Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Stress Reliever

We all have busy lives and many responsibilities that we are juggling. This juggling often leads to a high amount of stress. Stress can be shown and felt in our bodies in different ways: high heart rate, racing thoughts, feeling tired, etc. One of the top ways stress is felt in our bodies is with muscle tension. Muscle tension can make it difficult to relax and fall asleep as well as increase the probability of injury. Therefore, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is suggested for stress relief for sleep, every day use, and before competition and practices.

Stress Reducing and Relaxation

Stress relief as well as relaxation should be found everyday. Even if you only find five to ten minutes a day. There are many different types of stress reducing and relaxation activities. Some examples: breathing techniques, visualization, self-care, puzzles, reading, coloring, etc. More about the importance of stress reducing can be found throughout CTG’s website, podcasts, and blogs, including Growth’s blog.

PMR

Progressive muscle relaxation focuses on slowly tensing and relaxing each muscle group. Additionally, it allows you to differentiate between tension and relaxation in order to start recognizing the physical sensation of tension to notice when you are becoming tense and stressed. Therefore, you can notice when you are holding tension and stress in your muscles and relax them in order to decrease injury probability and decrease time of falling asleep.

PMR and Mental Training

A progressive muscle relaxation script can be found in our latest podcast episode. Mental training sessions can also be used to identify what type of PMR would be best for you and where you hold stress in your body. Moreover, mental training can provide specific PMR scripts that work for you and help you find what is causing your stress and to work on your stress in general.