Stress reduction via progressive muscle relaxation

By Nina C. Zimmermann Dec 6, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Berlin - Wrapped in blankets, the course participants lay stretched supine on the floor of the darkened room as Michaela Sauer gave instructions in a calm voice.

'Concentrate on your right hand and right forearm. Make a fist and tense the muscles in the hand and forearm,' she said. After a few seconds, she told everyone to relax the muscles abruptly.

'Focus on how the relaxation feels, on how the relaxation is spreading,' she said.

Sauer teaches a class at an adult education centre in Berlin on progressive muscle relaxation, a technique that can lead to mental calmness via physical relaxation. The participants were suffering from stress, tension, migraines and insomnia.

'The aim is to achieve, with regular practice, a general inner attitude of relaxation and calm,' Sauer noted, adding that such an attitude helped to reduce stress.

The technique was developed in the 1920s by American psychologist and physician Edmund Jacobson, who noticed a close connection between emotional tension and the voluntary musculature.

'Many physical complaints often have no physical cause,' said Ute Repschlaeger, first chairwoman of Germany's Federal Association of Self-Employed Physiotherapists. She advocates a holistic approach to health since 'mind and body are closely linked.'

Stiffness in the back of the neck, for example, is linked to an old evolutionary pattern of stress response, she said: Wanting to hide, one tries to make oneself small by hunching the shoulders, causing the muscles to tense.

Neck problems and headaches could be due to a dysfunctional spine, Repschlaeger said. If they occur repeatedly, however, she advises sufferers to learn progressive muscle relaxation.

'Jacobson was convinced that excessive strain caused most diseases of modern society,' remarked psychologist and author Dietmar Ohm, chairman of the German Society for Relaxation Techniques. He said this was why Jacobson took a physical - or more precisely, muscular - approach, in contrast to autogenic training, which is based on mental concentration.

The principle is simple: In a sequential pattern, muscle groups are tensed for about ten seconds - without cramping - and then abruptly relaxed. The tension-release cycle is repeated after about 45 seconds. In the beginning, all muscle groups are tensed separately. Experienced practitioners can tense and relax muscle-group combinations.

According to Ohm, the technique has a double psychosomatic effect. Relaxation deep in the muscles radiates to all organs, he said, causing the entire body to relax. Heartbeat, breathing and digestion all slow down. This, in turn, improves overall well-being.

The advantage of progressive muscle relaxation over autogenic training, Ohm said, is that people usually feel better after the very first session.

Since few people can concentrate on themselves so fully from the start that they block out everything else, the room should be as free from distractions as possible, Repschlaeger said, adding that it helped to be lying comfortably.

'But eventually the goal should be the ability to practice (the technique) regardless of the surroundings,' she said. Doing it while sitting is a more advanced stage, she noted, and at some point the practitioner will be able, for example, to relieve stress and enhance well-being by performing certain exercises unnoticed by office co-workers.

As Ohm put it, 'progressive relaxation is also sensation training.' He said people learned to sense their body - that is, its musculature - better, to sense tenseness and to do something about it.

Sauer guided her pupils through all of the muscle groups. After the right hand came the right upper arm, then the left side, the forehead, the back of the neck, the torso and so on down to the feet. By that time, at the latest, they all should have achieved deep relaxation.

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