Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)

If you’ve ever been told something along the lines of, “You’re holding a lot of tension; just relax!”, you know how utterly unhelpful that advice can be. When we’re feeling tense, it can be hard to simply release that tension.

Paradoxically, if you further tense and activate your muscles immediately before releasing them, you can achieve deeper muscle relaxation. PMR utilizes this phenomenon to walk us through tensing then releasing our muscles to increase relaxation and reduce anxiety.

If you’re familiar with PMR, you might know that tensing and releasing every muscle in your body can take quite a bit of time. To keep things practical and easy to fit into our workdays, we’ll only target five muscle groups: shoulders, face, back, arms, and legs.

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Let's Practice!

First, let’s sit comfortably in our chairs. If possible, place your feet flat on the ground.

Now let’s tense and release our shoulders. To create tension in our shoulders, bring your shoulders up to your ears. Hold the tension for 3-4 seconds, then drop your shoulders, releasing the tension completely. Do this twice.

Carol tensing her shoulders.

Now let’s tense and release our faces. To create tension in our faces, we’ll close our eyes tight, and scrunch up our faces and lips. Hold the tension for 3-4 seconds, then release the tension completely. Do this twice.

Carol scrunching her face.

Now let’s tense and release our backs. Arch your back and bring your shoulder blades toward one another. Hold the tension for 3-4 seconds, then drop the position, releasing the tension completely. Do this twice.

Kristen tensing her back.

Finally, we’ll do our arms and legs. Extend your legs out in front of you and squeeze those glutes together. At the same time, extend your arms out in front of you and stretch them forward. Hold the tension for 3-4 seconds, then drop the position, releasing the tension completely. Do this twice.

Kristen battling chronic inflexibility to extend her arms and legs.

Go ahead and practice the Progressive Muscle Relaxation skill now (or when you can) so that you know what to do in the future. Practicing skills before you need them is important, since it can be really hard to learn new skills during an anxiety spiral!

Over the next few days, try using the Progressive Muscle Relaxation skill when your anxiety is high, then use your notebook or text editor to reflect on any changes you experience in your body or with your anxiety. What changes did you notice after trying the Progressive Muscle Relaxation skill? How did it feel? Were you surprised by where you were or weren’t holding tension before trying the skill?