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LightSeed.com > Self-Empowerment Center > Articles > Relaxation

Relaxation

by Bobbi Gay

 
My name is Bobbi Gay and I have been working in the field of healing and self-empowerment for about a decade now. This kind of work has caused me to look at the issue of internal safety and inner peace in a very serious way. I came to realize over time, that many of us, myself included have never learned how to relax and how to maintain the capacity to relax once we achieve it. I was amazed at how little I actually knew about this all-important state of well being. We walk around in all kinds of tension states, oblivious to the fact that we are holding so much. Many times people comment about my work by saying that until they achieved a relaxed state they were unaware of what was being held in their system.

I now believe that relaxation is a state when body, mind, emotions, and spirit all line up and synchronize. The state of relaxation is actually telling us that we are internally coherent. Our everyday awareness is characterized by brainwave states in the range called Beta. This type of consciousness seems to me to be accompanied by much more bodily tension and anxiety. One thing I quickly noticed in my work, was that after people had worked in expanded states, they felt relaxed and more confident. The outer circumstances of their lives remained constant, but they felt more at home in their bodies and able to meet challenges.

As time went on I noticed that some people could maintain this feeling while others couldn't. I began to look at why that would be. I found that the cause differed with the individual, but there were some basic causes. It is empowering to identify your individual patterns around tension, because that is the first step in changing them.

The following are some of the hidden causes of tension I was able to identify:

A disconnection from the soul - bodily tension causes a constriction of the life force, which is a spiritual energy, when we are depleted of this energy substance we feel alone and at risk.

Muscular tensions get set up in early childhood. Rejections and hurts, and injuries all create a tightening in response to a perceived threat, notice I said perceived it doesn't have to be an actual threat or rejection. This contraction usually occurs in the abdomen, ribs, back and shoulders and jaw. Normal life is set up to oscillate between tension and relaxation. The heart contracts the heart releases. The day is busy; the night is for sleep. But what about the poor child who lives in fear and tension with no relief? He or she may become hypervigilant, basically habituated to a certain type of focused awareness. He won't even know there is another way

His muscles are habitually contracted and tense. This tension perpetuates tense worried thoughts. The pay off for the child in all that tension is that emotional energy gets trapped out of awareness. Some of the fear or anger or whatever isn't up in his face, but rather stays suppressed. This makes life seem more manageable. Yet on some level he knows that's incongruent with the facts and that causes anxiety.

The human being is set up to easily become automated. It does not take conscious attention to flush a toilet, the mind preoccupies itself with a more pertinent concern as you reach and flush without a thought. Muscular holding becomes automated in childhood. That's why we don't even feel it anymore. Awareness has been withdrawn from parts of the body.

This is not wholeness, so when my clients worked with expanded states they reclaimed more of their bodies. The ones, who could maintain the relaxation, had sustained that connection to the body and particularly the muscles. They brought awareness to the fact that they were beginning to hold tension and then loved themselves enough to remedy it before it went out of awareness again. The tools we offer are just the things I employed to encourage the connection to the body. I realized to get a good result people needed both awareness and choices about tools and techniques that work.

The choice of how to respond to the challenge of internal tension, is an empowering thing to have. Before I learned all this I used to have a real hard time when everything was hitting the fan. My baseline tension was so great; that when major stressors came along I would get very wound up physically and emotionally. This produced a peculiar feeling like my muscles were brittle like glass. Another thing that would happen is that I would become more defensive in my relationships and basically take on more of a victim consciousness. Needless to say it was very disempowering for me as well as my family.

Beliefs are powerful, you cannot bathe in negative thoughts and perceptions and not feel tense. For some who couldn't relax and just "be with" their bodies it was due to a negative core belief. Abuse and the need to repress emotion can be the genesis for beliefs that it is unsafe to be here in a physical body. Look at your most basic beliefs about the issue of safety for deeper insight into whether this is a problem for you. If you don't think it's safe to be here you will have trouble achieving relaxation because it is a state involving great presence. Body, mind, spirit, emotions all line up and are accounted for.

Guided imagery tapes, flower essences, and essential oils all contribute to achieving inner coherence and the relaxation response. It's also important to note that we can hold more expansive ideas when we are physically and emotionally calm relaxed and open. Contraction as a standard response to life must result in disconnection from life-force and joy. It is our hope here at the Self Empowerment Center@LightSeed.com that this material will actually help you to identify where you need to empower yourself and then offer tools and information to do so.

For those with a limited budget, there are two things that cost nothing we can offer. First is to use the information available here at the Self Empowerment Center@LightSeed.com to become more self-aware and self-empowered. Secondly begin to use affirmations and the Process for Shifting Limiting Belief Patterns described in our ARTICLES section. Guidelines on how to choose an effective affirmation are offered there.

 

Resources for Relaxation:

1. For those who feel chronically tense or sore I recommend using the healing system called Somatics. In the article Getting the Most from Somatics section I make specific recommendations for common problems. I find the tapes more helpful than the book. This is a good way to relax the body and retrain the nervous system.
   
   
2. Our Acorn Solution called Calm and Cozy can help your to achieve relaxation across all the levels, body, mind, spirit, and emotions.
   
   
3. The Somatics breathing tape called Calm and Energize will greatly help most people to achieve a notably deep state of "let go".
   
   
4. It is important to identify beliefs that contribute to tension states, this allows us to change the belief. I recommend reading the article entitled Process for Shifting Limiting Beliefs.
   
   
5. Pent up emotion can cause unease. We refer you to the articles entitled Emotional Factoids and Processing Emotion Effectively.
   
   
6. A man called Emmett Miller MD makes wonderful, powerful relaxation tapes... highly recommended. Letting Go of Stress, Easing into Sleep, Change the Channel on Pain, Headache Relief, or Ten Minute Stress Manager would be a good place to start.
   
   
7. There is a tape set called Brainwave Suite that helps the brain to achieve states of deep relaxation. This music can be played as background and is a very non intrusive way to achieve or maintain the state of "let go."
   

 

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