Thursday, October 2, 2008

Relaxation

When i was younger and having trouble falling to sleep, my dad would always tell me to "say goodnight" to my body starting with my toes and ending with my head. He said that by the time i got to my head i would be completely relaxed and fall right to sleep but i thought it sounded ridiculous. That may sound a little funny to you too but I just read an article from the Mayo Clinic which basically says the same thing. The article talks about how even if you don't have a lot of stress in your life you can still benefit a lot from little relaxation techniques. One of the relaxation techniques was called Autogenic relaxation. In this technique you simply visualize a peaceful place and focus on either relaxing breathing, slowing your heart rate, or slowly relaxing one part of your body at a time, which is what reminded me of my dads old trick. With this relaxation tip you can gain more energy, better concentration, fewer physical and emotional responses, and overall more efficiency with your daily activities. After reading this article i am going to try and help my body relax more with these simple techiniques and i suggest trying them on yourself!

8 comments:

Julian R.E. said...

Thats weird, my mom used to say the same thing. It does kind of work though...

simply me said...

my dad definitely told me the same thing when i was little.
i secretly still do it sometimes.
:)

Hersha G. said...

Wow! I didn't know relaxation was so good for you! I know we all love to relax, especially after a hard day at school but fully relaxing ourselves we hardly ever do now that we are grown-up and have sports or homework everday. I think that now people should make time for relaxing, that way we could do better in school!

Tessa L-M said...

that sounds like it would work, but Some times I do kinda the same thing, when I cannot go to sleep, i just think about what makes me relax, or what calms me down and it works. now I can say its scientific!

Meghan M said...

I always figured relaxing was good for you but it's interesting to know it has been proven. It's kind of funny when I was younger my mom gave me this hypnoses tape to listen to that was supposed to help with your memory and it said to relax each part of your body so maybe relaxation helps with your memory as well! But I agree with you Hersha, most of don't take the time to fully relax with all of our activities and homework so it would be a good thing to designate a little time to relax.

Hannah D said...

I love how in our society we look on something as childish but it actually works! Falling asleep at night, for me, usually involves my body pleading for sleep but my mind is still busy cramming for a test the next day. I think that just slowly letting the body fall asleep is a lot better than having the mind attempt to force the body to sleep. I might have to try this!

Carolynnn said...

Relaxation is key to a healthy life. I love these types of exercises. They are fun and very rewarding to do. I think I'm going to have to try to do this before I go to bed tonight.

Shannon H. said...

I remember once at ski practice we did this. We had a sports doctor come in to talk to us about stress and how to relax. I think people really need to take time out of their days, even just a few minutes, to relax. Life is stressful even for people our age and relaxing helps us from breaking under the pressure. I'm definately going to try this technique.