Cultivating Relaxation

You have a greater ability to control your body than you think. Our musculoskeletal system is under our voluntary control, yet most of our movements are habitual and involuntary. A crinkled brow from thinking, a clenched jaw in frustration, high shoulders and locked hips protecting against some unrealized, often imaginary danger. These are all examples of involuntary, unconscious musculoskeletal effort.

Our unexamined fears and anxieties are revealed to us in muscle tension. This excess noise in the nervous system acts as an internal resistance and desensitizes us. It serves a purpose, to protect; bracing against pain and holding our breath when we are scared are normal and healthy behaviors, but many of us stay stuck holding on to these patterns, and it prevents us from experiencing the fullness of life, it blocks us from the natural healthy rhythms in our environment.

Many people have forgotten how to relax their body, they stopped paying attention to it. Relaxation has become equated with zoning out in front a screen, desensitized, while their body stays braced. People wear their muscular tension to sleep, like an armor they forget to take off. They pay massage therapists, acupuncturists and other body workers a lot of money to help relieve them of it, while ignoring the fact that it is something that they have control over.

Luckily, physical relaxation is a skill that can be cultivated.

PRACITCE

Lay on the floor and give your weight to it, let go as much as you can and yield to gravity, dissolve tension across all your joints, so that if someone came and picked up your arm it would feel like three sand bags loosely fastened together by rubber bands. Do this for all your limbs, your head and neck, your torso and hips. There is always more to give.

Allow your body to resolve to a cloud of sensation, be in a state of internal  listening, without judging the areas or trying to change them. Just let go what you can, descend, dissolve and yeild. 

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Try this for 10 minutes a day to start. As you practice this you will grow in sensitivity and internal awareness. It will feel good, but can cause waves or discomfort and disorientation, as habitual patterns unwind them selves it takes time to restabilize. It is important to go slow at first. Eventually you can start to practice in sitting, standing, walking and while doing every day tasks.

You will grow more and more the ability to refine your muscular sensation. The subtle emotional patterns and relationships that create tension will be revealed in the process as the body and mind become more cohesive. Pain and anxiety will naturally decrease as you learn to soften and open up to your environment, as long as that environment is safe.