Relaxation / breathing exercises
One of the crucial steps in becoming cognitively quit is to be able to recognise
body cues, which is why we urge you to set your timers to go ping once an hour
so that you can do a quick body check. Those tense muscles in the neck and
shoulders, the shallow breathing, hunger, thirst, etc….. all have been
associated with a smoking response, and we want to retrain Warren, our
autopilot, to offer up a more appropriate non smoking response
I went on a course today to learn more about doing effective presentations to
groups (which I have to do as part of my work as a careers counsellor, from time
to time) I’m not a natural ‘performer’, and always get anxious and tense before
I have to speak to groups of ppl (and as a smoker, my way of calming myself down
was to smoke several cigs beforehand - which, of course, I came to learn caused
me more physical stress..) Seems that most people are just the same - even
people who do this for a living (performers, politicians etc) We were taught a
range of exercises to relax our bodies and voices, and I thought I’d post them
here, as some of you might find them useful when you’re retraining Warren…
Body relaxation exercises:
1. Stand straight, feet apart. Hunch shoulders as high as possible - feel the
tension! Slowly ‘uncurl’ your shoulders and feel the tension melt away. Do
this 3 or 4 times.
2 Stand erect, feet apart. ‘Throw’ the right arm, and keep it loose. Loosely
shake the hand as if trying to release it from the arm. Repeat with the left
arm. Then do the same with the right leg (and foot) then with the left leg (and
foot)
3 Stand erect, feet apart. Relax and bend over allowing arms to hang loosely.
Knees should not be stiff, the body free from tension (ie avoid ‘clenching’ any
muscles) Very slowly unwind - first the lower back, then the middle back, then
bring up the shoulders (being careful not to ‘hunch’ them), and finally lift up
your head so that it sits comfortably on your shoulders without tension in the
neck. Your head should be upright and not back ( which constricts the throat)
nor down (which directs the voice to the floor).
Voice relaxation exercises (which also help relax facial/jaw muscles):
1 CHEWING - imagine you have a huge piece of chewing gum in your mouth: open
your mouth and chew in a circular motion for a few seconds.
2 With your fingertips, massage the temples and sides of the neck
3 Screw up the face and relax quickly 2 or 3 times
I found them really effective and they definitely helped release physical
tensions all over the body . Hopefully you might find some of them useful too.
Pam