Yoga In 60 Seconds ~ Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Relax Your Body & Mind
Do you have excess tension in your body right now? How do you know?
Sometimes it’s tricky to know if muscles are still partially tensed or completely relaxed, especially when it’s an area of habitual tension held in the body. For me, it’s the shoulders! Perhaps you can relate or have a different area where you hold on to tension.
Often, we don’t realise this tension is even there. Practicing alternately tensing then relaxing, allows us to feel the difference between the two more clearly.
This is a great precursor to meditation or a standalone practice, give it a go and let me know how you like it.
Research On How It Works
Progressive muscle relaxation has been shown to reduce salivary cortisol levels so may help move you towards a more relaxed state.
“Results indicated that a brief relaxation exercise led to experimental subjects having significantly lower levels of post-intervention heart rate, state anxiety, perceived stress, and salivary cortisol than control subjects, as well as increased levels of self-report levels of relaxation.” (Pawlow & Jones 2005)
Progressive muscle relaxation as an auxiliary method can reduce anxiety and improve sleep quality in patients with COVID-19. (Liu et al. 2020)
Not all techniques suit everyone and that’s ok. If you don’t particularly like this one, there are others you can try. You could check out the video on up & down yoga breathing and reclined diaphragmatic breathing.
If there is something you’d like that you don’t see, just ask and we’ll be happy to include it in future releases. Remember to subscribe to our socials to get more handy yoga tips. I look forward to seeing you over there!
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