I discovered deep relaxation when I was 17. That’s when I dropped out of school, leaving behind a horrible, totally unhappy time. The very moment my decision was taken, I remember instantly exploding out of depression into relief, lightness, hope, joy, all at the same time, with an incredible big bang. The day I told my parents that I was not going back to school ever again was the first day of my life. They remained in a state of shock for some time and I remained in a state of bliss ever after.
I had always been slightly overweight and very scared of becoming both fat and ill. But in the dark years leading up to that moment I hadn’t had the spark nor the strength nor the time to do anything apart from surviving school, my family and my surroundings. And dreaming of being free from all of that.
And then suddenly I became the owner of my life and I was free to dedicate a great part of my time to observing and investigating humans, especially myself, and to looking for answers to a lot of questions I had about health.
One day I got a beaten-up, seventh-hand yoga-for-beginners book from a street market, and one of its first chapters was dedicated to deep relaxation. I had never heard about that and started practising straightaway. Nothing happened for the first three days, but then on the fourth day I got it… What an amazing experience that was! The fist time I felt myself sink into and through the floor, I couldn’t believe it!
I never stopped practising that, and over time I’ve become able to instantly relax any part of my body anytime, even on the bus or while shopping. You don’t always have to lie on the floor and relax everything. You can use parts of your body to keep upright or even move and relax the parts you are not using ad that moment. I absolutely love it!
Here’s how you do it
First of all, go to a place where you know you won’t be disturbed for 20 minutes or half an hour. A place that’s quiet and not too hot or too cold, where you can lie on the floor on your back, be it on carpet or on a mat or a mattress, or outdoors on a lawn or on the beach. Just make sure you don’t feel threatened by animals, rude people, or whatever might stop you from relaxing.
Switch off any devices!
Wear something loose and comfy, you don’t want to feel anything squeezing you or cutting into your skin.
Lie on the floor on your back with your arms loosely parallel to your body or sit back in a chair if you prefer, but I think that lying down makes it easier at the beginning.
Now close your eyes and start mentally observing every part of your body. Start with your toes, one foot first, then the other one. Feel whether they are tense or relaxed. If they are tense, try and relax them. Don’t worry if you twitch a little bit or if takes you a bit longer to get comfortable. Also, you might have an itch somewhere, just scratch it and go back to your position.
After your toes, move your mental spotlight up your feet to the heels, then your ankles, calves, knees, thighs. You might want to do every step on one side first and then on the other side, you can switch sides as much as you need. Take your time, try to relax every bit before you move to the next one. Then you can try and feel both feet, then both calves, both knees and both thighs at the same time.
Keep moving up in your thoughts. Is your pelvic floor relaxed, or are you contracting your muscles as if you were trying not to pee or not to poop? Let them go completely. Move up a little more, are your abdominals contracted as if you were trying to pull in or push out your belly? Relax your belly completely, then move your attention around to your lower back. Are your buttocks completely relaxed? Test the back of your thighs and the lower part of your spine.
Now move up to your ribcage. Is it relaxed and only being moved by your breathing? Your breathing will probably have slowed down quite a bit by now and feel peaceful. Make sure your whole ribcage is relaxed and feel how the air makes it expand and slump, expand and slump.
What about your shoulders? Are they totally relaxed? And your arms? And your hands? Sometimes there’s some tension left in the fingers. Try switching from one side to the other again, one shoulder at a time, one elbow at a time, one wrist at a time, and give your hands lots of attention. Now try and feel both shoulders, arms and hands at the same time. I like the symmetrical feeling of it after I’ve been working on the two sides separately.
Now go up to your neck. That’s a place where tension tends to accumulate. Is the back of your neck relaxed? Is your throat relaxed? And your tongue? If the tongue is tense the throat cannot relax either. Is your jaw relaxed? That’s another big tension point… are you grinding your teeth? Are your lips relaxed? And your eyelids? Are you squeezing your eyes shut? And where are your eyes turned to behind the shut eyelids?
Take your time for that. You might get distracted or fall asleep, you might think you’re wasting time, you might get impatient, you might find a thousand excuses not to do it. But please stick it out. Do it for half an hour every day and then suddenly you’ll know it’s working. You won’t regret it, I promise.
Here’s what it will do for you
So, how will you know if you’re doing it properly? There are two clues that will let you know when you get there without any doubt:
1) You will not feel your body anymore. You will not be able to feel in what position you limbs are. You will know if you remember how you are lying or sitting, but you just won’t be able to feel your hands or feet or anything else. That’s a very strange at first, but absolutely glorious feeling!
2) You will feel yourself sinking into the floor, through its surface. Sometimes only a little bit, sometimes you’ll go deeper down, but it’s always a beautiful, sudden but gentle sinking feeling as if you had gotten incredibly heavy or if the floor had turned soft. It’s quite something the first time that happens!
My old yoga book stated that 30 minutes in proper deep relaxation are the equivalent of 4 hours’ sleep for recharging and repairing our body. I don’t know if that’s correct and proven, but I can assure you that when you start practising on a regular basis, you are constantly recharging your batteries and you can feel a big difference as your fatigue levels go down and your energy levels go up.
There are so many places in our body that can get very tense without us being aware of it. When you start giving your full attention to every single part and every single muscle in your body, you can release a huge amount of contraction. Contraction is necessary for action and for emergencies, but whenever we’re not engaged in any of that, ideally our body should be at rest. Just observe the way cats and dogs go from full tension to full relaxation and back in a split second. That’s incredibly healthy and incredibly efficient… and our pets can become our best teachers with their example.
Relaxing our body like that has a beneficial effect on our breathing and on our mind as well. Both can and will adjust their race or their pace to this temporary state of physical peace.
As mentioned before, you might fall asleep if you’re not careful, which can be a positive outcome if you’re feeling restless. I taught a few sleepless people this method and I know it can help a lot!
Then you might want to use it against stress. Stress makes our breathing, our body and our mind race and panic, and deep relaxation can slow all of this down and even stop it. Our body can influence our mind as much as our mind can influence our body. They are only two different aspects of the same thing… The more aware of this you become, the better you’ll be able to restore you well-being whenever the situation gets out of hand.
And last but not least, you might want to use deep relaxation as a first step towards meditation. I won’t expand on meditation here, but the next thing you can do once you’ve checked every muscle and your body it is completely relaxed, is to tune into your breathing and just observe it without trying to influence it in any way.
Don’t judge it, don’t ask yourself if you’re breathing properly, if it’s too fast or too slow, to shallow or too deep, too high or too low. Just observe it, just give your full attention to feeling and listening to how the air is going in and out.
This sounds like a rather easy thing to do, but for most people it is not. When you make it there you’ll start observing things from a special place, and I promise you’re going to love it.
