Lifestyle Choices

Any worry that you have increases your level of muscular tension. Any specific feelings that you inhibit are likely to be related to specific areas of muscular tension — for instance, if you inhibit aggression you may feel tension in your limbs. If you inhibit the voicing of a feeling, you will automatically find a physical way of stopping the process of sound production at some point between your lungs and your lips. You may:

• Temporarily stop breathing or else breathe more shallowly.
• Constrict the muscles of your neck. (When such tension is held for a long period it can lead to a headache at the back, top and/or front of your head.)
• Tighten the muscles of your jaw. (Jaw tension can lead to a headache on the sides of your head around your temples.)
• Tense your tongue and stiffen or purse your lips.

If you try doing all these things at once, you will get afeeling of the “stopping of something coming out of you”.Usually, such tensions go unnoticed unless they lead toheadaches or other physical symptoms. Unfortunately, tension held in the muscles limits receptivity to the feelings of others as well as to your own feelings and inner processes;whereas the more relaxed and flexible you are physically, the more you can allow feelings and vitality to flow through your body. It is worthwhile learning the difference between tension and relaxation. The ability to perceive when you are tense at an early stage gives you a useful warning system because muscle tension may be an indication that something in your life needs looking at or changing. You can learn to realize your own level of muscle tension by practicing tensing and relaxing your muscles, as follows: lie down; tense the muscles in your legs, buttocks, belly, chest, arms, neck, jaw and face as tightly as possible; stay tense for about 30 seconds and then release the tension as you breathe out with a sigh. To learn to notice tension in specific areas of the body, practice tensing and relaxing each area separately.

Speaking Your Mind

If you are tense, try speaking your mind — when you have said what you really wanted to say to somebody, or when youallow yourself to feel the feelings that are inside you, you mayrelax with relief.

Heat

Any form of pleasant heat tends to relax muscles. A hot bath or a shower after a day of tension can change a potentially depressing evening full of preoccupations with the day’s events into an evening when you are more open to something or somebody else. Sometimes the relaxation of muscles in the bath allows feelings to arise which were previously blocked. You may, for instance, find it easier to cry in the bath. Outside the home, going to a Turkish bath or sauna can be a relaxing and invigorating experience.

Yoga

This ancient system of stretching and breathing may bring about all the effects common to the stretch exercises described below. In addition, yoga may be more like a form of meditation, focusing on the control of muscles, breathing and feeling, leading to the possibility of greater calm and clarity. The stretch exercises on pages 200 and 201 are yoga based, but if you want to learn more about yoga contact one of the organizations listed at the back of the book , or join a local class.

Stretching Exercises

There are many forms of exercise which gently stretch yourmuscles. After such exercises it is quite common to experience yourself as emotionally open, a natural result of loosening muscular tension and increasing the depth of breathing. The more open you are emotionally, the more pain, laughterand sparkle are possible to you.

The exercise programme described on page 200 may help you relax, get rid of negative feelings, remove muscular tension, and feel more energetic. Try doing the programme regularly, perhaps every evening in order to relieve tensions that may have built up over the day. It is designed to both prevent and relieve depression. It should also help to correct any postural faults that are symptoms of depression.

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