How to handle tension and treatment for it?

 Go on to one or more of the following exercises, working slowly, smoothly, without jerking. Start by doing them for just a few minutes a day; then work up to perhaps as long as half an hour. Seated comfortably, raise your arms slowly overhead-and let them drop suddenly. Do the same with the legs. After each drop, pause several seconds to appreciate the relaxed effect. Breathe deeply, exhale slowly. Lie on your back on the floor. 

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. Tighten all muscles in your body. Then let go. Breathe deeply, exhale slowly. Still on the floor, shrug your shoulders up to your ears-and then let them fall back. Turn your head far to the left, then to the front, and relax. Repeat to the right. Breathe deeply and exhale after each movement.

Lying on your abdomen, rest your head on your folded arms. Tighten buttock muscles, then let go. Repeat several times. If you find these exercises helpful, you may wish to consult two books written by Dr. Edmund Jacobson: Anxiety and Tension Control," which is primarily addressed to physicians, and You Must Relax,t primarily written for lay people. Many other physicians today believe that the key to relaxing tension is muscle control. 

With every type of nervous stress, they note, there is muscular expression-sometimes as obvious as drumming with the fingers, sometimes as subtle as a mere flick of the eyes. If you can develop muscular control, you can help prevent buildup of tension. For that you will need to recognize delicate sensations most people are unaware of, distinguishing the slightly different feeling of a muscle performing useful work and a muscle tensed uselessly. Then it is necessary to control the unused muscles, turning them off.

The objective is differential relaxation in which muscles in constructive use stay in use while others are relaxed fully. As an example of how to go about this, close your eyes and silently repeat to yourself the names of three states or Presidents of the United States. Though you are not speaking, notice the small, almost imperceptible tentative movements that take place in your tongue, lips, jaw, cheeks, and throat. Then see if you can relax these muscles completely. o. Jacobson, Edmund, Anxiety and Tension Control. 

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.