Anxiety Relaxation
Are relaxation and meditation the same thing?
They are strikingly similar. Some forms of meditation provide a person with a personal chant word called a mantra, but this is not necessary. A person can count backward or choose any meaningful word or phrase to say while relaxing, for concentration and focus.
Meditation can involve staring at an object, such as a lighted candle. This helps focus attention on the process. After a few minutes, some people like to close their eyes and just relax.
“I’ve tried relaxation, but i just can’t do it!”
Believe it or not, everyone can do it — it just takes the right preparation and attitude. Here are some hints:
- Maintain a passive attitude. Stay open-minded. Discard thoughts such as, “this won’t work,” or “this is dumb.”
- Set aside at least 20 minutes once a day.
- Get comfortable. Sit in a big easy chair with your clothes loosened and your feet up.
What are some specific benefits of anxiety relaxation techniques?
Relaxation has several benefits. “They include decrease in worry and sense of ‘nervousness;’ deeper, more restful sleep; more energy/less fatigue; reduced anxiety and stress; loosen muscles/less tension and reduced pain.
Increase self-esteem and coping abilities through positive suggestions.
How can this relaxation help my anxiety or depression?
Relaxation helps a person cope with anxiety, which is often a combination of experiences. Relaxation provides a person an opportunity to sit quietly, get in touch with the inner self, and gain more control over feelings, thoughts, and emotions.
A quiet time every day is important for everyone, whether or not he or she has anxiety. Relaxation just makes the quiet time more meaningful and serene.
The Relaxation Technique
Progressive relaxation is a method of relaxing the mind and the body by consciously relaxing one major muscle group at a time. For instance, you might concentrate on feeling heavy, warm and/or tingly in the legs while breathing calmly with eyes closed, then go on to another body part.
Close your eyes. Breathe calmly, slowly and deeply using your whole diaphragm. Practice at the beginning by gently pushing your stomach out as if you’re pregnant when you breathe in. Fill your lungs with air and keep breathing slowly in and out through your nose.
Slowly count backwards from five to one. This focuses your thoughts and gently relieves your mind of daily, busy thoughts. Once you reach number one, start over again.
Concentrate on sensations of relaxation in your physical body. Allow your body to sink into the chair. Become limp, like a limp elastic band. Imagine your body feeling very, very heavy, warm and tingly. Challenge yourself to see how much heavier you can feel.
Keeping your jaw loose, even dropped open, allow your head to relax with the rest of your body. Relax your face and eyes.
Once you feel relaxed, visualize a wonderful, calming place where you would love to be. Keep counting or repeating a calm word if you think you’re becoming less relaxed. If you are concentrating on counting and visualizing a beautiful place, you will be too focused to think busy thoughts. If distracting thoughts do enter your mind, gently brush them aside, and continue with the process.
Give yourself a positive suggestion, slowly, several times. You can think of a suggestion to give to yourself before you begin your relaxation exercise. You can say something nice about yourself that will make you feel good.
What are some positive suggestions a person can say while in the relaxed state?
Suggestions can be personal and meaningful; short and positive. Some suggestions might be:
- I feel calm and serene.
- I am having a good day.
- I am special and unique.
- My attitude is pleasant and Positive.
- I love my body.
- I believe in myself.
If you can’t relax, maybe you’re trying too hard
All too frequently, anxiety sufferers feel frustrated because they can’t relax. They struggle to find some peace of mind. They try really hard to learn how to relax. However, if you think about it, that’s really counter-intuitive. The more you try and force yourself to relax, the least effective it will be.
There are however, some techniques that work great for inducing relaxation, and you should learn these techniques and make them a part of your anxiety management toolkit. They will be useful in different contexts, provided you should make sure not to merely read about them. You should strive to learn these techniques and make them a part of your life.
That’s the only way that relaxation exercises can provide you with the results you crave. The results you get from this kind of exercise is often a function of the effort and commitment you put into it.
DIY Muscle relaxation techniques
Muscle relaxation can provide impressive results, especially when you’re having trouble sleeping. This exercise is actually fairly simple and you can do it in any position you like: the idea is focusing on each part of your body at a time. Contract the muscles in that area as intensely as you can. Hold for a few moments. Now let all the tension go. Repeat.
Begin with your head and neck, then your arms and torso, your stomach, legs and work down to your feet. In the first few rounds, contract all the muscles in each part of your body at once, and in subsequent rounds, progressively focus on individual muscle groups. After a few rounds of doing this exercise, you will feel as though your body is made of Jell-O, which will be great.
Aromatherapy will soothe the inner beast
We all have five senses, but we all focus on them differently. For someone who’s not much attuned with the sense of smell, aromatherapy may feel like some kind of new age hype. Well, it’s not! And if you’re not benefiting from the unique properties of scent to evoke a relaxed and peaceful atmosphere in your household, then it’s about time you do.
Generally speaking, some examples of calming fragrances include Basil, Cinnamon, Geranium, Juniper, Lavender, Patchouli, Rose, Sandalwood and several others. Those are some fragrances to consider if you don’t know where to start. Ideally though, it’s better to just try all kinds of different aromas until you find which calms you the most. What works for your particular sense of smell can be something unlikely or even something others don’t find relaxing at all.
When you find some fragrances that seem to help you relax, surround yourself with them. Use incense or essential oils or any other means to propagate aroma in your environment. You can even try carrying around a little flask or perfumed handkerchief embedded with your favorite scent. Get into the habit of smelling something you find relaxing whenever your emotions are getting out of control, since that will sometimes be all it takes to trigger relaxation.
Nothing wrong with going a bit crazy
Here’s something unconventional which sometimes produces potent results in terms of chasing away your stress. Although we recommend you use this technique only when there’s no one around, otherwise they might get the wrong idea. Because what we’re proposing you do with this exercise is nothing short of going crazy! And we mean that quite literally. For five to ten minutes, you will let go of all your tension and worries, along with your sanity.
Run around flailing your arms! Scream! Make strange noises! Throw a tantrum! Jump on your bed! Run around in circles! Spin around until you’re dizzy! Shriek! Laugh hysterically! Do anything that comes to mind, just as long as it’s not damaging or destructive. Your goals here is putting your sense of ridicule on hold and just do whatever comes to your mind for a few minutes. Once you’ve done so, your excessive energy will be spent and you will feel much better than you were feeling before.
Just make sure there’s no one around, or you’ll have to do a good deal of explaining as to why you were just leaping on your mattress acting like a maniac rooster!
Do you enjoy writing or painting?
If you’re the creative type and you enjoy writing, painting or other forms of self-expression, you should try to use that as part of your coping and relaxation techniques. Any kind of activity will do, as long as it’s creative and it’s something you enjoy doing: dancing, crocheting, scrapbooking, writing poetry… anything goes. The goal here is to engage in an activity you find soothing, which will help you stay calm as you keep yourself occupied doing something creative.
Why is that important? Because if you’re doing something creative, you’ll have some kind of output you can later analyze. And this output can actually provide you with important clues that will help you get a clearer sense of anything that might be bothering you at the time, which you don’t realize on a subconscious level. It’s not by accident that many of the great artists come up with their best work in dire times of depression and anxiety, you know?
