Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) is a sleep-inducing technique that deserves to be in your toolbox. Keep it handy, ready to use on nights when your brain doesn’t want to shut down.
It’s at least as effective as a sleeping pill, and the best answer to sleeplessness when you have a churning mind.
Why PMR works
When your mind is churning, when it’s going from one worry or subject to another, it’s like trying to stop a train from going down a track.
It’s physics. As Isaac Newton said, an object in motion tends to stay in motion. That became the First Law of Motion.
The mind stays in motion, doing what a mind does: thinking. That is, unless another object acts upon it.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation can be that object that stops those cascading, leapfrogging thoughts, those “objects” in motion.
It can be the brakeman who slows the train down and brings it to a stop.
Let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with thinking. Thinking pays off. There’s a time and place for everything and there’s a time to let worries, frustrations, and speculations go. That time is when you’re trying to go to sleep.
Basic PMR
The idea with PMR is to tighten and then relax your muscles in a series. First, you count the seconds you hold the contractions. Second, you count the seconds you release the contraction. Hold and release for eight seconds each.
Be sure to count slowly. Sometimes, it helps to count like this: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Saying “Mississippi” takes about a second.
Tense and relax your feet. Then move the area of concentration upwards. Tense and relax your ankles, calves, thighs, perineum, buttocks, stomach, chest and shoulders, arms, neck, and the muscles supporting your head.
It’s not so important what exactly you contract and relax. What’s important is the counting that goes into it, the care and meticulous attention that you put into making sure the muscles are contracted and relaxed. Also, the attention that you put into relaxing and contracting your entire body. PMR is, ultimately, a way of distracting yourself.
Some muscles can merely be tightened and then relaxed. Others, like your legs and hands, can be compressed together, like with an isometric contraction.
You’ll want to do a series of 10-15 individual contractions.
Some, when teaching PMR, make a list of all of the muscles that you can contract and relax. It’s not necessary to work off of a list. You can touch your ankles together and tense the muscles, for example. You can also tighten and then relax your calf muscles. The most important factor for success is the attention you put into contracting and then holding the contraction. Your attention is what acts as a brake on the intrusive thoughts.
What to expect after the PMR series
You’re still going to be awake after you complete your series. What you do afterward is turn on your side and relax.
I like to imagine myself laying down in the bottom of a small boat, rocking away in a peaceful lake.
Any peaceful imagining works. You can think of a peaceful time from your childhood. Time spent on the beach. Mentally put yourself in a hammock swaying in a mountain breeze. Mentally take yourself to your happy place.
Summary
That’s it. Ten to 15 contractions, eight seconds each while concentrating on the contracting and relaxing. After you’re done, visualize yourself relaxing, safe and secure.
Feel free to employ other approaches too like sleeping sounds.
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James Cobb RN, MSN is the founder of the Dream Recovery System, a top sleep website dedicated to helping the world sleep better.
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