Progressive muscle relaxation is a technique intended to bring awareness to the physical body and the areas that may be holding tension throughout our day.
This version is a detailed one starting with your feet and ending at the top of the head.
You can do it either lying down or sitting in a chair with your feet touching the ground.
Take a moment to get comfortable.
It's also important to know that this type of tensing and relaxing of the muscle is not meant to hurt.
If you have arthritis or other joint issues or migraine headaches or generally injured or sore in different parts of the body,
Be very gentle with yourself.
The goal of this exercise is to simply gain awareness of the muscles when they are contracted and tense and when they are loose and relaxed.
Please stop tensing if you feel any pain.
Now take a breath in and out and bring your attention to your feet.
Keeping your feet on the ground,
Just lift the toes to the sky.
If you're lying down,
This would mean simply pointing your toes towards your head.
You'll feel a stretch perhaps in the shins of your legs,
Along the bottom of your foot,
Your calf muscles.
Keep your toes tense towards the sky for a few more seconds and release.
Now bring your attention to the feet,
The whole of the foot.
Keeping the heel on the ground or on the floor,
Raise both feet towards the sky.
If you are lying down,
This would mean simply pointing your foot and your toes towards your head.
Again,
You'll feel some tension in the calves and the shins.
Keep holding the feet up in the air with the heels still planted on the ground for a few more seconds and release.
Just notice how the feet and toes feel at this moment.
You may notice they feel warmer or heavier or maybe there's some tingling.
Now we'll do the opposite tensing by lifting our heels off the floor but keeping our toes grounded.
If you're lying down,
Simply point your toes away from you.
Imagine you're pushing your against a wall with your toes and just keep pointing.
If you're sitting,
Then the pad of the foot and the toes are still on the floor but your heels are raising higher almost like we're putting on way too high high heels.
You should feel tension in your calves now.
You may feel some tingling or tightening.
Keep tensing for a few more seconds and release.
Allow the feet to relax and really pay attention to how the calves and feet feel.
Are they heavy,
Warm,
Tingling?
Maybe you feel nothing.
That's okay too.
And again,
If anything begins to hurt,
Please stop or be gentler with your tensing.
Now bring your attention to the upper part of your legs,
The thighs,
And the buttocks.
And to tense this area,
Bring your thighs in close.
You may find that as you tighten the thighs,
The glute muscles naturally tense as well.
So we're tensing the thighs and the glutes.
These are some of the biggest muscles of the body,
So we have a lot of power here.
Tighten these muscles now.
Hold for a few more seconds.
See if you can tighten for a few seconds longer and release.
Allow the seat or the floor or your bed to fully support the lower half of your body,
Which is completely relaxed at this point.
Take a moment to observe how different this part of your body feels compared to before.
Now bring your attention to your stomach.
This area is a little tricky because when we contract or tense,
We're also altering our breath,
So be gentle.
Slowly begin to suck in the abdominal muscles.
You may notice you're naturally exhaling when you do this.
Hold the muscles in for just a few seconds and release,
Allowing the inhale to happen naturally.
Again,
Slowly tighten and draw in the ab muscles and then release,
Allowing the breath to flow back in naturally.
And we'll do this one more time,
Slowly pulling in the muscles of the stomach and then releasing and allowing the natural in-breath to happen.
Observe how the stomach feels.
You may also notice your breathing has slowed.
Now bring your attention to your shoulders and your shoulder blades.
This is an area of much tension for many.
Bring your shoulders up to your ears.
It's almost as if you started to shrug your shoulders but got stuck at the top.
As long as you are not in any pain,
Try to squeeze tighter,
Bringing the shoulders up a little higher and hold them here close to your ears for a few seconds.
And release down,
Allowing the shoulders to drop completely.
Just observe how the shoulders feel.
You may even notice they are lower than when you started.
Notice how your shoulder blades in the back feel.
Are they looser?
Warmer?
Heavier?
What?
Now bring your attention to the hands and we're going to tighten our fists as much as we can without pain.
You'll notice some temperature changes,
Perhaps in the fingers,
Tightness in the arms,
Perhaps the wrists.
Hold the fists as tight as you can.
Hold it for a few more seconds.
And release.
Just observe the looseness in your hands.
Again,
If you have pain in your hands,
Be kind,
Stretching and tightening only as your body allows.
And bring your attention to your upper arms,
Your biceps.
Imagine holding a weight in each hand and bring the weights up like you're doing a bicep curl.
Tightening that bicep and instead of coming back down,
Just hold the arms tightly,
Tensing the muscles in the upper arm.
Hold for a few more seconds and release.
Allow your arms to hang or be supported by the floor.
And now bring your attention to the facial muscles.
Now we don't typically do much stretching of our facial muscles.
And if you suffer from migraines or dryness,
Be really gentle.
Contracting the muscles in this area can trigger headaches for some people and that's not our intention.
You may even want to simply listen to this part and skip the tensing.
Instead of contracting,
Envision the jaw and the face muscles warm,
Heavy,
And relaxing.
For those doing the contractions,
Bring your attention to the muscles around your jaw.
We contract these by pulling the sides of our mouth back in a tight smile.
You may even jut out your chin.
This will also stretch parts of the neck.
This can feel odd,
But just hold it here for a few seconds,
Trying to tighten as much as you can around the mouth.
Hold it for a few more seconds and release.
Your jaw may be feeling very heavy.
If it's relaxed,
You may even notice your mouth sort of come apart a little bit.
Now bring your attention to your forehead.
To contract the forehead,
Raise your eyebrows and lift your gaze up to the sky,
Almost like you're trying to look at the top of your head.
You'll feel a stretch or a tightness.
Hold it for a few seconds here.
Now take a few breaths.
Feel the head and the neck as heavy,
Warm,
And relaxed.
Scan the body slowly from the neck,
The arms and hands,
Chest,
The back,
Stomach,
The glutes,
The thighs,
The calves,
The feet,
And the toes.
Just notice the sensations in the body now and whether they're different than before you did the practice.
One of the goals of this practice is to also bring your awareness to how your body feels when it is tense versus when it is relaxed.
So as you do this more frequently,
You'll begin to automatically notice when and where you're holding tension.
Now begin to make small movements.
Bring your awareness back to the room.
You may want to flutter your eyes open,
And when you are ready,
Come back to the present moment and space.
