Why on earth is long lasting, genuine, deep relaxation so difficult to attain? The answer is the ‘tension paradox’ but before we look at what that is let’s take a quick look at your relaxation options.
Here are some of the main things people do to relax and release some of their stress along with a quick word about why they don’t really work.
1. Alcohol. Alcohol is a muscle relaxant and a natural accompaniment to enjoying yourself socially. Unfortunately, like all substances that chemically change your physiology, more and more is required to gain the same effect. Also when the alcohol wears off your tension levels return to normal. So no gain there, apart from the party fun you had.
2. Recreational drugs. These chemically change your brain chemistry to make you feel fantastic. However, clearly it is the same as above but even more addictive and a lot more expensive. It’s still a short term high.
3. Smoking. Much the same here again. The other advantage that smoking has is that the smoker learns to inhale deeply. Sure the air he inhales is full of toxins but the act of a full and slow exhalation is very powerful in releasing tension. We will cover this more in other posts on breathing. For now be aware that if you’re a smoker looking to give up then learning breathing exercises will help you enormously in kicking the habit successfully.
4. Holidays. A change is as good as a rest or so they say. Unfortunately holidays can also be stressful. I see them more as a way of exploring the world rather than a way to relax. As a relaxation option – short term and expensive.
5. Sports and recreational pastimes. This is more like it. The best activities are the ones that enable you to move your body freely in a wide range of movements rather than using the same movements continuously. However, all kinds of exercise help move the body, challenge the heart and lungs and make you feel better about yourself. The effects are long term as long as you keep at it and as for expense, well that’s up to you. There are many free ways of keeping fit and healthy.
6. Hot baths / saunas etc. The heat relaxes the muscles making you feel temporarily good and possibly somewhat more pain free. Naturally when the body cools down the tensions build up again.
7. Country walks. Fresh air and exercise. I love country walks but find that they are more beneficial and fun if I’m walking and breathing efficiently and have some awareness and knowledge of the countryside I’m travelling through.
8. Pampering. Not just for the girls anymore. Pampering is a big business with all kinds of spa breaks on offer. Of course you could just have a haircut and manicure. It’s good for making you feel better about yourself and taking your mind off your woes as long as you realise that, again, it’s short term and not exactly cheap.
So if none of these are able to give us any long term relief of tension does that mean we’re doomed to remain a prisoner of our tensions for the rest of our lives? No of course not but before we go on to look at long term strategies which will be covered in several other posts, lets take a look at the all-important reason why none of the above can offer anything more than short term relief.
The Tension Paradox
Many years ago I was lying in bed unable to sleep. I desperately wanted to but I couldn’t find that peace. I asked myself why and realised I couldn’t sleep because I was full of tension. ‘Why am I full of tension’ I asked myself. I lay there thinking about it and a series of answers came to me that explained so much about tension and why we humans find it so very hard to relax.
I had been lying there in bed holding onto a huge amount of tension spread throughout my body that I hadn’t consciously been holding onto. Where had it come from and why couldn’t I let it go?
Tensing a consciously muscle is easy. It’s an active process. You can consciously choose to tense your biceps or stomach muscles etc and feel the results. You can choose to make the contraction stronger or less strong. You can choose to hold the muscle in maximum contraction although that would soon wear you out and cause pain.
Unfortunately, relaxing a muscle is not so easy. You relax a muscle by not contracting it any more. Therefore it is a passive process. But how relaxed have you become? You have no idea whether the muscle is fully 100% relaxed just 50% or even barely 10%. There is no way of knowing as you get no feedback.
You can feel that you’re not actively tensing it any more but you cannot feel whether it has regained it’s full former length. Plus it’s bad enough trying to relax a muscle that you have tensed consciously but most of our tension is held unconsciously and so we have almost no idea as to which muscles are tensed and how much they are tensed.
Even if you knew it had only relaxed by 50% could you consciously relax it any further? Not really. There is no recognised method to do that.
This is what I call the ‘tension paradox. The inability to feel how relaxed any muscle or part of the body is added to the inability to increase muscle length i.e. to be able to relax it consciously.
The tension paradox explains why virtually everyone on this planet lives in a state of excess tension over which they have little or no control.
The tug-of-war contest.
Every muscle in your body has an opposite number on the other side of the joint to counter its forces. This is called the antagonist. The triceps which straighten your elbow are the antagonists for the biceps which bend your elbow. If your biceps are holding on to tension then the elbow would naturally bend unless there was compensatory tension in your triceps to prevent it (which there is). These opposing muscles are much like a tug-of-war team, both pulling on the joint to either keep it stable or to move it. However, they are both pulling far more than is necessary and so wasting a lot of their energy in the process.
This same tug-of-war competition is happening in every joint in your body and it’s putting huge strain on your muscles and joints and draining you of energy every day of your life.
As muscles on one side of a joint tighten they create excess tension on the other side which strains the muscles and tendons to breaking point. Eventually when they can take no more even the smallest, most innocent movement can ‘break the camel’s back’ and cause one of those muscles or tendons to tear.
The most amazing part of all this is that this tug of war is going on all over your body all the time and yet you are almost completely oblivious to it. Every movement you make is being opposed by muscles that would normally move the joint the opposite way. Hence an enormous amount of energy is wasted all the time through the need to maintain these tensions 24 hours a day.
It’s important to note here that it is a waste of time releasing tension in specific muscles unless you also release tension in the opposite muscles (known as antagonists). Otherwise it would be like trying to release tension on a rope by asking just one tug-of-war team to stop pulling so hard. They would instantly feel the rope being pulled away from them and so increase their pulling force again to stop the rope moving. The only way to release the tension on the rope is to persuade both sides to pull with less power. This information is of particular importance to those who stretch regularly and to massage therapists. Unless you remove the tension evenly much of your work will be undone in a very short time.
Remember to always release tension in the muscles on both sides of a joint
An injury in the right knee will affect all muscles that move or support the knee which is virtually every muscle in the leg. The other leg will have to work harder thus putting extra strain on its muscles. The hips will be thrown out of alignment which will also affect the spine. Muscles on either side of the hips and spine will either have to work extra hard to keep it upright or will become weak but tight. This will affect the neck and change the way the shoulders work thus changing the way the arms are used.
Tension is never local to just one muscle but always spreads in an attempt to either spread the working load or in an attempt to balance the body. However, the tension paradox tells us that we can’t feel it happening and couldn’t easily prevent it even if we could.
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