hello my name is Clare and welcome to Generation Calm. Today I'm going to be
talking about progressive muscle relaxation, what it is and what benefits
it can do to help you reduce your stress and anxiety. So progressive muscle
relaxation was one of the first techniques I ever learned as a
psychologist and it's the process of tensing and relaxing large muscle groups
in your body. It's often used as the first step in learning a stress relief
technique. When I was working with people who were clinically anxious this would
be a good technique to start with because often people aren't taught at
school how to relax and so you kind of have to learn from the beginning again
what the difference really is in your muscles between tension and relaxation
and so by tensing the muscles you can suddenly start to see where you might
have been holding tension in the first place and it can be kind of surprising.
So when you first of all learn how to tense a muscle you can then really
notice the difference when you relaxed afterwards and it really is the stepping
stone and the first step into stress relief and relaxation. So let's talk a
bit more about the benefits for you and the reasons why you should be trying
progressive muscle relaxation. So first of all it's a great way of learning how
to be aware of your body even before you do a body scan because it's bringing
attention to large muscle groups in your body and noticing the effects that you
have there with the tension and then the relaxation. So it's the prerequisite to
body scans it shows the difference between a tense muscle and a relaxed
muscle and you really might be quite surprised at where you're holding
tension already in your body and you may not always notice the difference until
you really tense and then realize. For those of you who don't like the
quietness and that stillness of meditation progressive muscle relaxation
is more of an active technique. You're actually doing something, moving
your body. It's also quite a mindful technique because you're bringing
attention to parts your body and really focusing on one muscle group at a time
and that focuses your mind and brings your attention to one thing at a time. So
if you've ever heard of the mind-body connection you know that if you are
feeling a certain way in your body then that will reflect in your mind so if
you're feeling tense in your body your mind will therefore feel tense but if
you can learn how to relax the muscle groups or how to relax your mind.It's
similar in a way to how smiling helps make you feel happy. So
progressive muscle relaxation is actually a no pill natural remedy for
stress relief. There are no bad side effects unless of course you don't like
feeling relaxed. Of course if you already have tense muscles I would suggest that
you talk to a GP about this first, a physician, just to check that
everything's okay and I probably wouldn't tense so hard if you have tight
muscles but other than that there really are no ill side effects to this. I think
a lot of people prefer progressive muscle relaxation because unlike
mindfulness it doesn't have any kind of
association with Buddhism. Some people might, for religious reasons, might not
want to do mindfulness because of its association with Buddhism and and this
stress relief technique has nothing to do with any religion whatsoever. Regular
practice of progressive muscular relaxation will really help to reduce
your stress level.
So next week I'm going to upload a progressive muscle relaxation video with
the audio and I'm actually going to be taking you step by step the way that I
do it that way you can try this relaxation technique for yourself out. So
thanks for watching, please share if you like this video and I look forward to
seeing you next time bye
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