This is a simple progressive relaxation exercise that can help with insomnia sufferers. You can either practice this by yourself, or have someone else read it to you. If you have someone else read it to you, make sure that they keep a low, even and relaxed voice tone.

Induction Begins

Lay down or sit in a comfortable position. Make sure that your legs and arms are uncrossed. If you are lying down place your arms by your side. If you are sitting, place your feet on the floor and your arms laying on your lap or on the armrests.

Now, go ahead and take a deep deep breath. Hold that breath for the mental count of three. As you allow the breath to leave your lungs, let your consciousness slide down the center line of your body. You may close your eyes now if you haven’t done so already. Know that your unconscious is making the necessary connection to allow you to become completely relaxed. Know that as you go into trance, you are always in total control and if you need to come back to reality for any reason, you only have to say in your mind the number one and move your fingers.

As you go deep into trance now, your mind can drift into a dreamy, drowsy state, right on the threshold of sleep. On the threshold all you will need to see, hear and experience will come to your unconscious mind. Notice how your body has already become more relaxed than at the beginning of this process. Every outside sound and noise will increase your ability to focus on your relaxation and you will go deeper and deeper into trance. You will begin a process of systematically relaxing you body, as you count from 1 to 10, you will relax your body from feet to head.

1- Relax your feet and ankles. Feel them turning off and becoming limp.

2- Relax your calves. Allow them to become heavy…so heavy.

3- Move the relaxation through your knees and into your thighs. Feel your thigh become so relaxed, so loose, so heavy.

4- Relax your hips and allow them to sink in. Notice now how very relaxed and very heavy your legs are. They are so heavy that you don’t want to move them anymore.

5- Move the relaxation into your abdomen now. Feel it go through you, into you and relax all the internal organs, relax your back, relax your abdominals.

6- Relax your chest now. Relax your heart and lung. Feel how deep and steady your breathing is now. Notice how your heartbeat has slowed down to allow you to become fully relaxed.

7- Move the relaxation into you shoulders and upper back now. Down into the arms, through your elbows and forearms and into you hand. Allow your hands to become so relaxed, notice how all your fingers are relaxing.

8- Move the relaxation up through your neck and into your face. Let all the small muscles around your mouth, nose and eyes to become completely loose now. Feel you forehead relaxing now. Notice how your eyelids have become so heavy that you couldn’t even open them if you tried in vain.

9- Relax your scalp now. Feel it becoming smooth… so very relaxed.

10- Let the relaxation move into your brain now. Relax your brain and allow it to become so very loose. Allow your consciousness to move about freely.

Every time you go through this process, it will become easier and easier and you will go deeper into trance than the time before. Every time you hear you count from 1 to 10, you will naturally drift into and easy and comfortable trance like the one you are in now. Every time you want to return to this state, you only have to repeat the trigger “10″. Every time you repeat the trigger “10″ you will come back to this nice relax state of trance.

Now you can begin a process of deepening your trance. Know that there is no limit to how deep you can go. With every breath you take, you will go deeper and deeper inside yourself. With every easy beat of your heart, your unconscious is coming to the surface of your being. Your subconscious is close enough to listen closely to what you have to tell it. This is so because you deeply desire to acquire this ability to become lucid now. Deep inside your mind, there is a special place very near to the essence of who you are. This special place is a place where everything is true. A place where you can store this and other information that you deeply desire.

At this point, you can either stay in this wonderful relaxed state for as long as you want, you can choose to communicate with your subconscious, you can let yourself slip into sleep or you can come back to normality and notice how relaxed you are now.

This progressive relaxation technique is great to help alleviate sleeping problem.

Jennifer Keightly is into holistic healing and invites you to visit her All Natural Cures blog

Get valuable information about natural cures for insomnia today at Cure Insomnia Naturally

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There are numerous relaxation methods out there. But where exactly do you apply these techniques? In what sequence?

In this article, I give you a very simple and direct method of relaxing down the body. If you have never done this before, I encourage you to try it right now. If you follow the directions, you will notice the results!

The technique I will suggest here is focus and deep breathing, but feel free to use your own favorite technique in this sequence if you like. Focus on the spot as you inhale, then as you exhale, allow it to relax.

Be sure you continue to breathe deeply. You might notice how the relaxation has a cumulative effect as you move down your body!

Relaxation Spot 1 – Work on your neck: your neck holds up the weight of your head all day. I don’t need to tell you how common neck pain is in America. When you develop these relaxation skills, you can let go of neck pain permanently! Notice the front and the back of your neck. Notice all the muscles around your spine. Notice any tension in the middle of your neck. Pay attention. Accept it. and then let it go.

Relaxation Spot 2 – Relax your shoulders: tension in the shoulders (and the trapezius muscles that connect your neck to your shoulders), goes hand in hand with tension in the neck. When you get a chair massage, this is where the masseuse will spend the majority of their time. Let your shoulders relax and move down. Notice any remaining tension. Smile into it, and then let it go.

Relaxation Spot 3 – Ease your arms: frequently, if you relax the shoulders, you will notice the arms becoming incredibly relaxed as well. It is good to still give them a quick scan, and for some people, a lot of tension can still come up in this area. Feel the relaxation flow down the arms. Notice each part of the arms, paying particular attention to the hands and the forearms. Notice any tension. Accept it. Then release all tension and move on.

Relaxation Spot 4 – Find peace in your chest: The chest and upper back are full of large and small muscle groups that can hide a significant amount of tension. Pay attention. Notice all the muscles around your chest. Notice all the sensations inside your chest. Notice all the muscles around your spine. Notice any sensations in your spine itself. If you notice any tightness, accept it, and then let it go.

Meditation Spot 5: Work on your stomach: The stomach and lower back can hide just as much (if not more) tension as the chest and upper back. Direct your awareness into your stomach and lower back. Pay attention to any tightness in your abdominal wall. Notice any tension around or in the lumbar vertebrae. Focus on it, then relax and let it go.

Relaxation Spot 6 – Let go of tension in your hips: There are untold secrets hiding in the hips. I never knew just how tight my hips were until I really relaxed my shoulders. Once I could see past my shoulders, I began to notice all the specific muscles in and around my hips. Pay attention to your hips, the very bottom of your spine, your tail bone, your buttocks, and your upper thighs. Relax and look closely for a while. Notice any tension. Smile into it. Accept it. Then relax and let it go.

Relaxation Spot 7 – Relax your thighs: The quadriceps are an incredibly large muscle group, and you put all your weight on them anytime you stand, walk, or run throughout the day. Let them relax. Focus your attention into them. Notice any remaining attention, and then let it go.

Relaxation Spot 8 – Relax your knees: At the junction of your thighs and calves, lies an area ripe for hard to find tension. It is very easy to skip over the knee, but I encourage you to pay attention. Knee trouble is also pretty common, so to avoid it, I suggest you focus in on your knees, and learn to relax them. Pay attention. Notice any tightness in the knees. Relax around it. Relax into it. Focus in. Let it go.

Relaxation Spot 9 – Let go of all tension in your calves: Your calves, just like your thighs, support your weight anytime you stand, walk, or run. Give them the attention they deserve. Focus in. Relax. Notice any tension in the ankles or calves. Accept it, and let it go.

Relaxation Spot 10 – Work on your feet: at last, the feet! Love your feet. Take care of your feet. Rub your feet anytime you can (or get someone else to ). Notice any tension in or around the feet. Accept it. Let it go.

When you practice this sequence of relaxation, it gradually becomes more and more a part of you. You will realize that you can relax more quickly and easily every time you practice!

This is a wonderful thing to do just by itself, but when you learn to integrate it with all the other skills you use in your life, you will be thoroughly shocked at the power of the skill of relaxation. I’m certain you will be more than satisfied with your results!

Benjamin Langley has been studying and training in meditation, NLP, hypnosis, yoga, and energy work for over 15 years. He regularly writes and shares powerful insights on his own blog. For more information on this topic, come take a look – 101-proven-tips-for-powerful-meditation/

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A simple path to relaxation.

Who doesn’t want to be relaxed? What won’t we do for it? We will pay a lot of hard-earned money on flight tickets and expensive resorts just to get away from our normal life and relax. We will submerge ourselves in boiling bubbling water, let people manipulate our muscles, use candles, drugs, music, and who knows what else just to relax, to forget about our troubles and smile a bit.

So what if I tell you that we are completely missing the point by doing all of these things just to relax? Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that all of that is bad for you, or not necessary. What I am saying is that all of these ‘therapies’ are pointless in the matter of relaxation. Such therapies are all good ways to spend time, to be together with friends or lovers, and maybe, on a good day, they are also a way for a temporary local relaxation. But these activities are not a solution, and we find over and over again that the tension comes back and we very soon forget all about being relaxed. We find ourselves back in heavy traffic, in front of the annoying boss or kids or waiter, but there will be no hot water to soak our troubles away. We look for solutions from outside, but these are not really effective or permanent in solving the problems from the outside world as we perceive and experience it. Our outside reality is unable to solve itself.

These methods or therapies, as you already know, are only a treat after a long day (or even year) of being tense. They are not a solution for the day (or year) that comes after.

But don’t worry there is a solution! Or maybe not!
Yes, I know it is a little bit confusing, but sometimes the truth is. In the next few paragraphs I will try to explain what I mean by this statement (and don’t worry, I promise the following paragraphs will not be as pessimistic as the introduction  – they will be very optimistic). There is a way to become more relaxed and it is very easy – it doesn’t involve any pain, loss of money, or 7 years in Tibet! Actually, it is so easy and under our noses that this is exactly the problem. Again I may seem confusing, so let us just begin.

Understanding the problem.

The way I see it, those so called ‘relaxation solutions’ and therapies will not really help us to relax because they are not really relaxing – they just give us an illusion of relaxation because in their nature they are happen in a relaxed environment (because we arranged it), and therefore in the same moment they make us think that we are relaxed or becoming relaxed. These therapies to help us relax are just illusions because life is not one big Jacuzzi and not one long vacation on the beach.

A wise man once told me I shouldn’t try to be happy in a temple in the Himalaya, but in a 1 bedroom apartment downtown with two children and a mortgage. And you will probably say ‘of course, but at least it help us relax for a little while’ and I would say no – it helps us lie to our selves that it did.

Real relaxation is not about a sunny beach and a beer. It is about being stuck in a traffic jam, running late, trying to renew your insurance on the phone having waited on hold for 40 minutes, to be then hung up on just as you see a passing scooter swiping past your mirror and… to smile! And when the girl from the insurance company answers on your second attempt, real relaxation is to be nice to her, telling her ‘good morning’.

A real relaxation is an inner thing, it suppose to follow us where ever we go and to be part of our permanent reality and not an outside temporary environment which we created in order to make us think we can be like that all the time, we won’t unless it will be part of us, an inner understanding that will help us stay relax all the time or at least most of it (without a need for candles, a spliff or pink floyd).

And this where I get to the point of the ‘maybe no solution’, and by saying that I mean that we, and when I say we I mean the western society or all of us who were born and razed in the west, we are screwed!

We are screwed because we were growned and educated from age 0 in a very tensed environment where everybody were running nervous around us and had no time and had to be quick. We grow up in a society which believes that the right way is not with a guitar on the grass but with a laptop on the subway or on the plane on the way and up the steps without a break. Many of us lived (and still are) in big cities (and even small) which never stops, full of traffic and pollution and people who are so nervous they forgot to look in each other eyes.
We saw it and felt it since we were babies, it is burn in us and we are programmed to act like this. Some of us got it a bit and some of us (mostly men) got it a lot and it might never change.

I am not saying there is no hope I am just saying you should let go of this solution idea. Trying to fight it will only add more tension to your life and you don’t want that. Letting go of it means that for the meanwhile you should forget about trying to relax and to forgive yourself for not being relaxed. We will discus it later on again. For now just let go.
The way I see it every problem in life should come in 3 steps – awareness, frustration and improvement.

On the first step – the awareness we are starting to recognize that there is a problem, it might been there for a long time before but we didn’t see it, didn’t want to know about it. In the awareness stage we come to a point where we admit to our self that we have a problem. After a while, after we played with it in our mind and looked on this problem from different angles and times we usually are trying to make the first attempt to solve it. If it a serious problem, we probably don’t succeed.

Than comes the second step – frustration. We don’t like not to succeed, and when it repeats it self time after time (usually we try to solve problems more than once, sometimes hundreds of times, years) we become more and more despair of it, feeling the failure burns in our bones. In the case we are dealing here this stage has even a double responsibility because this stage adds a lot of tense into our life. We try to relax but don’t succeed and it make us angry, we don’t like not to succeed and we get nervous we might never will. This is just feeding the problem more.

As well, being pushed to the corner like that by us make us want even more to solve the problem. Sometimes the frustration become so strong and major in our life that it is actually critical for us to solve the issue, which bring us to the third step – improvement. Most problems come at some point to some solution. It might not completely answer it or won’t be total but it will be an improvement – nothing is perfect right? The questions are how close to perfection can we get, and how long will it take us?

To answer that I will go back to the first step of solving a problem – awareness, because from there we can choose a different path which will take us to a beautiful place of relaxation.

Awareness.

What is it? Awareness is knowing. Awareness is concentration in reality or part of it. It is to give attention. It could be to anything and we are aware of things all the time. You might be aware now to this article or to the noise outside or to the fact that you have to go somewhere soon, but the most important awareness you should have is to yourself, feeling yourself in a present moment is mostly important for personal development, Actually critical, some of us got a lot of it and some of us got none but we all can (and really should) try to improve it and grow it all the time. It will help us see things as they are and therefore will help us to really deal with them. It will also be a very beautiful and true reason to live this life.
I mean, you all probably thought once or twice what is the purpose of our life? What the hell are we doing here? I will not try to answer it but I will just say that in the meanwhile (while we are trying to find divine answers to the universe) there is a developing creature in our hands which really like to be happy and complete but being stopped and smacked by reality so many times that it gave up a bit, yes, this beautiful creature is us and we have an amazing tool in this life to help our self grow and develop – the self awareness.

They are many ways to develop awareness and self awareness and I will discuss them later. One great way is to meditate, they are a few methods of meditation and I will explain and guide for some of them later on.

But now you might freak out a bit, asking yourself am I aware of myself or not? It is a very good question because it holds a paradox in it, means – How would I will be aware to myself if I am not aware to the fact that I am not aware to myself? By being not aware I will never know I am not aware (I won’t be aware of it) right? The fool don’t know he is a fool because he is too fool, he is probably sure he is a genius right?

Well I have good news for you! You are not a fool!
You know how I know? Because of the simple fact that you are reading this right now, not only that but you looked for the subject and found something which interested you. That means you already have awareness in you which made you see a problem. You are already in good hands of yourself! The only thing you did wrong (or just not right) is that you didn’t focus that awareness of yours to the right direction because as we said before being aware to the fact that we are not relaxed and not being able to solve it just make us more nervous. So, what is this awareness good for? How would it help us anyway? By focusing it on our body.

I will try to make it more simple, in order to improve our relaxation in life we should forget about trying to relax and start being aware to our body.

Yes, our body. This machine made of blood and fat and bones which move us around and express us and collect information and energy for us. This beautiful machine holds a lot of answers in it; it tells us a lot of stories about ourselves and could help us improve our inner life in many ways. In this article we are discussing relaxation so we are going to leave the rest. In the next few paragraphs I will explain how our body has everything to do with relaxing our mind and how you can use it to become more relax, it is really easy and all it takes from you is the will to do it.

Tense in the body.

As I said before, we are screwed! The western world destroyed our soft souls with pressure and fast lanes. For years on years we had being taught that the right way is the quick way, the way we compress as much as more into as much as less and than stuck it in a sandwich on our way to work. We learned that strong is better, tuff is beautiful (and manly), big muscles are sexy and not eating is good for us, we learned to be tensed. But not only us learned that, also our body been traumatized by the cold fast world. It learned that in order to be beautiful it has to be fit, men’s body learned they must be tuff, strong and stiff in order to look like a man body and women’s body learned they must torture there self with anger in order to look sexy and beautiful. Our bodies suffered with us all a long the way.
Slowly slowly, our bodies developed movements which were copies or illusions of what is right, or, how a body suppose to act in the western world, and what our bodies learned out there on the street, in our homes from our family, from TV and school is that the body in the western world suppose to be tensed.

As an example I will tell you a short story from my own (and maybe of every other man in western society today).
A few years ago I started being aware to a pain in my back. This pain was returning in the same specific point – right under my right shoulder and it drove me crazy! I could not figure out why it happens, coming back in different times and different occasions without any pattern or logic. It took me a couple of years to realize the reason, and it is because many years before, while I was still just young child I looked around me to see how men are looking. I knew I am a man (or at least going to be) and wished to learn how men act and look, like any other child I asked to copy. So I looked around and saw my dad and my uncles, I saw bigger kids in school and action heroes on TV and they were all big, muscular and with wide shoulders. I looked and looked but could not see a man which is appreciate by society as a “real man” who wasn’t strong and tuff. All TV shows were full of successful men who were high, muscular and with wide strong shoulders. No skinny kid like me was saving the world at that time. So of course I understood what I have to do – In order to be a real man I must be like them – strong, tuff with muscles, wide chase and strong wide shoulders, and than I started with the exactly opposite process of the one I will talk about soon…
First came the shoulders. “I need strong shoulders” I thought to my self,
So on one day and without almost noticing I started holding my shoulders tied. At beginning it was hard, my muscles weren’t strong enough yet and I was dropping my shoulders a lot, forgetting about the mission… But it was important to me – I had to be a real man so I insisted, kept on picking them up, stiffing the muscle around them, looking tuff… Slowly it stopped hurting, my muscle were strong enough to hold my shoulders tied for as long as I liked, it became an automated thing – holding my shoulders like that. Very soon I even forgot about my decision to do it, the new movement in my shoulders became a part of me.
The reason it hurt me only on the right side is hiding in the fact that I am left handed and my entire left side of my body is stronger therefore it get less tired and the left back muscles hurt less.

This is just one clear example how can a person and society around him change his body movement in a way which will create permeate tense in it. This theory can go much more complexed and talk about the relationships the body (and it pains) has with our mind and soul. It can go all the way to the fact that many tensed organs in our body are actually signing us on inner issues we have. In our case now I will try to keep it simpler than that but will be happy to answer any question if anyone has.

Back to my story, that was only the beginning of course, many things became stiff after that. Legs and arms lower back, stomach and chase.
The stress devil was partying! The relaxation was crying in the closet! I was a western man!

All of this is nice, you probably say, but what it has to do my mind relaxation, inner relaxation? It has everything to do with it!!!

From body to mind.

After being aware of the fact that we has organs in our body which are in permet stress, tensed all the time. We should practice on relaxing them.
It will take time. It is hard to relax an organ which wasn’t relaxed for most of it life. You will relax it and it will return to be stressed, again you will relax and again stress… Remind you something? The frustration step! Yay! Well nobody promised it is going to be easy… But I can promise you one thing – after the second step always comes (If you don’t give up) the third step – improvement.
They are methods and techniques to practice body awareness and body relaxation; you can learn them and improve your control on your body. To some people it takes very quick and for some a little bit more, it dispense on how much damage has been done (how many years of unawareness) and how open are you to make changes/

With the ability to relax your body you will receive to great gifts:

The first – Your body will be relaxed… You will spend less energy in general and on every action you will do, your body will feel more comfortable and many body pains will despair, back pains will reduce with shoulders release, headache and even migraine will despair after releasing hard neck or jar, digestion problems might be solved just by releasing stomach muscles who thought many years ago that by pushing in they will look more beautiful… Sounds amazing right? Well believe it or not this is the less important gift!

The second – by learning and practicing to relax your body’s organs you are actually practicing to relax your mind. The command that your brain send to your organ in order to relax it (hey leg stop jumping!) is the same command it send to itself when you are trying to relax. Trying to relax a tied shoulders or a twisted jar is exactly the same as trying to relax a mind. Sounds weird? I know, that is because you are used to think of body and mind as two different things, stop thinking like that, they are combined together and holds answers and each other secrets and one of those secrets is that relaxing a leg of a mind, a shoulder or a soul is the same.
By being aware to your body and to it tenses, you will slowly start to release it by just using your mind and by doing that, you will teach and practice your mind how to relax. It is a circle of influence that completes our mind and body into one.

By improving our ability to relax body organs we are also improving our ability to relax our mind, because it is exactly the same ability.

It is easier to start from our body where we can see the tense and actually feel it as a specific feeling in a physical point; it is easier to start practicing relaxing that. Then we can take this tool we developed and use it inside, where the stress feeling is general and much more abstract.
There are ways and techniques to do so, mostly working on improving awareness. They are simple, you can do it, all you need is to want to.

Visit my site for more information, therapy techniques, awareness exercises and relaxation practices.

[http://www.k-atarim.com/relaxit/relax-inside.html]

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We all know how unpleasant excessive stress can be. We also know the feeling of sickness in our stomach before an important performance, and the intense ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction we get when we face frustration after frustration.

In this society where challenges have to be met and limits to be broken all the time, there are just too many stresses which one had to handle & faced, be it student who faces stress at school work & during exam period or the working adult who had to meet the demands of never ending workload & unrealistic deadlines. Relaxation techniques become a marvelous way to help in the quest for stress management.

A lot of people have the misconception that relaxation is just only about having peace of mind or simply enjoying a hobby during their past time. However, relaxation is much more than just that, relaxation is actually a process that helps reduces the wear and tear of life’s challenges both physically & mentally so that one can recharge & keep on going positively in life.

Regardless whether one has a very stressful & hectic lifestyle or they have managed to get it under control, one can still benefit from learning the different relaxation techniques. Learning basic relaxation techniques is easy & by exploring these simple relaxation techniques, one is able to get started on de-stressing their life and improving their holistic health.

According to a research done on using relaxation training in improving of irritable bowel syndrome, it was found that with relaxation training in a brief group intervention, it has significantly improves symptom severity, general health perception and medical consumption in irritable bowel syndrome patients immediately after, as well as 6 and 12 months after intervention.[2]

There are also a number of other benefits as to how the body readily responds to stress from practicing relaxation techniques:

* Decrease in heart rate

* Able to stay mentally positive

* Slowing one’s breathing rate

* Reducing the need for oxygen

* Increasing blood flow to major muscles

* Reducing muscle tension

* Reducing emotional responses, such as anger and frustration

* Improved concentration & focus

* Greater ability to handle problems

* More efficiency in daily activities

Although health professionals such as complementary and alternative medicine practitioners, doctors and psychotherapists can teach relaxation techniques, we can also learn some of these techniques on our own.

The relaxation response leads to a quieting of the sympathetic nervous system. This relaxation response thus prevent one from being overstress, however it can only be evoked through conscious effort.

Relaxation techniques usually involve refocusing your attention to something calming and increasing awareness of your body. Regular use of the relaxation response helps to offset the effects of fight-or-flight responses (Benson, 1976). It doesn’t matter which techniques one choose, what matters is the need to practice relaxation response regularly to benefit from it.

There are several main types of relaxation techniques, including:

Body-to-mind control is one method which one can use to evoke the relaxation response. It is also known as progress muscle relaxation. In this technique, we will focus on slowly tensing and then relaxing each muscle group. This helps us to focus on the difference between muscle tension and relaxation, and we will become more aware of our physical sensations. We may choose to start off by tensing and relaxing the muscles in our toes and progressively working our way up to the neck and head. Tense the various muscles for at least five seconds and then relax for 30 seconds, and repeat.

Mind-to-body control is another method of evoking the relaxation response. In this technique, we will first select a quiet environment, get into a comfortable position and close our eyes. Next, we will concentrate fully on taking a deep breath and slowly to be aware of the breathing. While we are breathing out, repeat a positive cue word or sentence, for instance, “I’m relaxing my whole body”, “my whole body feels relax and free”. Continue doing this for another 10 to 20 minutes. During this exercise, we will adopt a passive attitude, which means that we will allow any distractions that come to our mind to simply pass through and not to focus on the thoughts so as to allow relaxation to occur at its own pace.

Visualization is the third relaxation techniques one can perform. In this technique, one will form positive & relaxation mental images so as to take on a visual journey to a peaceful, calming place or situation. We will try to stimulate using as many senses as possible, including smells, sights, sounds and textures. If we imagine relaxing at the ocean, for instance, we will think about the warmth of the sun, the sound of crashing waves, the feel of the grains of sand and the smell of salt water. We may choose to close our eyes, sit in a quiet spot and loosen any tight clothing so that it will help in the process of the overall relaxation technique.

There are also other relaxation techniques which include those that are more familiar with, such as Taichi, yoga, music, exercise, meditation, hypnosis and massage etc.

In Taichi, we combine both the techniques of body to mind & mind to body relaxation responses. Taichi can also be regarded as a form of dynamic meditation and when coupled with music along with the rhythmic, graceful smooth & continuous movements, it can be considered as one of the more holistic and complete form of relaxation techniques where it combines the positive effects of all the other different form of relaxation techniques.

As we learn & explore the various relaxation techniques, we will slowly become more aware of our muscle tension and also other physical sensations of stress. Once we are able to get a understanding of what the stress response feels like, we can then make a conscious effort to practice a relaxation technique as described earlier the moment we feel our muscles start to tense up.

In this way, we can prevent & thus avoid stress from spiraling out of control. We need to understand that relaxations techniques are skills just like other skills such as swimming, running, baking a cake and as with any skill, our ability to relax improves with correct practice. We need to be patient when performing the relaxation exercises & stay motivated to reduce the negative impact of stress on our body so as to experience a greater sense of calm in our life & also to be control in stress management.

REFERENCES

[1] Kaushik RM, Kaushik R, Mahajan SK, Rajesh V. Effects of mental relaxation and slow breathing in essential hypertension. Complement Ther Med. 2006 Jun;14(2):120-6. Epub 2006 Jan 10

[2] P. P. J. VAN DER VEEK, Y. R. VAN ROOD, A. A. M. MASCLEE (2007). Clinical trial: short- and long-term benefit of relaxation training for irritable bowel syndrome. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2007 Sep 15;26(6):943-52

[3] Rainer Martens PhD, 1987, Coaches Guide to Sport Psychology, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois

[4] Don Greene, 2001, Fight Your Fear and Win, Random House, New York

[5] Terry Orlick PhD, 1990, In Pursuit of Excellence, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois

[6] Herbert Benson M.D., 1992 (reissue), The Relaxation Response, Harper Collins, New York

[7] Martha Davis PhD, 2000, The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook (Fifth Edition), New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, California

[8] Rainer Martens, Coaches Guide to Sport Psychology, 1987, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, USA

Coach Yip has written various articles relating to Taichi and Sports Science. He has also previously conducted Taichi & Sports Science seminars. Coach Yip took up Taekwondo since young and attained his black belt before he started learning Taichi. He had participated and achieved many medals in various National Wushu Competitions.

Coach Yip is currently NROC registered with the Singapore Sports Council under Wushu/Taichi with a NCAP III certificate. Coach Yip approaches Taichi in a very scientific research based and systematically training system.

Besides giving personal and small group coaching, he also specializes in Wushu/Taichi coaching for Kids in schools and has previously conducted Mass Wushu Workout for Kids, ranging from primary to junior college level. To date, more than a thousand students had benefited from his Sports Scientific Wushu & Taichi coaching. For more info, visit http://www.newagetaichi.com

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