"Just Relax" -- Seriously?

If you ever had someone tell you to relax in a stressful moment, most likely it wasn't very helpful, in fact it might have added irritation or frustration to the moment. In my 20's, training to be a massage therapist, we learned not to say to a client, "just relax.” If they could do it that easily, they probably wouldn't need a massage! Still, there were times I wanted to say it. There was a common phenomenon I would experience where a client would specify that they wanted deep work, yet when I would apply more pressure they would brace themselves by contracting their musculature. This, of course, was counterproductive for the client, and it just made my job harder because I would then have to use more force and effort. All it did was create more tension, more stress in their body and in mine. Often they didn’t know they were doing it at all. Thinking about this recently, I realized that this is a common experience in life.

We want to feel more at ease, less anxious, more comfortable. We want more peace, more joy, but what do we actually do? We guard ourselves, brace against what might come, contract our body to what is here or, more often, to what we imagine might arise. We create the opposite of what we want. Once we become aware of this tendency, we start see how much we do it on a regular basis. It's often in our interactions, or anticipated interactions -- when we ask for something, when someone asks something of us, when we open emails or texts, with bills that arrive in the mail, when we drive, shop, search for something. With this bracing, we end up expending more effort, create more physical and emotional tension, and get further away from what we actually want to experience. We all do this to varying degrees. It’s a very human, hard-wired need to want to protect ourselves, so we don't have to feel ashamed of it. What we can do is have more awareness when this habit energy is arising and we can practice letting it go.

When we see lightness and joy in certain people -- the Dalai Lama comes to mind -- it is so appealing because they aren't bracing against what's here. They are relaxed. So what do we need to do to “Just relax?” If we make it an invitation, not a demand of ourselves, we can choose to let go, to open to what is here without needing to fight or defend. We can be curious instead about whatever we find by trusting in ourselves to slow down and meet it with kindness. If we do this, what is there to brace against? “Just relax” might not be such a bad instruction to give ourselves (though I still wouldn't say it to someone else)! I might word it differently by saying, “Jean, it's ok to let go of contracting here, or Jean, it's ok, you don’t have to brace yourself right now.”

Once we have the awareness of tension in ourselves coming from anxiety, the unknown, feeling overwhelmed, or confusion, we can help our mind by letting go in the body. Letting the body influence the mind by choosing to relax the contraction, that sense of pulling in, tightening, narrowing. It can be very powerful and very direct. It can be harder to change what we are doing in our mind, than to change what we are doing in our body -- how we are holding ourselves.

My invitation this week is to use the direct experience of easing up in the body to ease the mind. You might notice when you've drifted into thought and, if it is a planning thought, an anxious thought, a worrying thought, an overwhelming thought, to sense your body and see where you can let go, where you can relax more. Choose physical ease and notice if that changes your thought or the feeling behind your thought. As many times as you need throughout the day, keep letting tension fall away.

🪷
Jean