Of course, the antidote for stress and tension is relaxation, but the problem is that most people don't know how to relax. In fact, many people experience such chronic, habitual tension that they don't even realize they're tense but actually believe they are relaxed! As an experiment, raise your eyebrows so that you create wrinkles in your forehead, and hold this position for just one minute. This is rather difficult to do-in fact; you will probably find it mildly painful. If you were to continue this experiment for an hour, you would probably develop a splitting headache! Now observe others around you-you'd be amazed to see how many people do manage to maintain this expression all day. Were you to ask any of them, they would probably be unaware of their chronic frowns, because their tension feels normal? Most people-and that probably includes you-become aware of tension only after it has reached an extreme degree.
Relaxation combats the effects of stress, but it is useless to admonish yourself to relax; you must first learn how. After you have mastered the skill of relaxing, you must use it if it is to become an effective stress antidote. Stress management involves changes in all four AMPS modes of behavior: You must teach yourself new actions, new mental pictures, new physical sensations, and new sentences. This will take time and effort, and you'll need to practice the following exercises until you achieve mastery. On the average, it takes two to four weeks of daily practice to learn this skill. But don't let that scare you-the amount of time necessary each day is minimal, and the eventual benefits will make you feel better and will assist in preserving your health and peace of mind. It is best to begin your training at home. After you have learned the basic skills, extend them to your work environment.
Your first objective is to learn what tension and relaxation feel like in each muscle group. This is a necessary step and is easily accomplished. You must learn to recognize tension in its initial stages so that you can eliminate it before it gets out of control. To do this, you need to sharpen your self-perception and stress-detection mechanisms.
One of the best ways to do this is to alternately tense and relax the various muscle groups. Study the physical sensations when the muscle is tense. What exactly does tension in this muscle feel like? Relax the muscle. Study the different physical sensations that relaxation produces. By contrasting the tension and relaxation, it becomes easier to distinguish them.
To illustrate, make a fist tight enough so that you feel a slight increase in tension (don't tense so hard that it hurts), and hold this for five to seven seconds. Study the physical sensations of tension in your knuckles, your fingers, and other parts of your arm. Then remove the tension by quickly opening your hand and relaxing the muscles. Study the changing sensations. Try this exercise several times. Your objective is to become aware of the different physical sensations,
The purpose of the tension-relaxation recognition exercise is to illustrate the basic procedure for physical relaxation training. By purposefully tensing muscles, you can study where your muscles get tight and what that feels like to you. As you release the tension, you can study what that feels like as well. By using the same tensing-relaxing procedure with all your major muscles, you can learn to identify tension throughout your body. Think of this as a means of developing your early detection system. To accomplish this, you will need to focus your attention conscientiously on the physical sensations of tension and relaxation in your muscles.
The Muscle Groups
There are four major muscle groups, each composed of several smaller muscle groups. The following list describes each group and how to tense the muscles.
1. Hands and Arms
a. Dominant hand and forearm: Make a fist with your dominant hand.
b. Dominant biceps: Bend your dominant arm at the elbow, and point your fingers toward your shoulder.
c. Non-dominant hand and forearm: Make a fist with your non-dominant hand.
d. Non-dominant biceps: Bend your non-dominant arm at the elbow, and point your fingers toward your shoulder.
2. Head and Face
a. Forehead: Raise your eyebrows toward the top of your head or knit your eyebrows to create a frown.
b. Cheeks and nose: Squint your eyes and wrinkle your nose.
c. Jaws: While clenching your teeth, press your lips together and pull back the corners of your mouth.
d. Lips and tongue: While pressing your lips together, push your tongue into the roof of your mouth.
e. Neck and throat: While pushing your chin into your chest, apply a counterforce by pressing your head backwards into the back of your chair.
3. Upper Body
a. Shoulders and upper back I: Raise your shoulders toward your ears.
b. Shoulders and upper back II: Arch your back and push your shoulder blades together.
c. Chest: Take a deep breath and hold it.
d. Stomach: Suck in your stomach toward your spine, or push your stomach out as far as you can.
4. Lower Back
a. Buttocks: Flex your buttock muscles and push them into your chair.
b. Thighs: Press your heels into the floor or straighten out your legs and tense your thigh muscles.
c. Calves: Point your toes down toward the floor or point your toes up toward your head.
d. Feet: Curl your toes as if you were burying them in sand. (To avoid cramps, tense these muscles slightly for about three seconds.)
Rules for Practice
- Select a quiet setting and arrange not to be interrupted. Unplug your phone and put a "do not disturb" sign on your door.
- Make yourself as comfortable as possible before beginning the exercise. Sit in a comfortable chair that supports your head, or recline on a couch or bed.
- Work on the major muscle groups in any order you prefer. It is important, however, to tense and relax all the muscles in any one group before moving on to the next one.
- Hold the tension in the muscles for 5-7 seconds. Experience the relaxations for about 20-30 seconds.
- Be careful not to tense your muscles too hard. If you do this, you will have difficulty learning to detect the first signs of tension. Use a sufficient amount of tension to notice a distinct sensation-but don't tense the muscles any more than that.
- Actively reduce the tension by quickly releasing your hold on the muscles.
- Study the physical sensations of tension and relaxation. Concentrate on the contrast between tension and relaxation.
- Breathe evenly and smoothly. Inhale during the tension phase and exhale at the beginning of the relaxation phase.
- 9. Throughout the exercise instruct yourself silently. During the tension phase, speak to yourself rapidly; during the relaxation phase, speak slowly and soothingly.
- At the moment of relaxation, think of your anti-stress command.
- Practice with your eyes closed.
- When distracting thoughts come into your mind, simply notice that you have become distracted, and return your attention to the sensations in your muscles.
- Let yourself enjoy the physical sensations of relaxation and of smooth, even breathing.
- Practice twice a day for 20 minutes. Schedule an appointment with yourself and insist that you keep it. Reinforce yourself for doing so.
- Practice consistently and conscientiously.
What you say to yourself during your practice sessions is an important part of relaxation training. In a training workshop the leader would guide you through the exercise, telling you at each point what to do. But as your own trainer you need to instruct yourself. Self-instruction is a very powerful change technique. Talk to yourself, perhaps this way: "Tm going to begin by making a fist with my right hand. Tense my fist and forearm. Good. Feel the tension building up. Study the sensations of tension. Feel that tension and now... Relax (anti-stress command)... just let the tension dissolve. Good. How does relaxation feel compared with tension? Better, huh?"
Many people prefer to use tape-recorded instructions. This method is effective, but it has its drawbacks-you can become a passive listener, for instance. If you listen passively to instructions, you will find it more difficult to make the transition from your practice session to actually using relaxation to counteract stress. And you can hardly take out your tape recorder in the middle of a tense meeting or a performance appraisal, so try actively instructing yourself. If after several practice sessions you still want recorded instructions, then make a tape for yourself or purchase a prerecorded instructional tape. When you instruct yourself (or make your instructional tape), don't worry about the exact wording; make up your own instructions, and instruct yourself the way you like to be instructed.
Self-Instructions
Breaking habits and learning to control undesirable behavior is difficult. Engaging in the new desired behavior often feels forced and artificial at first. This is where self-instructions help. Instructions are a guide that ready assist in the early stages of learning a complex behavior like driving a car or managing stress.
Consider how most of us learn to play tennis. The ball comes over the net and we quickly think, "Run left. Backhand. Easy, swing!" We've made our first volley. As we become skilled, we can see the ball and be there. We are one with the ball, the racket, and our opponent. During a fast volley, our internal speech is momentarily silent. Self-instructions at this moment would be counterproductive. Don't worry about having to talk to yourself all the time. Self-instruction is a behavior change technique-you can use it to change the way you cope with stress triggers. Here is a List of sample instructions.
Present the instructions to yourself in a way that you like to be instructed. It's like giving yourself a pep talk, except that instead of saying, "Come on, I can do it," tell yourself what to do. And then, of course, follow your instructions-you'll notice that each of the sample instructions is followed by a self-reinforcing statement. In the early stages we learn fastest when we receive a lot of reinforcement. Actively look for what you’ve done right and then point it out to yourself. For the time being, forget the constructive criticism-it's often a stress trigger. As you become more skilled at relaxing yourself, the experience of relaxation itself will become a built-in reinforcement. Then you won't need to consciously instruct yourself or to reinforce yourself. But in the beginning, indulge yourself. The tension habit is tenacious: It takes concerted effort and a lot of reinforcement to break it.
