What is Progressive Muscle Relaxation and how can it help me?

So in this session, I'd like to teach a little bit about a technique called progressive muscle relaxation. This is a technique that you might have heard of at some point in the past because it's fairly common. It's been practiced with regularity since, I would say, about the 1970s. And there's some actually really good research behind progressive muscle relaxation and how it promotes relaxation in the body and the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is essentially just the relaxation response. The idea with progressive muscle relaxation is that we want to train the body to relax so that the body can send the relaxation signals up to the brain to tell the brain that it can calm down. A lot of times, fear, anxiety, PTSD symptoms are occurring in part because the brain is signaling different physiological reactions in the body. Different responses maybe to things that are happening around us, or maybe even just responses to things that are happening inside of us. So what we want to do with the relaxation skill, just like pmr, progressive muscle relaxation, is to learn how to relax the body so that we're relaxing the brain, essentially bottom up, so relaxing the body and then sending those signals up to the brain for the brain to relax as well. So what I want to do is I want to step us through progressive muscle relaxation. But keep in mind that this practice is something that can be done formally with a focus on the entire body. Just as we're going to do it, we're going to do it in a way that's pretty comprehensive. But I also want you to know that you can do shortened versions of progressive muscle relaxation. I have clients who like to practice PMR, maybe just for five minutes before something stressful happens, or maybe they just want to practice it for a couple of minutes while they're lying in bed before they go to sleep at night. So what they might do is focus on certain regions of the body and not focus on all of the regions. So know that what I'm teaching you can be adapted for whatever your life looks like and for whatever your needs are. I also have some clients that don't really benefit so much from feeling into their feet, because we're going to be feeling into all these different regions of our body when we do this together. But for some clients, they don't really like feeling into the feet or the legs. They're saying, that doesn't really do anything for me. But they really like to focus on maybe that neck, shoulders, back region where we tend to hold a lot of tension. And they say that if they just focus on those areas and how to relax those areas on command, then they feel a whole lot better. And that might just take a few minutes. So while I'm going to teach it to you as a fairly long practice, know that this can be a super short and sweet practice that you can do just within even a couple of minutes on a daily basis. So a little bit about what this is. So progressive muscle relaxation. It is kind of what it sounds like. What you're going to be doing is moving your awareness through different regions of the body, through different major muscle groups of the body, and then systematically tensing and relaxing those areas. What we're wanting to do, what we're really wanting to learn, is two things with this. One is we're wanting to learn what it feels like when the body is tense. We want to be alerted to this. We know from research that those who practice PMR on a regular basis report being more aware of what's going on in their body and specifically being more aware of when their body is starting to tense. The benefit of that, of knowing that you're starting to tense is that then you can catch it and you can say, aha, I think my shoulders are a little tense and I'm holding my breath a little bit. I must be stressed out or I must be anxious. That's really good to be able to detect, because once you detect it at a low level, what I mean is, before your shoulders are like this and you're like that, when you're that stressed out, it might be too late to intervene. But if you can start to notice when you're just a little tense in the shoulders, when your jaw is just a little tense. But before you're going to the dentist with tooth problems, when you can notice tension at a low level, then that can indicate to you that it's time to do something to relax yourself. It's like an early sign of stress. And we know that the stress response in the body is characterized by a lot of muscle tension, right? You probably already know that. So this exercise alerts you to early indications of stress. That's one thing. The other thing that this is really good for is for you training yourself how to relax on command. So I want you to be able over time to detect low levels of tension. Think, ah, I feel a little bit of tension here. I must be stressed. And then I want you to learn how to release that tension or relax the body on command. This is a skill. This is actually something that you get better at with practice. It's not something that naturally comes to Some people now, some people, they say they can relax on command and everything's great, and that's wonderful. But anyone who has a history of having an anxiety disorder or might just be prone to experiencing stress, you might feel like that's a little bit difficult. So this, as a regular practice, will train your body and your brain to learn how to relax. And what you may find is that as you do this exercise more over time, that you learn how to rel faster and more completely as your body and your brain learn, you actually get better at this exercise. So if you notice as we do this that your body relaxes, but then you end up tensing right back, that's okay. That's totally normal. Know that you may have to practice this for a few weeks before that relaxation really sticks with you. Ok, so let's go ahead and we're going to try this. So I'm going to lead us through a classic progressive muscle relaxation exercise. And as we do it, I invite you to close your eyes if you'd like to close your eyes. And all you have to do is follow along with my voice. If you don't want to close your eyes, that's fine too. Just find a spot to gaze down at. Okay, so just gently gaze down. If you can have minimal external distractors, that's probably recommended too, because when our eyes are open, we're naturally drawn out into the world around us. When we close our eyes, we're drawn inward. But if you're someone who experiences flashbacks, intrusive images, that kind of thing, then you may opt to not close your eyes. And of course, keep in mind that this isn't a substitute for therapy. Definitely see a psychologist, a therapist, if these sorts of skills are something that you're really wanting to perfect over time and use in different ways in your particular life. Okay, so let's go ahead and get started. What I'm going to be having you do when we start off is tense and release different regions of the body, and I'm going to tell you which ones to tense and I'll tell you for how long to tense them and then to release them. But you're going to notice that as we go through the body doing this, I'm going to instruct you to tense the muscles at about 40%. So what I'm telling you is I don't want you squeezing at 100%. So if we're at the hands and you are making a fist with your hands in order to squeeze your hands to tense your hands, I don't Want you to go like this, where it's like the hardest you can possibly squeeze. I want you to only squeeze at about 40, maybe 50%. Okay? Now the reason why I recommend this is because when someone tenses at 100%, it's really easy to feel. That's kind of like when I gave the example of waiting until you're like this, like really, really tense, right, to notice that you're tense. I want you to notice that you're stressed before you get that bad, before it gets that severe. So what I want you to do is when we get to the shoulders and we tense them by bringing them up toward our ears, I just want you to tense a little bit at about 40% because that's the level that we miss stress at. I want you to train your brain to notice what it feels like so that then you can learn how to relax. So I'm going to be having you tense at about 40%. We're going to be moving through the body from the bottom up. Although some people prefer the top down, that's okay as well. And as we go through each region, I'm going to give you a suggestion for how to tense that area of the body. So for instance, for shoulders, when we get to the shoulders, you'll hear me say, now you can begin to tense your shoulders by gently bringing them up toward your ears at about 40%. But for any of these instructions, any of these suggestions, if there's a different way you want to tense that area of the body, go ahead and do that. So if I'm saying to scrunch up your toes, but you don't want to scrunch up your toes, you actually rather point your feet upward to tense your feet. That's okay. The most important thing is that your body and your brain are linking together. This is what a low level of tension feels like. And here's how we can release it on command. In doing this exercise, what we're really aiming to do in the brain is a couple of things. One thing is we're aiming to crank down the knob of that little almond shaped structure in your brain called the amygdala. That's the smoke alarm or the smoke detector of the brain that alerts you to threat and danger. If you have an anxiety disorder, if you have ptsd, that little structure is cranked up like a dimmer switch, way too high, too much of the time to where you feel on guard and vigil, just stressed out. So what we want to do with this sort of relaxation exercise is Crank the knob down on the amygdala, which will allow you to feel a little bit more relaxed. The other thing we're trying to do in an exercise like this is activate the insula. That's the area of your brain that allows you to connect your brain to the body and feel into internal experiences. Without being able to do that, it's hard to have much awareness of what's going on in the body. And it's actually really difficult to have any emotional awareness also. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that we are in our bodies, that our brain and our bodies are connected. And that's really a task for the insula. So when your insula is working well, then you'll notice things like muscle tension, or you may notice when you're hungry, or you might notice that when you feel nervous, your stomach drops. We want that, that awareness of ourselves. So we're going to do this exercise to help improve the functioning of the insula. And remember also to crank down that dimmer switch of that fear center, the amygdala. So let's go ahead and get started. Find a comfortable spot. You can be sitting up, you can be lying down. And I want you to begin. If you'd like to close your eyes, I invite you to close your eyes and just bring the awareness inward toward the breath. So we're going to begin by connecting with the breath. And if you can just take a long, deep breath in and then a long, slow exhale out. And just following along with my voice, we're going to begin progressive muscle relaxation. Let's begin by bringing our awareness down to our feet, beginning to check in with the feet. So first we're just feeling the feet. You can even wiggle the toes a little bit to check in with the feet, noticing any sensations or experiences in the feet. And now I want you to tense the feet at about 40% by scrunching your toes or pulling your feet upward. And you're just going to hold the tension, hold the tension in the feet at 40%, no more than 40%. Hold. And now I want you to release the tension in each foot. So you're releasing the tension in the left foot, releasing the tension in the right foot. Now just feeling into the feet and noticing what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense. Now let's move our awareness up to the lower legs, feeling into the calf area, feeling into the calves, noticing any sensations. And now I want you to gently begin to tense the calves. You can do this by Pointing your feet downward only at 40 or so percent. Holding this tension at 40%. Continuing to hold. Noticing what this tension feels like. And relax. Relaxing the left foot. Relaxing the right foot. Again, noticing what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense. So we're relaxing both the feet and the lower legs now, left and right sides. Now we're going to bring the awareness upward to the upper legs. So around our thighs, around our hamstrings and quadriceps. Just noticing any sensations in this area. And now I want you to begin to tense this area. You can do this by gently lifting your legs up or extending your legs out. Squeezing some of the muscles in the upper leg and holding. Holding at 40% tension. Squeezing the upper legs at 40%. Hold, hold, hold. And now relax each leg, releasing the tension out of the legs. You're going to relax that left leg, relax the right leg, so you're relaxing the upper legs. You can also still relax the lower legs and feet. Okay, move the awareness up. Now we're going to move it to our abdominal area, this center for digestion. And we're going to feel into this area. Sometimes people even like to put their hands on this area. You don't have to, but you can if you'd like. Just noticing this abdominal region, feeling into this area. And now I want you to gently tense this area at about 40%. So you're tensing your stomach muscles here, which you may notice makes it a little bit more difficult to breathe fully. You to squeeze the stomach just at 40% though. And now relax the stomach muscles. You may notice that you can breathe a little more easily now, relaxing the stomach completely. You can even notice what it feels like to breathe in and breathe out. But just notice what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense. Let's move the awareness now to the hands. Feeling into the hands and noticing any sensations or experiences in the hands. And now let's gently begin to tense the hands up. 40%. And you can do this by making fists if you'd like, with your hands. Just holding that tension. 40%. Noticing what tension feels like. And now I want you to on purpose, relax each hand. Relaxing the left hand, relaxing the right hand completely and noticing what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense. Keeping the focus here on our hands, let's just move the awareness up a little bit to the arms. Feeling into the arms, noticing any sensations or experiences in the arms. And now let's gently begin to tense the arms. One way to do this is to extend them out in front of you and hold the tension in the arms, but trying just to hold it at about 40%. Hold that tension, noticing what that tension feels like in the arms. And now I want you to release the tension completely and allowing the arms to drop, noticing that feeling of relaxation in the left arm into the right arm. And now let's move our awareness to the back side of our body. Run the upper back, kind of the shoulder blade area. I want you to feel, feel into this area and notice any experiences in this area. And now let's begin to tense the upper back by bringing our shoulders back. You can kind of imagine that you're trying to bring your shoulder blades together, trying to make them meet, but only tensing at 40% and holding this tension here. Hold the tension in the upper back. And now release the tension in the upper back. Feeling the left side of your back relax. Feeling the right side of your back relax. Just noticing what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense. And now let's move upward to the tops of the shoulders, another area where we tend to hold a lot of tension. I want you to feel into the shoulders, noticing any sensations or experiences in the shoulders. And now let's begin to tense the shoulders just a little bit by bringing them up toward our ears. So you're not bringing them all the way up, but just tensing at about 40% and holding it. Gonna hold this tension at 40% and then relax the shoulders, releasing this tension. You can even move them a little bit. Okay, we're going to relax the left shoulder and the right shoulder and then that important piece of noticing what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense, noticing this contrast. Then moving up, begin to focus on the back of our neck, another place where we can hold tension. I want you to feel into the upper neck, noticing any sensations in this area. Now I want you to attempt to slightly tense the neck. One way you can do this is by actually letting your head go back a little bit and you can squeeze the neck muscles a little bit, just at 40%, holding this tension, holding the tension and now releasing it by bringing the head back up, Trying to relax the left side of the neck, the right side of the neck. You can even move around a little bit. Just noticing what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense. Now moving the awareness back to the front of the body again, we're going to focus on the jaw. This is an area where a lot of us hold a whole lot of tension and it can cause a lot of problems. For us. So what I want you to do is feel into the jaw, just noticing any sensations, any experiences in this region. And I want you to gently tense your jaw by bringing your teeth together, not too hard, just at about 40% and hold this tension. Hold. And then now relax the jaw, letting it drop, relaxing the left side of the jaw and the right side of the jaw. Sometimes I even kind of press on it like this to help it relax and just notice what it feels like to be relaxed after having been tense. Now, before we end this exercise, let's return the focus back to the breath. Just taking one more deep breath, deep breath in, Long, slow, deep breath out before opening your eyes and come back into the room. So that's an example of how we can do progressive muscle relaxation. A lot of different clinicians do it different ways. Some clinicians will add in regions of the body that I didn't include, or they may not include certain regions that I did include. So keep in mind there's a lot of different ways we can do this technique. What's most important is that you find some variant or some way of doing this that fits with you, that resonates with you, that you can train your brain how to do well over time. And it's the sort of situation where the more you practice, the better you get, the more your body and your brain respond and the more relaxing this becomes. So if, like I said before, if you do this exercise and your body just boomerangs back and becomes really tense, know that that's a very norma, very common experience. But if you're willing to stick with a practice like this, you really will experience benefits over the long term, as well as producing those brain changes that I talked about. What I'd recommend for a technique like this is that you do what you will do. And that's what I always say about techniques, is I recommend you practice as much as you're willing to practice. So what I don't want is for you to have a failure experience with this, where you intend on doing this an hour a day, you can't seem to find the hour. And so you say, forget the whole thing, I'm not going to even do it. So what I'd rather you do is Practice this for 30 seconds when you can. Or if you can set an alarm on your phone for a five minute practice on your lunch break, if you can do 10 minutes before you go to sleep at night. These are all ideas. If you want therapeutic brain change, the recommendation is usually doing about 15 to 20 minutes. Of per day total of an exercise kind of like this and or diaphragmatic breathing or autogenic training or other types of relaxation techniques. Usually the recommendation is to practice those for a total of maybe 15, 20 minutes a day for about 15 weeks. And I know that sounds like a lot like 15 weeks sounds like a really, really long time. But the time passes anyway. Your brain's always wanting to change in one direction or another. You might as well steer it in a therapeutic direction and know that symptom changes come a lot sooner than that. 15 weeks. So the 15 week mark is usually about how long it takes for your brain to show changes on an actual brain scan. But most of the time, clients report feeling a change before it happens, that they would actually see the change on the scan, so that the change on the brain scan happens after you've felt the effects of it, if that makes sense. So you're not going to have to wait 15 weeks to have any effect. Usually folks notice something within about a couple of weeks or so, but that's what I'd recommend. 15, 20 minutes a day. And you can break it up. It can be 5, 5, 5. You don't have to do one practice that lasts that long in the day, but break it up just a few times a day. Doing an exercise such as this, or maybe one of the other ones that I teach as a way of training your body and your brain to relax and after a while you'll start to feel a little bit different.