In the exercise, we will teach you to do relaxation exercise properly. This will be useful if you practice it once a day and will help you to be able to stabilize your breathing, your reaction to those things which normally stress you, and allow your heartbeat and pulse to be at the correct levels. This, in turn, helps your blood pressure to remain stable. You are much more likely to feel less depressed if you are indeed relaxed and breathing correctly.
Lie on the bed in a quiet room and make sure that you have no outside interference or noise. If that means turning off the TV, then do it. Lowered light is good so if you have drapes, close them. When lying on the bed, only use one pillow. If you use two, you put your head in a position that isn’t the easiest for breathing as it blocks the windpipe. However, if you don’t use any pillow at all, you are likely to feel discomfort.
Make sure that your clothes are comfortable and that you undo your tie or your waistband so that nothing distracts you at all. I feel like not at all being restrictive and I can do the relaxation exercise without being interrupted by a tight waistband or a collar that is choking me. Lie with your arms by your sides. What we are going to do is practice breathing and concentrating only upon what you are asked to. That means if you let thoughts wander into your mind, you start again from scratch. The idea is to concentrate so much on the exercise that you don’t think outside of the line of thinking at all.
Close your eyes as this makes distraction less as well. Now, breathe in and think about your toes. You are concentrating totally on your toes. Flex them so that you feel them tense up and then relax them, all the time concentrating just on the toes. As soon as they are relaxed, you move up to the next part of the body. Thus, you could be thinking of the ankles. Do the same thing, making sure that you are breathing in through the nose and out through the nose at the same time as thinking of your anlkes. Flex them so that they are tensed and then relax them. Feel them get heavier. Feel them relax.
Work your way through the following body parts doing the same thing:
Calf, knees, thighs, hips, waistline, chest, fingers, thumb, forearm, upper arm, shoulders neck, back of the head, mouth, jawline, head.
Remember, if you are distracted and think of anything else, you need to go back to the toes again and start over. The reason for this is because you are trying to discipline yourself to relax entirely and you can’t do this if you are letting other thoughts get in the way. The whole exercise will eventually take you about 20 minutes, but you may find that this is a longer time when you first start, because you will no doubt have to stop a couple of times and go back to the beginning because you are not accustomed to thinking of such a narrow range of things. The point of the exercise is to totally relax mind and body and this can be performed once a day. It’s a good idea to do this at bedtime because by the end of the exercise you should be sufficiently relaxed to sleep well.
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