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Relaxation Meditation

Stress is a part of daily life; On the plus side, it spurs us on when it comes to creativity, learning and even survival. Sometimes however stress becomes too much to handle rather than a survival mechanism and begins to interrupt the healthy equilibrium of our nervous system. Fortunately, there are relaxation meditations which can help restore balance by triggering the relaxation response and calming the body down from its heightened state of awareness.

Relaxation meditation can mean physically relaxing, with the resulting psychological and emotional benefits. More importantly though it is a mentally active physiological process that leaves the body relaxed, and the mind calm and focused.

Some of the Benefits of Relaxation Meditation on the Mind and Body are:

  • - Decreased stress
  • - Lowered blood pressure and cholesterol
  • - Reduced headache
  • - Increased energy, breathing, and posture
  • - Increased fertility and libido
  • - Increased creativity
  • - Improved memory and perception

Start by looking for the Relaxation Meditation that resonates most with you personally as well as your current stress level and lifestyle. When all these factors line up it elicits the body’s optimal relaxation response. For example:

  •  - If  stress tends to make you angry, then meditating by deep breathing or guided imagery may be best.
  •  - If you are more likely to become withdrawn or depressed by stress, then something that energizes your nervous system, such as rhythmic exercise, may be best.
  •  - Or, if you tend to freeze up externally while speeding up internally, mindfulness walking or power yoga may be most beneficial.

Articles About Using Meditation For Relaxation:

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Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Progressive muscle relaxation

Science tells us that the mind and body are intimately connected to each other. Our thoughts affect our bodies, and our bodies affect our minds. If we are under constant stress, the stress will express itself in the body in the form of an affliction. Likewise, this progressive muscle relaxation can reduce stress and anxiety in the mind as well as the body.

Just as you can improve your well-being by following a nourishing diet and by getting enough sleep, you can also help yourself by learning to relax the tension in your body. Many of us are so accustomed to being tense that we no longer notice it. The first step is to become aware of tension in your body. Once you do, you can use the technique described here to relax.

When to Use Progressive Muscle Relaxation Technique

Use progressive muscle relaxation to relax your body, and in turn, it will help to calm your mind. You can also use this technique to help with physical problems such as tension headaches.

Why This Works

Studies have shown that by tensing and relaxing your muscles, you can develop a greater awareness of the existence of stress in your body, and you can release the stress. And when you learn to control the tension in your body, the associated anxiety and stress will diminish as well.

The Technique

Where I’ve written “for a few seconds,” please adjust the time to suit your comfort level, generally between 5 and 15 seconds.

  • Make yourself comfortable, either lying down or sitting in a comfortable position. Be aware that if you lie on your bed, you may fall asleep before completing the technique.
  • Breathe naturally and allow yourself to relax for about 30 seconds.
  • Now close your eyes as hard as you can. Keep your eyes squeezed shut for a few seconds. Be aware of the tension in the muscles all around your eyes.

Gently relax the muscles around your eyes and open your eyes. Notice that the muscles around your eyes feel more relaxed.

  • Raise the skin on your forehead and hold it for a few seconds. Feel the tension.

Slowly let your forehead relax. Feel the sensation of relaxation in the muscles of your forehead.

  • Tighten your jaws by clenching them together. Hold it for a few seconds. Feel the tension.

Relax your jaws and feel the relaxation.

  • Raise your shoulders up toward your ears as high as possible. Feel the tension. Hold it for a few seconds.

Relax your shoulders. Experience the relaxation in your shoulders.

  • Inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Do this three times, noticing the sensations as you slowly exhale.

Now try to inhale a little deeper and hold it for a second or two before you exhale. Notice how your body relaxes when you exhale.

  • Tighten your abdominal muscles as tight as you can. Hold it for a few seconds then let them become soft again.
  • Tighten the muscles of your buttocks. Squeeze the muscles as tight as possible for a few seconds and then let go.
  • Tighten the muscles in the upper half of your legs, hold them as tight as possible for a few seconds then let go.
  • Tighten your calf muscles, hold them tight for a few seconds then let them soften.
  • Now bend your feet so your toes are pointing towards you. Stretch them towards you as far as you can. Hold for a few seconds then let go.
  • Now bend your feet so your toes curl towards the floor.
  • Before you continue with your day, take a few moments to enjoy your relaxed state.

What We Learned Today

By contracting and relaxing the muscles of your body, you will release stress and enjoy a feeling of relaxation. When your body is relaxed, your mind also becomes quieter.

Here is an audio of a different type of muscle relaxation you can try.

A Question That Sometimes Comes Up Is

Why is this exercise considered a meditation when all I did was tighten my muscles?

Mindfulness meditation is about directing your awareness toward something while at the same time not getting caught up in your thoughts. For example, watching a sunset, entering the “zone” while playing a sport, or simply savoring a meal are all forms of mindfulness meditation.

To your health,
Totally Meditation

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Relax and Breathe

class 1 girl outside breathing

Relaxing and breathing are excellent ways to begin practicing meditation. Both are important techniques in almost all types of meditation. And you breathe all day long, so fitting in moments of mindful breathing isn’t difficult to do.

When to Use this Technique

This meditation focuses on the physical sensations of breathing. The technique doesn’t take effort. You can practice in many everyday situations, such as when you’re waiting in a grocery line or waiting for a bus or a dinner companion.

I sometimes feel that I’m wasting time when I’m forced to wait for something. But by doing this meditation, I can put the time to good use. So next time you find yourself waiting for something, don’t take out your phone to surf social media. Instead, use the time to practice mindful breathing.

Why it Works

As you switch your attention from thinking to breathing, you’ll find yourself becoming more centered because you’ll be quieting your thoughts. It works no matter how you’re feeling, but if you’re troubled, you’ll find yourself becoming calmer because you’ll be quieting the part of your brain responsible for the “fight or flight” response.

The Technique

The easiest way to make a daily habit of meditation is to keep your sessions shorter rather than longer, especially when you first start learning to meditate. For this reason, I suggest you start your first week by spending only one to three minutes in your daily practice.

Preparation

It will be easier to meditate by choosing a quiet place with few distractions. After trying this meditation once or twice in a quiet place, you may find that you can meditate in more crowded or noisy places.

The Meditation

  • You can sit, stand up, or lie down when doing this meditation.
  • If the situation allows (perhaps you’re sitting and waiting for a dinner companion), close your eyes. Take a moment to let your body relax. Rest your hands open on your lap or at your side.
  • Take one or two deep breaths to help settle in.
  • Breathe as you would normally. You can breathe using your mouth or nose. As you gain practice with this meditation, you might find it interesting to try both ways and to notice the difference.

Notice the Sensations of Your Breathing

  • As you breathe, bring your attention to the sensation of breathing. In other words, instead of having your attention on your thoughts about breathing, focus on the sensations of your breathing.
  • Where in your body do you feel the air as you breathe in and out?
  • What does it feel like as the air travels over your tongue and down your throat?
  • Can you feel the air as it travels down to your lungs and back up out your nose?
  • Do you feel a sensation of warmth or coolness?
  • Do you notice your lungs rising and falling? What about your belly?
  • Are you breathing shallowly or deeply? What does it feel like if you try breathing the other way?
  • Your mind may use words to describe the sensations of your breathing. That is a common response. If that happens, just bring your attention back to feeling the sensations of breathing. There is no need to pay attention to the words.

Next Steps

After you practice this meditation a few times, you may want to lengthen the time you spend in meditation. Or if you find that short sessions are right for you, try adding a second session later in the day.

The next time you find yourself waiting for someone or something, relax and breathe. It will pass the time and release tension before it has a chance to build up.

What We Learned Today

Relaxing and breathing are basic techniques in many types of meditation. You can practice relaxing and breathing, and notice the sensations of your breathing, in many everyday situations.

Try this for a week and see how it works for you.

FOLLOW UP
Question that Often Comes Up

I forgot to practice for a couple of days. How can I remember to practice?

Forgetting to practice is a common problem. It may help to plan a specific time of day to practice, such as when you first wake up. Or you might decide to meditate when you do a certain activity, for example, when you’re waiting for a bus or doing the dishes. It may also help to have a special place to practice. When you pass this place, you’ll remember to meditate.

To your health,

Connie

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Relaxation Sequence

This relaxation sequence is a preparation for longer meditations. By relaxing your body and your mind first it helps you to go into a deeper meditation more quickly and easily.

relaxing meditationThe more you practice this relaxation sequence the easier it will be to remember. Soon you will find you can fall into a relaxed state pretty quickly.

Make yourself comfortable, have a glass of water and a blanket handy for added comfort and of course turn off anything that is likely to make noise.

  • Close your eyes. Let your hands lay open on your lap and set your feet a comfortable distance apart.
  • Take a deep breath, filling your lungs and belly. Let it out with a sigh.
  • Breath deep, feeling your lungs and belly expand and breath out with a sigh.
  • Breath in again. Sigh out again.

Go back to your normal breathing and as you breath in imagine you are breathing in calmness. As you breath out imagine your mind and your body are relaxing and releasing tension. With every breath allow your muscles to become more relaxed, calm and heavy.

  • Feel your feet relaxed against the floor.
  • Feel that relaxation traveling up through your ankles and into your calves. Allow the muscles in your calves to become soft.
  • Bring your attention to your thighs, feel them relaxing down towards the chair.
  • Notice your buttocks and lower back are comfortably relaxed.
  • Feel this total relaxation spreading through your abdominal muscles. Any tension you were holding in your stomach melts away. Feel all the organs in your abdomen relax.
  • This quiet relaxation travels up to your chest and through the organs in your chest and into your upper back.

You feel calm relaxed and healthy.

  • That calmness spreads across your shoulders and down your arms into your hands and your fingers. Your fingers relax open.
  • Feel relaxation traveling up your neck and through your jaw. Your jaw may relax open a bit.
  • Relaxation spreads across your face with the muscles around your eyes softening and releasing tension.
  • You find yourself feeling so relaxed that even the skin on your forehead becomes smooth and quiet.
  • Take a moment to enjoy this physical relaxation. If you notice any areas of your body still feel tense spend a moment on that area – breathing in relaxation breathing out tension.

Your body is now in a quiet, calm and relaxed state as you bring your attention inside your head.

  • Allow any thoughts that come into your mind to disappear.
  • There is no need to try to stop thinking, simply release thoughts as they come up.
    • There is no need to hold onto a thought, if it is important you can come back to it later.
    • With practice you may become so quick at this that you can release a thought before you finish thinking it.
  • Now bring your attention to the quiet gap that happens between thoughts
  • Allow that sliver of time to expand in between thoughts.
  • Take a minute or two now, paying attention to the quietness between thoughts.

Use this relaxation practice on it’s own or as a preparation for a longer meditation. You will find I refer back to this page for many meditations.

To your health!

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Overcoming Anxiety

Man doing wood carving for relaxationMeditation is a powerful tool for overcoming anxiety. It doesn’t cost anything, can be done anywhere and the side effects are all positive 🙂

It is well established that anxiety can lead to heart disease, relationship problems and a person who is anxious is likely to rate their level of happiness lower than a person who controls their anxiety.

Several ways to overcome anxiety:

  • Meditation.
    We have a wide variety of meditations to choose from right here.
  • Mindfulness.
    Pay attention to only what you are doing right now. This leaves less room for an anxious mind to worry! In this article from Harvard Health Publications mindfulness meditation (in the video he describes it as paying attention) is given as a way to relieve anxiety.
  • Creativity.
    Here is an article about using art as meditation, including ideas and instructions. Although I use art as an outlet, many other (non-electronic) hobbies have the same effect. I say non-electronic because it has been shown that computers and other electrical devices stimulate instead of calm the nervous system. Here are a few (non-electronic) examples

    • Knitting, quilting, crocheting.
    • Wood working, model trains. There are many hobbies that use your hands and imagination to create a physical project.
    • Art in it’s many disguises – drawing, painting, working in clay. Think of creating things that are visual.
    • Writing. No not your grocery list 😉 I mean creative writing like short stories. Also, writing in a journal can be calming, especially if you take the attitude that you are writing away your problems. (In that case start by writing about the things that are causing stress, then switch over to writing about things that make you feel calm or happy. That way the last thoughts you have created for yourself are enjoyable ones, so take a few moments to FEEL the good thoughts 🙂
    • Reading uplifting materials.
    • Creating music.
    • Gardening.

When you are engrossed in creating, you forget about what is causing you stress. Sometimes is all you need in order to gain a sense of calm is to interrupt the anxiety with a hobby you enjoy.

  • Socialize.
    Connect with friends (preferably ones who are upbeat).
  • Movement.
    Exercise is well known to relieve stress and anxiety.

I hope you find these suggestions useful.

Do you have any other ideas? Please leave a comment to let me know what your favorite way to overcome anxiety is 🙂

To your health!

 

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Relieving muscle tension and anxiety video

This simple technique once learned can be used to reduce stress and muscle tension.  I sometimes use this as a natural sleep aid.

As you follow this meditation it helps help you to relax muscles and  aids in relieving muscle tension.

When you release physical tension it allows the mind to become calmer as anxiety fades away. This is because the unconscious mind interprets tense muscles as being on guard against perceived threats so when physical tension fades anxiety is also likely to fade.

That fight or flight response was great in caveman days when you needed to avoid man-eating dinos, not so great now when the “threats” are likely to be deadlines and too much to do in too little time!

There is a huge amount of research showing the nasty effects of chronic stress, and here are just a few of them.

  • high blood pressure
  • heart problems associated with high blood pressure
  • increased perception of pain – and let’s face it if you think you are in great pain you are!
  • headaches
  • relationship difficulties

Please watch this video and leave a comment in the box below!

To your health 🙂

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Download this Relaxation Meditation – mp3 to Reduce Stress

Hello!

man listening to meditationI would like to introduce my first relaxation mp3 to you.

The purpose of this free mp3 is to help you learn a simple and effective method for reducing physical tension, and at the same time reduce stress. I sometimes use a version of this progressive muscle relaxation technique to help me sleep when I have insomnia.

I hope you find this technique as useful as I do!

Disclaimer – this is my first audio recording so I am giving it away free until I get the process perfected, then I will likely record a longer version, put it up for sale and remove this free version from the site, so if you like it please download it now 🙂

To download it to your own computer right click on the link below and choose where on your computer you would like to save it.

I would love to get your feedback about this mp3! Could you please leave me a comment below to let me know what you think of it? (the comment shows up after it is approved, I do that to reduce spam)

totallymeditation_relaxation_meditation_1

To your health!