Learning to Relax

All nervous tension has a muscular element, the control of which helps your nervous and emotional as well as your physical state. You cannot command your whole body to relax at one time, but you can easily learn to relax one or two muscle groups at once. When you have learned this simple procedure, you can quickly relieve accumulated muscle tension at almost any time. In the process you will keep both nervous and muscular tension from building up, and maintain a much more emotionally responsive state.

Lie down in a quiet, darkened room. Hold your neck muscles slightly stiff, moderately stiff, quite stiff, then as stiff as you can make them. Now move backwards along the same scale, from totally stiff to quite stiff, to moderately stiff, to slightly stiff, to normal - and then one more step in the same direction, towards looseness and relaxation beyond the original base level. Go through this routine three or four times, until you definitely 'get the feel of it' and can relax your neck muscles at will.

Now you are ready to relax other parts of your body.

Relax your right arm, your right leg, your left leg, your left arm, your scalp, your face, your neck, your back and your tummy muscles. This order - around the clock, then top to bottom - is easy to remember. Do not strive for maximum relaxation of each part: you will relax more thoroughly in a given length of time by focusing your attention on each part only long enough to loosen its musculature through a single 'relaxation command', then shifting your attention to the next body part. After three or four 'go-rounds' you will find yourself drifting into a state of highly restful calm which you can easily maintain for some time.

When you first try part-by-part relaxation, twenty-minute rest breaks in a quiet bedroom work best. After a few weeks, however, you will become good enough at relaxing muscle groups that isolation and quiet are no longer necessary. You can sit in a straight chair with both feet flat on the floor, place your hands in your lap, let your head loll forward, and relax muscle groups in rotation just as if you were in bed. Even when children are playing in the vicinity or dinner is cooking on a nearby stove, you will find that you can readily relax. After two or three 'go-rounds', lift one hand up to shoulder height and let it fall back into your lap like a limp dishrag. Do the same with the other hand. Then resume part-by-part relaxation, perhaps for two to three minutes. Such brief 'refresher slouches' will definitely help to keep tension from building up, of ten with startling effects on your disposition, level of contentment, and sexual responsiveness.

A few more weeks of practice will improve your ability to relax to the point where a set position and chair- or bed supported posture are no longer entirely necessary. Whenever you become conscious of muscular tension you will be able to relax it without interrupting your activities.