Relaxation
Switch off and Relax…
Being good to yourself doesn't have to include a calendar full of luxury spa treatments. It simply means treating yourself as well as you'd treat a friend.
Now, what does that imply?
While learning how to treat yourself well, you increase self-compassion and you become your own therapist.
There are 3 different techniques that you can apply to release tension, physically as well as mentally, and you learn to become more relaxed, focused and spiritual in less than 20 minutes per day.
One of the self-guided techniques is
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR).
With this specific technique you will experience a deep muscle relaxation that leads to deeper breathing and a lower heart rate at the same time.
The second technique is
Autogenic Training (AT)
It focuses more on mental relaxation through autosuggestion. While working with AT you are going to understand the importance and power of affirmation in your life.
The most spiritual technique is
Quan Dao Kung Fu
“The pathway to the source”. It is a circle of 12 Quan Dao movements in a slow motion pace that address the three spiritual centers in your physical body – the mental, the heart and the intuitive lower centre, all situated along the middle line of your body. You learn how to connect them with each other and find the right balance and flow between all three centers.
Apart from theses specific techniques you need to learn to schedule time slots for yourself to indulge or just do what you love to do the most!
Why are these techniques so important to learn?
They will help with the release of pain and muscle tension
They will calm you, lower your heart rate and let you breathe deeply and slowly
They will relax your body, mind and soul
More on the importance of learning techniques to relax deeply on a physical and mental level below.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation PMR
Progressive Muscle Relaxation is especially helpful for people whose anxiety is strongly associated with muscle tension. This is what often leads you to say that you are “uptight’ or “tense.” You may experience chronic tightness in your shoulders and neck, which can be effectively relieved by practicing Progressive Muscle Relaxation. Other symptoms that respond well to Progressive Muscle Relaxation include tension headaches, backaches and tightness in the jaw, tightness around the eyes, muscle spasms, high blood pressure and insomnia. If you are troubled by racing thoughts, you may find that systematically relaxing your muscles tends to help slow down your mind. Dr. Jacobson, the creator of PMR, once said, “An anxious mind cannot exist in a relaxed body.”
The immediate effects of Progressive Muscle Relaxation include all the benefits of relaxation. Long-term effects of regular practice of Progressive Muscle Relaxation include:
Decrease in anxiety
Reduction in the frequency and intensity of panic attacks
Improved concentration
Increased sense of control over moods
Increased self-esteem
Increased spontaneity and creativity
These long-term benefits are sometimes called generalisation effects: the relaxation experienced during daily sessions tends, after a month or two, to extend to the rest of the day. The regular practice of Progressive Muscle Relaxation can go a long way toward helping you to better manage your anxiety, face your fears, overcome panic, and feel better all around.
Autogenic Training
Autogenic Training allows you to control stress by training your mind to influence and balance your body’s self-regulative system that controls circulation, breathing and heart rate. It will teach you to respond to verbal and visual cues that reduce tension.
Autogenic Training restores the balance between the activity of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system and has important health benefits:
The parasympathetic activity promotes digestion and bowel movements
It lowers the blood pressure and slows down the heart rate
It promotes the function of the immune system
Autogenic, which means “self-regulation or -generation,” refers to the way in which your mind can influence your body to balance the self-regulative system that controls circulation, breathing, heart rate, and so on.
Autogenic Training allows you to control stress by training your autonomic nervous system to become relaxed. It will teach you to respond, in a passive manner, to verbal and visual cues that reduce tension. By focusing on relaxing phrases and images, the training conditions positive, relaxing responses, such as rhythmic breathing and heart rate and a warm, relaxed, heavy feeling throughout the body.
Autogenic Training is based on the notion of passive concentration. You try to achieve your goal of relaxation by not working actively as you would do in Progressive Muscle Relaxation.
This technique can be used to apply positive affirmations to change your attitude to a better way of thinking in different areas of your life.
Quan Dao
is a spiritual version of Kung Fu and represents the “Exercises of Strength”, developed to train our body awareness and should be part of our daily spirituality.
Body and soul are closely connected. Those who train the body also do it for the soul.
When you improve your concentration and your presence, your body and soul become much stronger!
Quan Dao is perfect for anyone who wants to awake the inner and outer vitality.
3 benefits of Quan Dao:
Developing body awareness
Creating more inner strength
Strengthening mental and physical health
