Progressive Muscle Relaxation

I have created a version of progressive muscle relaxation that works for me. But, first, some background. Over the past year or so muscle tension in my face, jaw and neck has become worse. The muscle tension is uncomfortable on its own. But there's more. Here are some other symptoms that seem to be caused by muscle tension: low quality sleep, dull migraine-like headaches that are continuous for days, feeling like I just got off a roller coaster, neck pain, feeling unfocused and detached from my environment, dizziness and unsteadiness. Right or wrong, I believe that all or most of this is due to almost constant muscle tension. There has been scientific observation that progressive muscle relaxation and breathing exercises are good treatment for muscle tension, anxiety (and its symptoms?), headaches and neck pain, fatigue, and some other conditions. I have learned and tried the method of progressive muscle relaxation and breathing exercises, but neither have ever worked for me. In fact, breathing exercises make it worse: each inhalation is almost always directly tied to a further painful constriction of the already present muscle tension in my head and face. It just makes it worse. Progressive muscle relaxation doesn't make things better or worse. Until now.

The traditional method of progressive muscle relaxation is to first consider a particular muscle or muscle group, such as the forehead, eye lids,lips, jaw, etc. You would then tense the muscle very tightly, hold the tension for 5 seconds or so, and then abruptly release and relax it. After release, really appreciate the difference in the experience between tension and relaxation. Those are the common instructions, now I'll speculate a little. I suppose the reason for the procedure is to teach yourself to notice overlooked muscle tension. You can't relax muscles that you don't know are tense; but you can relax a muscle that has been intentionally tensed. And if the release is abrupt, the difference between tension and relaxation can be more easily noticed.

As I mentioned, this method has never solved any of my problems. But I have stumbled upon a modification of it that does work very well. For me the key is to tense the muscle just to the point of being noticeably tensed. This is much different than tensing very tightly. As far as muscles in the head and face are concerned, this allows me to easily focus on just one muscle group at a time. Furthermore, this barely noticeable tensing followed by abrupt relaxation allows me to sequentially relax the muscle group further and further to the feeling of complete comfort (or lack of tension). I may spend 5 minutes or so gradually "stepping down" the tension on just one group. I'll usually follow that with some time just observing the relaxed state. This seems to work very well: I was able to achieve relief and comfort after the first session, and I woke up the next day feeling remarkable different and better than recent mornings. My explanation is that over-tension the muscle make it much harder to perceive and relax the muscle tension that was already present. Tensing just barley enough to exceed the muscle tension that was already present gives me a much better perception.

This may be one of the most boring blog posts ever. But the discovery is worth it to me since it seems to have caused the first non-pharmaceutical relief in my muscle tension and associated problems ever: No headache, neck pain, detachment from reality, unsteadiness, and I've had better sleep. These symptoms have been so pervasive and unpleasant, especially over the past few months. It's a big discovery if progressive muscle relaxation continues to work.