Progressive relaxation is a technique that has you tense and relaxes body parts from the feet up. We are going to pay attention to how it feels when you tense and relax. 

Your mind may wonder, and that is okay so long as you notice and refocus!

Clifton A Grant: You are listening to a mindful moment from the wellbeing in you podcast. To access more wellbeing resources, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and visit our website at go.yorku.ca/wbpodcast.

Scott Pope: In this podcast, I'd like to introduce you to a relaxation technique called progressive relaxation. This technique is very simple. We're going to progress from our feet to our head, and we're going to tense and relax body parts. As we go up the body, we're going to pay attention to what it feels like to have the tension and what it feels like to have,release the tension and have a relaxed response. This meditation is going to take about ten to 15 minutes. You may find that your mind wanders, and that's okay. If it does, do not become critical of yourself. That's just the mind's trick to get you to think. All you need to do is note that your mind is wandering and come back to where we are in the meditation or the relaxation. Don't worry about what you've missed. The real trick here is noticing that you've wandered and refocusing. That act of noticing that you've wandered and refocusing is a very vital and important task to learn. It will increase your ability to focus and pay attention to things in your life, such as lectures, reading. I'm sure we all had the experience of reading a page of a book and turning the page and think, what did I just read? What's happened is you probably were reading, but your mind went into its thoughts. So, one of the techniques and the benefit of meditation is noticing that and refocusing. And the more you do that, you're strengthening the mind to develop better concentration and focus. So, let's start. We're going to start by putting our feet on the ground, making sure that we feel grounded. We're going to look around. This is often used to help us go to sleep. So, you may fall asleep with this technique. That's okay. You need the sleep. If you fall asleep, then we want to create as much upward movement in our body as we can by imagining that there's a string at the top of your head, pulling you upward so that your lungs have the full capacities. You're not hunched over and squeezing your lungs or diaphragm. And then we're going to add to that by pulling our shoulders up to our ears and letting our shoulders drop back, opening our chest. So now our lungs have the full capacity of movement. Now we're going to empty our lungs of all the waste gas throughout the day, we start to shallow breathe and we're only using the top half of our lungs, so the bottom half fills up with waste gas. And that's not very good for your health, but also not for your mind. Your mind uses a lot of oxygen, about 20% of the oxygen you take in to help you focus. Remember, calm yourself. So, we want to have as much oxygen available to the mind. So, let's prepare our lungs by simply taking a deep breath in, noticing how deep you can actually go this time. And you're going to exhale by pulling your abdominals up towards the rib cage, pushing out all that waste gas. We're going to do these two more times. Inhale. Exhale. Pulling the abdominals up towards the ribcage. One more time. Inhale. Exhale. And you might feel a little bit lightheaded. That's okay. Just find a nice breathing pattern, trying to use your whole lung and just notice how that feels. We're going to start the progressive part of the relaxation. And let me explain that a little bit before we start. We're going to take a deep breath in and we're going to tighten a body part. And I'm going to tell you which body part you're going to tighten. You're going to squeeze it and then you're going to exhale that first breath, keeping the squeeze. And then you're going to take another deep breath in. And on the second breath out, you're going to relax the squeeze. I'm going to suggest things like you're bringing health and well-being to your feet and your legs, et cetera. Okay? So, let's start. Get comfortable. Take a deep breath in and gently curl your toes. Don't really squeeze them tightly. You can cramp in your feet and that can hurt. Hold the squeeze and let the breath out, all the tension in your feet. Just let it breathe out. Breathe in. Health and relaxation to your feet. Exhale and let go of a squeeze. And just take a moment to notice what it feels like between attention and relaxation. Continue our journey upwards. Now we're going to move to our calves and shins. We're going to tense our calves and shins by keeping our heels of our feet on the floor. And we're going to lift our toes up. And as you do that, you can feel the shins and calves tighten. So, you inhale health and relaxation to your calves and shins. Exhale all the tension from your calves and shins, keeping the squeeze. Inhale. Health and relaxation to your calves and shins. And as you exhale, you're going to relax the squeeze and let all the tension go. And just notice the difference between the tension and relaxation. This often gives us much more of a body awareness of our bodies where we're holding tension, continuing our journey upwards. We're going to move to our thighs and we're going to tense our thighs just by bringing our knees together. They don't have to touch. Just the act of bringing them closer is enough to feel the tension. So, you're going to inhale health and relaxation to your thighs. You're going to exhale all the tension from your thighs that you're squeezing out, keeping the squeeze. Inhale, health and relaxation. Exhale all the tension and, relax the thighs and take a moment to notice what that feels like. Okay, we're going to move from our legs now into our trunk and we're going to start at a lower part of our trunk. And we're going to tighten that by squeezing the buttocks and the lower abdominal cavity. And now we're not only squeezing out tension from our muscles and bones and tendons and ligaments, we're also now some organs here. So, inhale, health and relaxation to that part of your body. Exhale all the tension that's been stored there. Inhale, health and relaxation. Exhale all the tension and relax the squeeze. And just feel the difference between the tension and relaxation. This is a part in the progressive relaxation where I start to lose concentration. So, if that's happening to you, just remember that's okay. Just come back to my voice and continue wherever we are. And don't worry about what you've missed. Okay, we're going to move now into the abdominal cavity. And we're going to tense the abdominal cavity by pulling the abdominals up towards the ribcage. And then we're going to take a deep breath in. Notice how difficult it is to take a deep breath in. Exhale all the tension in your abdominal cavity. Breathing in health and relaxation to your abdominal cavity. Exhale and release the squeeze. We want to reset your breathing, so let's just take a deep breath in here. Exhale. Pulling the abdominals up towards the ribcage. Coming back to a natural breath and doing that. Resetting of the breath throughout the day can be really helpful. Just so that you really maximizing your lungs capacity to oxidize the body and mind. Okay, you're going to move up again to our back and chest. We're going to pull our shoulder blades back, create tension across our chest. Inhale health and relaxation to our chest and back, in our heart and the lungs, everything inside. Exhale all the tension from there. Inhale, health and relaxation to our chest and back. Exhale all the tension and relax. Just feel the difference between the tension and relaxation. Great. Now we're going to, do our shoulders. Shoulders carry a lot of tension. So just pay attention to that and feel how it feels. So, you're going to pull your shoulders up to your ears, your neck down into your shoulders and squeeze not too tightly because you can hurt yourself here or cause some discomfort. Inhale, health and relaxation to your shoulders and neck. Exhale all the tension. Inhale, health and relaxation to your neck and shoulders. And as you exhale, let the shoulders drop and allow the neck to relax. Just feel the difference between the tension and relaxation. Okay, we're going to leave our trunk now into our arms, hands, and fingers. We're going to tense our arms, hands, and fingers by making a fist, curling the fist in towards your forearm and making muscle in the top arm. Inhaling, health and relaxation to our arms, hands, and upper arms. Exhale all the tension. Breathing health and relaxation to our arms and hands. Exhaling and relax. And just feel the difference between the tension and relaxation. Because our neck is a place that we carry a lot of tension, especially when we're studying, we're going to just go back to our neck to try that one more time, just to make sure we get all that tension out. So, we're going to pull our shoulders up to our ears or neck down into our shoulders. Inhale, health and relaxation, to our neck and shoulders. Exhale all the tension. Inhale, health and relaxation. Exhale and relax your shoulders. just feel the difference between the tension and relaxation. Okay, the next is our face. We're going to imagine that we can pull our eyebrows to our hairline, make a grimace with your face, push your tongue at the roof of your mouth, squeeze out all your face. Inhale, health and relaxation. Exhale all the tension. Inhale, health and relaxation. Exhale all the tension and release the squeeze. And just feel the difference between the tension in your face and relaxation. We're going to quickly do a body scan that's just simply starting with your feet going up your body towards your head and just seeing if there's any residual tension. I want you to imagine that your breath can go beyond your lungs to that body part that's holding on to tension and act like a magnet, pulling that tension away from that body part and back up into your lungs. Okay, now I'm going to ask you to squeeze your whole body from your toes to your head and everything in between. Inhale, squeezing all that residual tension into a small, little ball. And when you're Ready, exhale and blow the tension right across the room. Let’s do that one more time. Inhale, squeeze the whole body. Exhale. Just take a moment to now notice how your body feels. This technique is really good to release the stress in your body, but it's also a great technique to use if you're having a problem falling asleep or waking up and going back to sleep.