How to release muscle tension

RELEASING MUSCLE TENSION

One important means-but not a commonly appreciated one-we have for releasing pent-up emotion is physical exercise. Actually, this is a means for releasing the tensions that we tend to store up in muscles. Perhaps you've had the experience of hearing a telephone ring in another room. You expect somebody else to answer it, but the telephone goes on ringing, and you became tense. You are prepared to act-but don't. Your muscles are ready, some of them possibly even contracted, but you don't move and you don't relax them for a time.

When nervous tension leads to an almost continuous tensing of some muscles, contracture, or shortening of the muscles, may result. They no longer relax properly. For some years, investigators have been reporting that this is a mechanism in many common disorders. In tension head- ache, for example, the frontalis muscle in the forehead and the occipital muscles running up the back of the head may be involved. Often involved in painful, stiff neck are the neck muscles, the trapezius muscles lying over the shoulder blades, and the rhomboid muscles under the trapezius. In many cases of backache as well, muscles may be involved. 

Sometimes injections of Novocain may be needed to relieve the pain produced by knotted-up muscles. Exercise, even if only a long walk, can help when tension builds up, not only to divert the mind but also to work off muscle tensions.

You may well find great relief from tension if you break up, even just briefly, long periods of sedentary work with interludes of physical activity. Every hour or so, get up, walk about (even just a few steps), stretch and bend, perhaps wave your arms a bit, take a few deep breaths, and sit down and go to work again. Chances are you will feel some lessening of fatigue and will be able to go back to your work a little more relaxed and with somewhat more zest. 

For some people who are especially tense, special relaxing exercises may be helpful. Some years ago, Dr. Edmund Jacobson of Chicago observed that muscles which had been made tense could be taught to relax. One of his first steps, an important one, was to teach people to identify the sensation of residual tension. He would have a patient lie down, close his eyes, and rest his arms beside the body. Then he would ask the patient to bend one hand up and back, slowly, steadily, going as far back as possible. 

And, for a long minute, as the patient held the hand there, he would ask him to "observe carefully a certain faint sensation in the upper portion of your forearm. This sensation is the signal mark of tension wherever it appears in the body. Vague as it is, you can learn to recognize it." It was not unusual for a patient to take several days just to discover the sensation. Dr. Jacobson then would remark: "When you understand what you are looking for, start afresh and bend the hand slowly back again.

But this time, when it reaches its peak, relax your muscles and let it fall. Let it go completely. Let it fall limply." Eventually, after such release, there would be no tension left to feel. If you would like to try relaxing exercises, the following may be helpful. First, check with your physician to make certain you have no possible ailment that might be affected detrimentally by exercise. Get into as relaxed a state as you can. Sit down and, for five minutes or so, just try to relax mentally and physically. If you feel tension anywhere in the body, let it go. Try to make yourself as limp as a rag doll.