Body Centered Practice - Progressive Muscle Relaxation

This episode is part nine of a nine-part series of body-centered practices. Dr. Janys originally recorded this as part of a crisis counseling course. Their students kept asking to download it so here it is for anyone and everyone. Body-centered practices can be helpful in gaining resources for calming the nervous system. If you are looking for brief practices for personal use, resourcing for counseling, or for being a counselor- this will be of use to you! Transcript included. 

In addition to being a therapist and a professor, Dr. Janys is certified as a yoga instructor and yoga therapist. In addition to using her own experience leading guided body-centered practices, they referenced the readings below to create the body-centered practices series:

Levine, P. (2008). Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body. Sounds True.

Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and Our Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press.

Rothschild, B. (2000). The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. W.W. Norton and Company Inc.

If you like these practices, please share them, like this podcast where you listen, or support the show! Thanks for listening and be well! 

Transcript

Body centered practice, nine progressive muscle relaxation. For this practice, I suggest either lying down or being in the seated position, if you are seated, make sure that your feet are on the ground and either have your hands in your lap or on your knees.

We're going to start with your feet, and I want you to imagine that you are putting your toes in the sand. So as you inhale, go ahead and squeeze your toes and as you exhale, releasing. You might feel some squeezing all the way up into your legs.

Making sure that your breath is even so, that you're squeezing on the inhale and then exhaling completely, so you're relaxing on the exhale.

And then bring your hands to the outside of your thighs. If you're lying down, you'll need to bend your knees. And on your. Inhale. You're going to go ahead and press your hands in as you press your thighs out.

And then on your Exhale release that.

Again, on your inhale, you're going to press your hands and as you press your thighs out, you might find that you're using your core muscles to squeeze as well and then exhale release. Do this a couple of times, again, on your inhale, bring your hands and squeeze your thighs out.

Making sure that you're getting the sensation of both tightening and relaxing in your body.

Do this about five times.

Next, turning your palms up and resting your hands on your legs. Imagine that you're holding lemons in your hands and as you're inhaling, you're going to squeeze all the juice out of the lemon, squeezing your hands.

And as you're exhaling, you're just unfolding, letting your hands drop.

Do this about five times again, inhale, squeeze your hand, squeezing all the lemons. Making lemonade, if you like. Doesn't have to be lemons, it can be oranges or something not sticky, and then exhale, release, inhale, squeeze and then exhale release.

After you've done that about five times, bringing your attention to your shoulders and on an inhale, just reaching your shoulders up to your ears, tucking your chin in. And as you exhale, roll your shoulders back and then lifting up your chest. Looking up just slightly.

Inhaling, bringing your chest in, drying your shoulders up and then exhale, rolling down. We oftentimes have tension in our shoulders and we don't even realize that we're holding this. So exaggerating the shoulder shrug can help with that. Tucking the chin in on your inhale, exhale and tuck your chin. Drop your shoulders down.

Making sure you're still having full, complete breaths.

Do this about five times.

The last thing you're going to do is you're going to squeeze the muscles in your face and a nice visual for this is imagining that there might be a fly at your nose and you are trying to get rid of that fly by just wiggling your nose on an inhale. You're going to scrunch up the muscles of your face and just wiggle your nose like you're trying to get rid of that fly on your nose. For some reason, you can't use your hands, probably because you're still squeezing lemons and then exhale release. Do this about five times, inhale, squeezing the muscles of the face, get that fly. Exhale release. It's OK if you don't get a visual of these things, it's also can just be a sensation. Inhale and squeeze. Exhale and release remembering to have full, complete inhales and exhales.

You can stop here or if you'd like, you may also just try to do all of those things as much as you can at once, put your hands to the outside of your thighs and on an inhale, squeeze your toes, bring your thighs in as you're squeezing and squeeze your arms, bring your shoulders up, draw your belly in and squeeze the facial muscles on it. Inhale so you're squeezing everywhere, hold as long as you can and then exhale release. And do that as many times as you need to to completely relax. And just noticing the difference between the tension and the relaxation in your body, go ahead and stop and just be in the relaxation for a couple of breaths.

And I would invite you as you're coming out of this experience to take some time to write down what you did, whether or not this was a resource for your body that you might continue to do in the future.