When life is unpredictable, we often swing on the so-called emotional seesaw, and it is important to learn how to stop them so as not to lose strength. How to deal with stress while working with the body at home?
It is known that vivid feelings cause tension: in order to feel this or that emotion, something in the body must be strained. For example, you won’t be able to get angry if you don’t tense your diaphragm. Or you won’t be able to get scared without pulling your head into your shoulders.
It is important to know how and where your body tenses up so that in case of acute experiences you can give yourself first aid: quickly and effectively relax your muscles – and then the negative emotion will dissolve, pass through the body and disappear.
Neck and shoulders
There are only three points in the body where emotional stress accumulates the most. The topmost is the first cervical vertebra: this is the area where the skull is attached to the neck. A frightened person reflexively draws his head into his shoulders. How does this happen:
- the area of the first cervical vertebra closes – if you analyze this movement in detail, it becomes clear: the neck goes forward, and the head, as it were, rotates back;
- the space around the first cervical vertebra is compressed, and this provokes downward tension. It involves the neck, shoulders, upper back.
If such tension becomes habitual, then chronic headaches develop against its background. The man got worried – his head hurt: a familiar situation? This means that the neck is already accustomed to tense up in response to experiences and at this moment blocks the outflow of blood from the head.
How to wean the body to tense up in response to an emotion? No way, because it happens reflexively. Our task is to teach the body to relax the region of the first cervical vertebra after an emotional outburst. To do this, there is a simple exercise from the qigong course for the spine Sing Shen Juang.
- Sit or stand with a straight back. Cover your lower abdomen with your hands.
- Move your neck forward, rotate your head back, while the area of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbthe first cervical is closed.
- Move your neck down, as if the tip of your nose is running along the opposite wall.
- Rotate your head forward, and then relax so that it hangs at the base of your neck. At the same time, the neck relaxes, the intervertebral spaces open up.
- Pull your neck up, vertebra by vertebra. At the same time, the region of the first cervical vertebra opens and relaxes.
Diaphragm
To get angry, or even just defend our opinion, we need to tighten the diaphragm. This is a large muscle, which normally should move freely: down on inhalation, up on exhalation. As we teach it to tense up, it loses the ability to relax – and its amplitude is reduced.
This tension can become so strong and constant that the diaphragm stops relaxing even during sleep. This means that aggression accumulates in the body and can “shoot” at any moment.
How to learn to relax the diaphragm?
I suggest using the same Sing Shen Juang complex – a rotation exercise that kneads, relaxes the diaphragm and deepens breathing.
- Stand up straight, the top of your head tends up, your arms hang.
- Imagine that the lower part of the body is frozen, and the upper part – from the solar plexus upwards – rotates.
- Rotate left 45 degrees, return to center, then right 45 degrees.
Rotate your body as far as you can without pain. Focus on the area of the solar plexus and its projection on the back (twelfth thoracic vertebra), ask yourself if it is possible to relax even more during rotation.
pelvic floor
The third part of the body that responds to almost any emotional stress is the pelvic floor. To evaluate how the pelvic floor reacts to literally any emotion, conduct an experiment: try multiplying 32 by 12. Now concentrate on the lower abdomen. Do you feel tension?
Any unusual task can cause tension in this point of the body. To relax it, let’s do a simple squat from the Sing Shen Juang complex.
- Stand up straight, feet wider than hips, turned out so that it is comfortable to stand.
- Imagine that someone is pulling your knees towards your toes. And you, following this tension, squat a little. No more than 10 cm.
- Focus alternately on the sacrum and lower back, abdomen, hip joints, pelvic floor space – and ask yourself what other muscles can be relaxed in this position.
- Get up very slowly. If a tremor is felt during the lifting process, then the exercise is performed perfectly.
- Do several of these squats, each time deepening the relaxation.
Performing these simple exercises will quickly help at the moment of a strong emotional outburst. And the regular performance of the entire Sing Shen Juang complex allows you to calm down and find harmony in any situation.