Progressive muscle relax Therapy Part-1

Yes!! I’m back. It’s been a while since I gave my put thoughts. Well, reasons for not being able to do so are 1) RSI. 2) Lots of work. The pain of RSI still persists at root but I’m feeling fine for right now. Today I’m goanna right about journey I’ve been through last one month. I’ve already written about what RSI is in my previous blog. Today I’ll write about what to do when go through it.

When I suffered from RSI nothing went well. I couldn’t sleep properly, not even eat properly. We couldn’t celebrate our last wedding anniversary. Imagine when you woke up in the morning and first thing you feel is not fresh air its pain. I got pain in my neck and shoulder. A higher version of pain in those areas can cause cervical spondelysis which sucks. I tried acupressure doctor, physician and physiotherapist. They’ll all give you medicine but nothing worked completely. Still I’ll show you two exercises given by my acupressure doctor which I feel are very handy and effective.
The other thing that really well worked on me is PMR therapy.

Progressive muscle therapy:
The process of progressive muscle relaxation is simply that of isolating one muscle group, creating tension for 8 -10 seconds, and then letting the muscle relax and the tension go.
For example: Take your right hand, tighten it into a fist, and notice what happens. You can feel the muscle tension increase in your hand and up your forearm. The longer you hold it, the tenser it becomes. You become aware that it does not feel good. In fact, it begins to hurt. This is an example of exaggerated muscle tension. If such tension exists around the neck you get a neck ache, and if it is in the forehead you get a headache. Continue to hold the tension and now, all at once, relax and let go. Allow your hand to flop down into your lap and notice the difference. The muscles now begin to relax, and the muscle tension just flows away, melts, dissolves, and disappears.
Remember here releasing the tension is the most important part of this therapy. As per the physiology principal ‘Whenever you create tension in a muscle and then release the tension the muscle has to relax. The muscle does not have a choice’. You would say ‘ya, we all get tension in muscle at office they why our muscle doesn’t relax?’ Aree yaar!!! You need to relax it to let your muscle relax. Imagine this thing you are carrying a bucket full of water on each of your hands. You can carry it for 1 minute, max two minute. What after that? If you don’t drop it and take a breath it’ll start giving you pain. So the funda is to relax while work. Just 15 seconds 20 times a day is enough which will only take your 5 minutes of your day. You do have that much time, don’t you?

The key to triggering the relaxation response in this manner is to take charge of the voluntary muscles by tensing them and forcing them into a state of relaxation. Once the muscles relax then the other components of the relaxation response will naturally follow. Relaxed muscles require less oxygen so the breathing pattern slows and deepens. The heart does not need to be beating so fast to carry oxygen out to tense muscles. Heart rate and blood pressure decline. The normal blood flow returns to the belly and digestion resumes. The belly is calmed. Hands and feet warm up. Such a series of bodily adaptations all start and fall naturally into place because the voluntary muscles are being directed into a state of relaxation. Soon changes in mood follow, and you become more calm and refreshed.

Read about suggestion before doing it, how to do it and about its procedure in next version of PMR technique blog. Have a healthy life.