaxing us and also a number of benefits of this for the body and the mind.
It's a bit of a sort of active practice in the body and the basic sort of activity of this practice is tensing and relaxing different muscle groups in the body as we move through the body.
It's a practice a lot of people have come across before and what I want you to do going into this practice is just have a moment to actually check in with your body,
Find your way into a relatively comfortable position for you.
Just take a few deep settling breaths.
So we're going to have the tense part of each kind of muscle group and I'm going to ask you to tense for roughly five to seven seconds with each sort of muscle group and then we'll have the relaxed part which will be slightly longer maybe about double that time.
So what I'd like you to do is start down at your hands and actually first like squeeze a tight fist with your hands with both hands for a few seconds and then actually open and splay your fingers as wide as you possibly can for a few seconds and then from there relax the hands.
So slowly softly let the hands kind of fall back down.
You might like to at some points in the relaxation phase like find yourself doing a bit of a soft sighing breath out as you relax your hands and come up to your biceps actually do like you're doing a bicep curl or just tense physically tense the biceps.
Hold and then ever so softly lengthen back out the arms but the arms softly fall to a really comfortable position for you let them spread and extend relax your arms.
And then the last of the arms is the triceps so this time stretch your arms out long and actually feel a bit of a tension along the back of the arms and your triceps.
Hold and then again allow your arms to float back down and the whole arm to soften and relax.
You might like to along the way blow out a really soft stream there through the mouth but you need not do this part.
Relax your arms and then bring those shoulders up towards the ears.
Hold for a couple of seconds and then let those shoulders slip and slide back down away from the ears.
And then away from the ears just let them settle and soften them a little bit.
Relax your shoulders.
You come up to the forehead and just scrunch up the eyes and the forehead.
Hold and then allow the eyes to soften the forehead to soften and smooth.
Just perhaps blowing a soft stream of air out through the mouth for a soft out breath as you allow your eyes and forehead to just soften and relax.
And then just tense up the jaw by actually stretching the mouth as wide as it can comfortably go creating like a wide yawn where you stretch out the muscles of the jaw.
Hold and then allow the jaw,
The mouth to soften back down to almost close.
Maybe your lips stay slightly apart.
Allow the muscles of the mouth to really soften.
And we're going to move to the neck.
Only do this if you know you don't have any neck problems and do this one quite gently so it's to kind of stretch the head back.
Create some tension in the back of the neck or a stretch in the back of the neck but a soft one.
And then let your head come back to vertical.
Feel those neck muscles lengthen and relax.
As you blow out softly feel the whole face,
The jaw,
The neck and the shoulders all relaxed.
Relax.
Just move down to your shoulder blades so the back of your,
Your sort of upper back,
Bring your shoulders,
Kind of pull them together a little bit behind your back,
Your shoulder blades.
Again not too hard.
Just feel that tension for a few seconds and then soften and relax your shoulder blades.
Allow there to be just a nice sense of space and spaciousness between your shoulders.
Blow out softly through the mouth as you relax the shoulders.
Relax.
And then come to your chest.
Tense up your chest actually by taking a really big deep in breath and feeling the chest kind of expand to its limit.
And from there as you kind of breathe out actually tighten the chest muscles together towards each other.
Hold for a couple of seconds and then just relax the chest altogether.
Just allow yourself to take one nice soft breath in and out,
Kind of nourishing and relaxing the chest.
And then come to the abdomen and just kind of tighten the stomach in for a few seconds and hold.
And then just slowly soften and relax the stomach.
And then to the lower back and the buttocks and just sort of tighten them up again,
Be careful with your lower back.
Hold for a few moments.
And then let your sit bones expand,
Soften and just really allow yourself to be heavy into the chair or the place you're lying.
Feel that sense of expansive relaxation.
And then come to your thighs and sort of tense your thighs and upper legs,
Could be by straightening out the legs or just kind of tense them from a bent position,
Whichever you prefer.
But hold them tense for a few seconds and then relax the thighs,
The hamstrings,
Upper leg muscles,
Let the thighs kind of feel like they're almost melting down towards the floor.
Soften and relax the thighs.
Relax the thighs.
Just tighten up your calves by bringing your toes towards you and actually kind of pulling your toes quite strongly towards you for a couple of seconds.
And then again with the calves,
The opposite movement,
Actually straighten your toes out away from you now and feel that kind of tension that creates.
And then very slowly allow the feet to come back to a comfortable neutral position and just let your calves come heavy down towards the floor.
Your shins,
Your lower legs,
Heavy towards the floor.
Relax the lower legs.
And then lastly curl your toes inside your shoes,
Make a little kind of tight little knot with your toes for a few seconds.
And then from there,
Soften,
Open and relax the toes and the feet.
Let the toes just expand,
Let the feet spread and soften into the floor.
And then make that a base for just a sort of final stage relaxation of the whole body at once.
So just enjoy a sense of relaxing the whole body.
You might even like to do this by some really kind of nice deep soft breaths in and out.
Or you might just like to let the whole body just kind of soften and relax naturally,
Feeling open and soft and relaxed.
Relax the body.
And let yourself enjoy the relaxation this also offers to the mind and the breath and the other layers of you.
Rules are not bound toInside the weight of the imposed pressure,
The body on you is all perfect.
Achilles.
