Learning How to Relax

How much challenge is too much? How much emotional, physical or psychological stress can one handle?

The question is not how much challenge can we handle but how well can we recover and return to homeostasis after we have been challenged? One of the first questions I ask my clients is how do you relax. Most are taken back by the question because in the fitness industry, it is only recently that the value of relaxation has been recognized by medical health professionals to be directly related to our ability to have a healthy and happy life.

The ability to relax and recovery from a sympathetic nervous system stimulation varies from person to person and is influenced by a host of factors including but not limited to history, temperament, and type of challenge. What is stressful for one person may be difficult for another person to assimilate. Knowing what challenges you and tracking your reaction is key. Do this by listening to how your biology responds. Does your heart rate increase, can you sense tension in your body, is your breathing restricted?

Exercise: Practice a full body scan. Begin in a comfortable place where you can focus on your body like in your bed, chair, or lying on the floor. Start by tensing the muscle in your feet, then while maintaing the tension in your feet began to tense your entire leg. Then both legs are tense. Continue to systematically tensing the muscles in your body until your entire body is tense. Once every muscle is tightened, hold a few seconds, then all at once relax everything. Let go of all the tension more and more, breathing freely and deeply. Repeat the exercise until you feel a deep sense of release on the letting go phase of the exercise.

This exercise will help you to learn what tension feels like and what relaxation feels like. Practice checking in on your state of relaxation throughout your day. This is a good beginning in learning how to sense your body, feeling the contrast between contraction and release.

A Breathless Lifestyle

How do we avoid breath creating distortions and return to a natural state of breathing?

A breath distortion can effect any part of our breathing cycle; Inhalation, Exhalation and Pause. The Pause cycle of the breath is where most problems occur. The 'Pause' happens at the end of the exhalation and is the time in which we are gathering energy for the next inhalation. Without the pause our organs are compromised and will remain in a state of chronic tension and poor function. Also our nervous and circulatory system are compromised. Our overall sense of well being becomes limited.

Any event in our daily experience can cause a change in our breathing cycle and with each experience our breath is adapting as we integrate or digest our experiences. Like a tree adapts to stillness after being moved by the breeze. The problem arises when we interfere with our ability for our breath to normalize. For example, if you did not allow your breath to normalize after doing a running sprint and then went into a intense conversation with your boss or loved one, the stored tension in the breathing muscle would quickly form a habit of breathing that is distorted and will be carried through to all your future experiences.

Another example deals with being parents or caregivers. Think of a child that is crying. The neurology of a child lacks the experience to self regulate and adapt to this completely new experience of intense emotions. The child sensing the environment changing relies on the parent for cues of comfort. If these cues are not effectively communicated, the child will begin to build an internal tensional habit that will effect their breathing physiology for a life time. Parents are initially responsible for supporting their children in returning to a natural breathing state.

We currently live in "Breathless Society" or a society in which most of the citizens participate in a lifestyle that does not allow for breath awareness and adaptation. The speed at which we transition from activitiy to activity has a lot to do with how our breath is able to return to a normalized state.

Symptoms of a distorted breath pattern include and are not limited to:
Chronic Anxiety
Prone to Anger
Depression
Chronic pain
Digestion Issues
Sleep disturbances

To develop a relationship with your breath will take a kinesetic sense or a sense of your body as it is breathing. If you are not familiar with your breath in a natural state seek out a teacher, like me, to help you learn an invaluable skill.

Work the Breath Muscle

The Diaphragm, the primary breathing muscle, is the only muscle that lies perpendicular to the spine in the body. When we don't use our diaphragm to breath we can end up with what I call a paralyzed diaphragm. A paralyzed diaphragm occurs when we use secondary breathing muscles like the commonly used pectorals,sterno-cleido mastoid and the scalene muscles. If one has a paralyzed diaphragm it is also likely that other primary breathing structures will be inhibited as well, such as the ribs. The rib muscles, tendons, cartilage and ligaments all move with every cycle of breath. It is important that every rib moves with expansion and contraction. Unresolved, intense past emotional experiences are one reason for breath distortions and can remain stuck in ones breathing cycle.

Exercise: Try bringing your attention to the place where the air is just entering your nose. This is the gate from the outer world to your inner world. As the air enters your body begin to track how it outlines your inner landscape or the space that is inside of you. Use your breath to find how each rib moves exploring the entire dimension of your rib cage with each breath: The front ribs, the side ribs and the back ribs. On inhalation, feel your ribs began to expand from the lower ribs first. Then like a ladder how each rib expands upward until you get to the very top of the rib cage at the base of the neck.