Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation technique helps to reduce anxiety levels through different tension and relaxation exercises.
These exercises can play a very important role in anyone looking to find a bit of harmony at the end of the day or to start it in a relaxed way.
There are many people who find it difficult to control anxiety, stress and nervousness, or it is something that they believe is out of their reach. Feeling overwhelmed by the situations and experiences in our life is very hard from a psychological and emotional perspective. Thus, tools such as progressive muscle relaxation are very interesting to take control of our emotions.
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What is Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation?
There are many useful tools to deal with situations that cause us stress, but without a doubt the most relevant are those that teach us to listen to our body and notice what is beginning to happen to us in order to act before feeling overwhelmed.
Progressive muscle relaxation can become, in this sense, a very useful self-control tool. It is a simple technique to perform and train, with proven effectiveness. His exercises can be done almost anywhere and with training you can achieve not inconsiderable results.
Therefore, it is a technique that can be used when other relaxing activities are unfeasible or as the main relaxing activity.
What is Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation for?
Progressive muscle relaxation seeks two main objectives: on the one hand teach us to understand our own muscle signals and learn how to act on these signals.
Stress, anxiety and in general any important activation, evolves following an ascending curve to the peak of personal activation.
If that high point is reached, we lose control of what is happening to us and therefore we cannot answer how we would like. Hence the importance of knowing the signals prior to that point and being able to control the activation without letting it reach its maximum.
With proper training, the person will be able to recognize the level of muscular tension that the different areas of their body present.
How to perform progressive muscle relaxation?
To start with this technique, it is advisable to go to someone who has already mastered it and thus avoid possible self-harm.
Also, in the beginning, it is necessary find a place where we feel comfortable, Let us know that we will not be interrupted and we are relaxed to be able to train. Over time these exercises can be practiced anywhere.
We can practice muscle relaxation or sitting or lying down, at our choice.
We will start atStretch the muscles, in the order listed below, for 5 seconds, then relax them for 20 seconds. When a muscle group has been tensed and relaxed, it will move to the next one on the list until finished.
It can be difficult at the beginning to count the time, so we can help ourselves with someone we trust to focus exclusively on our muscles.
Muscles to be trained for muscle relaxation
It is important to tighten and loosen the following muscles, in the order they appear in this list:
- Dominant hand and forearms: you have to clench your fist as if you wanted to punch.
- Dominant biceps: try to bring the wrist to the shoulder while keeping the hand relaxed.
- Non-dominant hand and forearms: we repeat the same as in the other arm.
- Non-dominant biceps: We repeat the same as in another arm.
- Forehead muscles: raise the eyebrows forcefully.
- Eyes: close the eyelids tightly.
- Nose and upper cheeks: wrinkle the nose forcefully as if we were dealing with something unpleasant.
- Lower cheeks, jaw, and tongue: pressing the palate with your tongue, clench your teeth until you feel the tension in the entire maxillary area.
- Neck and throat area: there are two variants depending on the position in which we are.
- Sitting: try to touch the chest with the chin
- Lying down: pressing the head against the bed, floor or the surface on which we are.
- Shoulders and upper back: pull back your shoulders trying to bring them together.
- Chest: take a deep breath and release the air with force.
- Abdominal muscles: put the stomach in as if we were doing a hypopressive abdominal.
- Lower back: arch your back and pull your abdomen out.
- Dominant leg: stomp. In case of lying down, stretch the leg with the foot outwards.
- Non-dominant leg: repeat the same movement for the other leg.
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The importance of training and perseverance
Like almost any exercise whose benefits we want to feel, You need to practice it often and establish a training routine. The ideal, in this case, would be to practice these tension and relaxation exercises twice a day for about 20 minutes.
Most of these exercises can be done in a sneaky way every time we need them to relax our body and focus our mind on training.
Over time, having trained, we will be able to feel the benefits. And it is that when due to stress, tension or anxiety our muscles contract and tense naturally, a subsequent relaxation will also come. Thus the impact that the situation we are facing causes on us will be attenuated.
Thus, it is possible to educate the muscles to loosen up when they feel tension And it has reduce anxiety levels. Furthermore, this offers a feeling of well-being by being able to tame anxiety and nervousness at will.
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