GETTING RELAXED WITH YOGA

Articles In This Section:

· GETTING RELAXED WITH YOGA

· YOUR BODY ISN'T MADE TO DILL WITH THE STESSES

· OBSERVING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST

· YOU AND TENSION

· BEST YOGA POSITION FOR DEEP RELAXATION

· MASTERING THE BASICS OF YOGA

· yOUR BODY KNOWING WHAT YOU CAN HANDLE

Have you ever had the experience of going to consult a doctor only to be told, after he has made his diagnosis of your physical ills: "... But your main trouble is that you are much too tense. Stop driving yourself so. Try to rest more. Try to get more sleep. Relax! Let down a little ..."

But if you point out to him that your nerves will not let you unwind, that when you go to bed and turn the lights out sleep will not come, that you wake in the morning as tense and weary as when finally you did drift off, the best he can do for you is to offer you a crutch. Probably a bundle of nerves himself, he will prescribe sleeping pills or tranquilizers, long walks, or a glass of warm milk at night. What he will not say, simply because he doesn't think along these lines himself, is that relaxation may be learned and that in learning it you begin to cope successfully with both your physical and emotional problems.

There can be no physical relaxation without the mental; no mental relaxation without the physical. This becomes selfevident as soon as you stop to think that every movement, no matter how slight, involves a nerve impulse, while every nerve impulse brings on some muscular contraction, voluntary or involuntary. If you stretch out to rest with your mind churning, for instance, you will find yourself tossing restlessly; then if you force yourself to lie still, you will feel your neck muscles tensing or realize suddenly that you are clenching your teeth.

When people say they feel like crying with sheer fatigue, they mean just that: physically, they have reached a point where the only release for their weariness is an emotional purge. Afterwards, of course, they will end up completely exhausted, for nothing eats up one's energy like letting the emotions have full play.

Most of us are spendthrifts of our energy resources. We dissipate them twenty-four hours a day. Just watch yourself and the people around you. Can you sit still, quiet and at ease, for ten or even five minutes? Or do you fidget, shift about, cross and re-cross your legs, drum with your fingers on the arm of your chair, rub your neck, bite your lips? In a roomful of people, is there even one who is without nervous habits? If so, he is a happy exception. Nor, mind you, does this apply to "busy-busy" persons alone. It is perfectly possible to spend a quiet day with nothing in the least urgent to do and still eat one's self up with tension. In fact boredom itself is an enemy in this respect. Think how many people with easy, routine jobs complain of being "dead tired" by the end of the day. And who of us hasn't said, at one time or another, "I haven't done a thing all day, but I'm beat."?