Are you a woman who lives with a secret shame called Closet Eating?

A closet eater is a person with a complex about eating in full view and in front of others. For a closet eater, the idea of eating food in public creates an excessively uncomfortable feeling in their body generating fears and beliefs that people are always watching them and judging what they eat.

Most people speak to themselves over 10,000 times a day and according to research done, studies show that the majority of what we tell ourselves is based on criticism and negative input.

If you are a woman whos unhappy with your body and frustrated with your weight, you most likely are beating up on yourself with critical self talk. Since you are already conditioned to think of yourself in negative terms, you tend to think or believe that others share your negative opinions and judgments.

If you struggle with feeling ashamed when you eat in public, you are most likely replaying memories in your mind of actual events that have occurred in which you felt uncomfortable eating around people.

For example, as a young teen, like me, you may have had a very critical Uncle Don, who felt that he was doing you a big favor by criticizing your body and commenting on what you ate.

As you sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, with a full plate, eagerly anticipating enjoying your food, your Uncle may have made comments about how fat you were and how the food youre about to eat will only make you fatter.

Since your brain is always searching to make new connections, you associate Uncle Dons scathing criticism with the awful feeling of shame that you now have in the pit of your stomach.

In NLP, we call this a kinesthetic anchor. Each time, you are reminded of feeling criticized or judged, your body, sends a signal to your brain flooding your body with stress chemicals designed to alert you to danger. Your body sends a signal that stirs your brain to remember this feeling of anxiety, whenever you are in situations involving social dining.

In specific, your ears sent a signal to the brain that, Youre going to get as fat as a house one day if you keep eating that food. You already look like a truck driver from the back.

Desperately wanting to get away from this threat, you seek to find a way to eat the food you want without being noticed. By doing so, you create a new connection in your brain that eating in secret keeps you safe and in control. Yet because of the flood of stress chemicals that the negative memories create, and societal pressures to dine with others, you feel awful hiding and eating in secret.

Therefore, instead of eating Thanksgiving Dinner in front of everyone else seated at the table, including your Ugly Uncle Don, as many people would do, a closet eater will pick at their meal, often claim that they are not very hungry, and find a way to sneak the food away and eat it in a place where they can be all alone, feeling safe and protected from harm.

Until I finally stopped dieting, and learned to trust myself around food and began to honor my feelings as well as my body, I’m sad to say that I wasted years eating in secret too.

I used to be very strategic and clever in thinking up so many wonderful hiding places for food. I had stashes of cookies in my coat pockets, candy bars under the bed, wrapped snack cakes behind the toilet. I would eat in public bathrooms, closets, behind locked doors, in laundry rooms, anywhere that I could be assured of being alone.

For years I put on a show for everyone, including my Uncle Don that I was doing my best to diet and lose weight. Yet, the moment that I was left alone, I would desperately reach for the food that gave my life comfort and joy. I felt caught in a cycle of self abuse for decades, silenced by the secret shame that I felt that I had no control around food.

Today Ive found a solution that can help you to end your secret shame. I want to help you.

As a Professional Coach, I now understand that closet eating is an example of an eating disorder. Unlike the purging behavior associated with bulimia or the purposeful acts of starving connected with anorexia, closet eating is just as insidious in that it undermines the individual and reinforces negative messages to their brain, making them feel shameful and sinful.

If youre suffering from this painful and shame filled behavior, there is hope for you. One of the things that I recommend doing is learning a process called Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. EFT will break the connection that eating in public is shameful and threatening.

EFT is based on the science of Acupuncture and often considered to be it’s emotional equivalent without the pain of needles. Anyone can use it anytime to balance their energy, feel better and overcome negative emotions and fears in minutes.

The reason this re-balancing of energy is necessary is due to the fact that when we experience stress and pain, our bodies hold on to the memory of that event.

Consider that your body is like a smooth running current. When things are going well, the current is flowing gently and evenly. Yet when pain, upset or disease occurs, its almost as though a monkey wrench has been tossed into the works.

This disruption short circuits the entire system, causing arcing and blow outs to occur everywhere. Thats when everything goes wonky, your eating goes out of control, and you feel miserable. That explains why you’re reaching for that food as soon as someone’s back is turned. There are parts of you that are short circuiting. If you want a quick easy, painless way to smooth it all out again, EFT can surely help.



By: Andrea Amador

 

If you have come across the word ‘kaizen’ before it will probably have been in the context of industrial quality control or personal development. “Kaizen” is a Japanese word that is usually translated as ‘improvement’, but it means more than that. The word has connotations of continuous, gradual, orderly and never-ending improvement, the willingness to constantly, relentlessly pursue improvement a small step at a time. The application of the kaizen principle is the reason why Japan’s economy was transformed after the Second World War. All workers were encouraged to make suggestions as to how quality and production could be improved, even by tiny, tiny percentages, but over time the effect of these tiny percentage improvements, applied consistently and built upon, transformed Japanese industry.

So what has this to do with Reiki? Well the word kaizen actually appears towards the end of the Reiki precepts. The line in Japanese is “Shin shin kaizen, Usui Reiki Ryoho”, which could be loosely translated as “Mind body change it for better Usui Reiki method”. So when Usui was talking about using his system to improve the body and mind, I get the impression that we are looking at a lifelong commitment to work with the system, to focus the energy on ourselves again and again, long-term, in order to produce small incremental improvements within ourselves, to dedicate ourselves to developing our effectiveness as a channel. But small changes build on previous small changes, an enhancement upon an enhancement leads to amazing development over time. And Usui’s original system gives us the solid, concrete techniques that we can use to develop ourselves: as channels, in terms of spirituality and in terms of intuition, to produce our own individual Reiki Evolution!

So how do we pursue our own kaizen of Reiki? How do we apply the concept of continuous and never-ending improvement to our practice of Reiki? Here are a few suggestions…

Root your practice of Reiki in daily energy work.

If you are serious about wanting to obtain the many benefits that are available to you through the Reiki system then you are going to have to work on yourself most days, ideally every day, and by doing so you will build up the beneficial effects of Reiki within you. It is not sufficient to use Reiki on yourself once a week, or to assume that if you treat other people occasionally then this is enough to give you the Reiki you need.

Your first priority should be yourself, and this means daily energy work. This does not need to be an onerous task, nor does it need to take a long time to carry out. Sometimes we decline to use Reiki on ourselves because we do not have the perfect opportunity, perhaps because we do not have, say, 30 minutes to work on ourselves. Yet even 10 minutes of energy work, when carried out consistently each day, would be far better and produce much better results than doing nothing for days, and then a great big blitz for a big chunk of time on a weekend to try and ‘catch up’. Spending even a small chunk of time working on ourselves each day builds up a momentum and stirs changes which build and build. Sporadic practice leads to some beneficial changes, but you are not maximising your Reiki potential.

So, how can we work on ourselves? Well, a good place to start would be to practise Hatsurei ho, a series of energy exercises taught in the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (the ‘Gakkai), an association set up after Usui’s death by the Imperial Officers who had trained with him for a while. ‘Hatsurei ho’ means something like ‘start up Reiki technique’ and consists of a series of energy meditations/ visualisations that focus on your Tanden (Dantien in Chinese) and which are designed to be carried out every day. The effects of Hatsurei ho are to:



Clear and cleanse your energy system

Help to move your energy system more into a state of balance

Help to ground you

Help to build up your personal energy reserves

Allows you to grow spiritually

Develop your ability as a channel for Reiki

Help to develop your sensitivity to the flow of energy

Help to develop your intuitive side



The exercises take perhaps 12-15 minutes to carry out each day, and can be fitted into the busiest of schedules if the will is there. We can all make this time for our Reiki practice.

But we should also focus the energy more specifically on ourselves, on our own self-healing, by carrying out a self-treatment each day. Whether you carry out the Western ‘hands-on’ method of treating yourself, or use the self-treatment meditation that Usui Sensei taught, you should focus the energy on yourself on a regular basis to help bring things into balance for you on all levels, and to help you to release things that no longer serve you: mental states, emotions, physical things. The energy will deal with many aspects of your body/mind, many deeply-embedded imbalances, if we give the energy the opportunity to do its work on us, digging deep and chipping away at the ‘baggage’ that we carry, over time.

We prefer to use Usui Sensei’s self-treatment meditation because it seems more intense and versatile, but all self-treatment approaches are valid. Usui’s Sensei’s system was all about spiritual development and self-healing, so Hatsurei Ho and self-treatment can lie at the very heart of your Reiki practice. You need to put yourself first, and the principle of kaizen means that by working on yourself consistently, great transformations are possible. You owe it to yourself to allow yourself to obtain the benefits that are available to you through Reiki.

Receive spiritual empowerments throughout your training and beyond.

Training with Usui was rather like martial arts training, where you were in ongoing contact with your teacher over an extended period of time. Part of your training involved receiving simple spiritual empowerments from Usui Sensei, repeatedly, at all levels. Each empowerment reinforced your connection to the source, cleared your channel for the energy, allowed you to develop spiritually and enhanced your intuitive potential. To echo this practice, Taggart sends out a distant Reiju empowerment every week, on a Monday, which can be ‘tuned in to’ by any Reiki person. You can find out about this, and what to do, by visiting this page of the Reiki Evolution web site:

www.reiki-evolution.co.uk/reijubroadcast.htm.

On each occasion that you receive Reiju you are given what you need, and as your needs change from one occasion to another, this simple spiritual ‘blessing’ helps you to develop. A one-off attunement or empowerment does of course give you something permanent, and when you learn Reiki for the first time the attunements or empowerments that you receive provide you with the ability to use Reiki permanently, but it does not stop there: by receiving empowerments on a regular basis you are building momentum and allowing the energy to penetrate more deeply within you.

If we are committed to ongoing improvements within ourselves then we should make the time to receive an empowerment weekly. And again it is the regular commitment which is the key, the key to deepening your experience of the energy and its beneficial effects on you.

Work on developing your intuitive potential.

Mikao Usui’s original system did not focus very much on the treatment of others, and any instruction on treatments would not have involved slavishly following a set of ‘standard’ hand positions that you had to apply to everyone you treated. Usui’s method was simpler and more elegant. You allowed the energy to guide your hands to the right place to treat, different from one person to another, and different within the same person from one treatment to another. The way we have been taught to do this is through a ‘technique’ called ‘Reiji Ho’ (indication of the spirit technique’), a way of emptying your mind and merging with the energy, getting your head out of the way to allow intuition to bubble to the surface. The exciting thing about Reiji Ho is that it works for everyone, and with time – we come back to kaizen’s small incremental improvements – your hands will move more quickly, more consistently, more effortlessly, and you will start to attract more intuitive information. So every time we treat someone we should spend time cultivating our ‘Reiji’ state of mind, and gradually, gradually, we develop.

Learn to become the energies.

…that you are introduced to at Second Degree and Master levels. Usui’s system didn’t involve symbols as far as most of his students were concerned. Students were expected to carry out meditations over an extended period of time in order to learn to experience different energies and, at Second Degree, students were introduced to the energies of “earth ki” and “heavenly ki”, which represent two fundamental aspects of our being. By practising ‘becoming’ earth ki and heavenly ki again and again – a powerful self-healing practice – these energies became so familiar to the students that they could ‘connect’ to the energy direct without having to use a prop like a symbol. Usui provided some Shinto mantras for some of his students to use to invoke the energies, but it was possible to move beyond these mantras with time, too. In my article ‘A Simple Way with Symbols’ I describe a meditation that you can use to ‘become’ these energies.

But again we see that to obtain the greatest benefit, to enhance self-healing, to free up our practice and move beyond symbols, takes time and commitment. A quick meditation carried out a few times is not enough: Usui Sensei’s students spent 6-9 months meditating on just one energy, and this was done because the principle of kaizen – plugging away and developing by small amounts again and again – led to deep changes over time.

Live your life according to Usui’s guiding principles.

Usui’s simple principles to live by offer perhaps the best example of the principle of kaizen in our Reiki practice: Usui Sensei’s precepts are a work in progress. They are not something that you read through and think “OK, got that”: the precepts are simple to read and understand but they are something that you drip-feed into your daily life over time, more and more over time.

We may begin by thinking about the precepts when we first come across them on a First Degree course: we reflect on how they might impinge on our lives, our thoughts and emotions, our behaviour; we might imagine situations from that past that might have proceeded better had we exemplified the precepts, and we might imagine situations in the future and see ourselves behaving in a way that demonstrates that we are living the precepts.

But this initial surge of interest in the precepts is not sufficient to produce the beneficial changes that the precepts can produce in our lives.

To fully embrace Usui Sensei’s spiritual principles takes regular reflection and ongoing thought. On an ongoing basis we consider our thoughts and our behaviour, we reflect on the principles and what they mean to us. If we do this then over time we will find that living the precepts becomes easier, that our behaviour is modifying itself, that there are more permanent changes in the way that we react and behave and relate to other people. But this will only happen if we ‘chip away’ at our current behaviour patterns, using the precepts as our guiding light. There are no quick fixes: the precepts are not just for First Degree. The precepts are the essence of our Reiki practice.

Now, we do not need to be perfect, we do not need to beat ourselves up for not applying each and every principle on all occasions, but by dedicating ourselves, and by forgiving ourselves, and by trying to do a little better each day than we did the day before, we transform ourselves.

That is the key to our kaizen of Reiki: dedication and commitment, patience and forgiveness, and openness to the source. Long term.



By: Taggart King, Reiki Evolution

In this article I thought I would set down ten things that you can do – ten principles to take account of – to benefit your practice of Reiki. This is not something that has come from Japan, or from early practitioners of Reiki: it is just something that I have put together myself. I hope that this article will be of interest to people at all Reiki levels.

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(1) Reiki is all about you

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Although Reiki is sometimes presented in the West as a sort of complementary therapy, a hands-on treatment technique, or a form of Japanese spiritual healing, that is not what Reiki is all about. If your practice of Reiki consists mainly of treating other people then you are missing the point because Reiki is all about you! Reiki is a personal practice for your self-healing and your spiritual and self-development. You are the priority here.

In Usui’s time the treatment of others was not focused upon or emphasised, in fact treatments were a bit of a distraction from the main thrust of his teachings, which Usui Sensei referred to as a “system to achieve personal perfection”. Right from the start, the system was about personal development, not working on others.

So to gain the greatest benefits for yourself through Reiki, you need to establish a decent routine of working on yourself in whatever way that you were taught. If you were taught Western-style then do your hands-on self-treatment regularly, if you know about Japanese-style Reiki then practise your Hatsurei ho; if you know about Usui Sensei’s original system then add his self-treatment meditation to your regular Hatsurei.

I know that some people seem to have the view that working on yourself is in some way ‘selfish’, but if you cannot look after yourself properly then how can you help other people? By working on yourself regularly you make yourself a better channel and more effective at what you do in terms of treatments, so there are plus points all round for those who make themselves their Reiki priority.

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(2) Base your practice on the precepts

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Usui Sensei established a simple spiritual system that was rooted in his precepts, his ‘rules to live by’. Rather than being an interesting set of instructions to read on a course and put to one side, Usui’s precepts are at the very heart of his system, and it was said that as much spiritual development could come through following the precepts as would come through doing any of the energy work. If we are consider ourselves as ‘practising Reiki’ then we will follow the precepts.

So we need to think deeply about the precepts and how they affect our lives. We need to consider each precept in turn and reflect on how that precept might impinge upon and guide our thoughts and behaviour and relationships and priorities. And we need to do this regularly, using the precepts as an ongoing source of guidance, the effects of which will make a real difference to us, and the people around us, over time.

The precepts are something that you we drip-feed into our lives, something that we refer to regularly and reflect on regularly, for our own benefit and for the benefit of the people with whom we come into contact.

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(3) Practise mindfulness

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Although not referred to on most Reiki courses, the practise of mindfulness was as important part of Usui Sensei’s system as were the precepts, and in fact mindfulness is hidden in the precepts! Mindfulness is a form of meditation that one can perform at any time, when carrying out ordinary, mundane activities like walking somewhere or washing dishes or sipping tea, and involves becoming consciously and fully aware of your thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally, existing in the moment.

When you are living ‘in the moment’, fully engaged in what you are doing, fully aware of the present moment, then you are existing in a state where there is no anger and there is no worry. By not dwelling on the past or speculating about the future, by embracing fully the present moment, you are living the precepts, and mindfulness brings with it humility, honesty, compassion and forgiveness.

So mindfulness is a way of experiencing Mikao Usui’s spiritual principles.

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(4) Work on yourself daily

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Reiki isn’t something that you can pick up once in a while, play around with for a bit, and then drop again… not if you are looking to receive the many benefits that are available from the system, anyway. If you are looking for consistent benefits then you need a consistent practice. The precepts say “just for today”, and that is a good starting point: just do something with Reiki today. You can manage that. It doesn’t have to be hours and hour’s worth. Just do something for 10 minutes: you have ten minutes. Do something for 20 minutes. And if you don’t have ten minutes, get up 10 minutes earlier: problem solved.

Don’t worry about what you will do tomorrow: just focus on today.

When tomorrow comes, do the same. Just do something with Reiki, even for ten minutes. Don’t worry about tomorrow: just do something today.

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(5) Commitment is the key

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There are spectacular benefits to be enjoyed through practising Reiki, and all you need to do is to work with the energy consistently, focus on the precepts and practise mindfulness. The benefits build up cumulatively, you see, and sporadic and occasional practice isn’t enough if you want the very best out of your Reiki. You will get out of the system what you are prepared to put into it, so Reiki deserves a little of your time each day. You need to plug away at a few simple things, a few simple exercises or routines, and make them a regular part of your day, as regular a part of your routine as brushing your teeth or your hair.

And once you have established a regular habit of working on yourself with Reiki then you will find that it is difficult to stop: you will find that you really miss your hatsurei session or your self-treatment if you miss a day. That is the sort of position you are looking to get yourself into and by committing yourself to working with Reiki each day, even if it is a little inconvenient, you will reach that point.

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(6) Don’t try too hard

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While we do need to commit ourselves and establish a decent routine of working on ourselves in order to obtain the many benefits that are available to us through Reiki, we should at the same time make sure that we do not try too hard, work for too long, or take our practice too seriously. Reiki is best enjoyed in a gentle, laid-back and light-hearted fashion rather than in a fists-clenched, furrowed-brow, tense, ‘ready for a lot of hard work’ sort of way. We do not force Reiki and we do not force a fierce practice on ourselves.

Reiki is rather like a flowing stream of water, and we are a rough rock sitting in that stream. The rock will become smooth, of course, but this will be achieved gently, through having the water flow consistently, and this will be done in its own time.

We might read about some of the experiences that other Reiki people might have when working on themselves, or receiving attunements/empowerments, or treating others (seeing colours, feeling particular things) and we may not notice all these things ourselves; we may notice very little. We may then think that if only we tried a bit harder then we would notice these things and then we would then be ‘doing it properly’.

But trying hard and trying to force things is the best way there is to put a great big block on your progress. You will progress fastest when you give up trying and just be. Stand aside (metaphorically), do the exercises, treat people, and don’t think or worry about what you do or do not experience. Be a bystander, be neutral and empty, have no expectations. That is the best approach, the approach that will lead you to progress at the right speed for you.

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(7) You don’t need to be perfect

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Along with the need to be relaxed and laid-back and light-hearted about your practice, you should also make sure that you are not beating yourself up for not being perfect! You do not have to be perfect in order to obtain benefits for yourself through Reiki, or to treat other people successfully. No-one else is perfect, so you don’t have to be either.

So perhaps your mind wanders when you do a treatment or work on yourself. So what? This happens to everybody else. Don’t worry about it (there is something in the precepts about worrying). It you make a big thing about it and try through ‘force of will’ to have an empty mind, you have just made things worse: now you have two lots of thoughts… the first thoughts and then all the new thoughts about getting rid of the first lot of thoughts! Don’t worry. Pay the thoughts no attention. Let them go. Bring your attention gently back to what you were doing. Feel the energy flowing through you; imagine yourself merging with the person on the treatment table. Over time your mind will settle, and you’ll spend more of your time in a nice empty meditative state, but thoughts may well intrude again, and some days will probably be better than others. That’s ok. You’re human. It will sort itself out with time.

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(8) Don’t keep trying to puzzle out ‘why’

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To get the best out of your Reiki I recommend that you don’t spend too much time trying to puzzle out why you are – or are not – experiencing a particular thing. Don’t keep trying to work out what a particular colour that you or the recipient saw during a treatment means, or ponder the significance of a colour that you saw when self-treating. Don’t keep wondering what a particular sensation in your hand means or why you felt a lot of energy flowing into a particular area of someone’s body, or why you didn’t feel any energy flowing into a particular place. It doesn’t matter.

Your head can really mess up your experience of Reiki if you keep on frantically thinking about, analysing and questioning things. Don’t think! Just be. Empty your mind, merge with the energy, if you are treating someone then merge with the recipient, and let it happen. Follow the flow of energy when you are treating, yes, and allow your hands to stay for longer in areas where more energy is coming through, but don’t start frantically trying to puzzle out what is going on: Reiki works on lots of levels and you won’t know what’s happening so you may as well give up thinking about it and let go: enjoy the process, enjoy your treatments and give up the mental effort! It makes it so much easier that way!

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(9) Trust your intuition

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Along with not questioning everything that you feel or don’t feel, you should also not keep on doubting the things that you are feeling and noticing. If you feel something, you feel it: you are not making it up. You cannot make yourself feel something.

So if you notice that energy is flowing into you more strongly in a particular area when you are self-treating, accept that and go with it, self-treating for longer there than in other positions. The same applies when treating someone else: if you feel that there is a ‘hot spot’ or ‘fizzy area’ then accept the sensations and treat for longer there. You are not making it up.

Neither are you making it up if you feel strangely drawn to a particular area of the body. You are intuitive and you can work intuitively straight away. All you need to do is to stop second-guessing and doubting yourself, be still, and simply accept what comes to you. It doesn’t need to make sense. Don’t try and puzzle it out: just accept it and treat in the way that feels appropriate.

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(10) Ignore silly rules and restrictions

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While we are making sure that we are not cluttering our practice with endless thoughts, questions and doubts, we should also thrown out as unnecessary the various rules, regulations and restrictions that we may have been taught. Reiki does not need to be controlled, blunted and restricted by man-made rules that have no basis. Reiki is safe and Reiki is simple, and simple approaches are usually the most effective.

So we do not have to slavishly follow a prescribed set of hand positions when treating ourselves or other people and we do not need to say a set form of words for our Reiki to work. We do not need to follow ritualised sets of hand and body movements in a particular sequence to be able to treat someone and we do not need to refrain from treating people with various medical conditions. Reiki is safe and Reiki is adaptable. It allows many different ways of working that are all valid. There is no ‘one’ way that Reiki has to be used, and we should ignore admonitions that we should ‘always’, or ‘never’, do a particular thing.

So, to get the most out of your Reiki, I recommend that you make a commitment to yourself to work on yourself each day as your top priority, but not beating yourself up if you miss the occasional day. Use Hatsurei ho and self-treat, focus on the precepts and drip-feed mindfulness into more and more of your daily activities. Don’t try too hard though: be light-hearted and forgiving towards yourself because you don’t have to be perfect. Try not to clutter your mind with lots of thoughts and doubts and questions: just be neutral, have no expectations, be empty and content. And make sure you keep it simple.



By: Taggart King, Reiki Evolution

Progressive muscle relaxation [PMR] is a relaxation technique of stress management developed by American physician Edmund Jacobson in 1934. This progressive muscle relaxation technique is focused on tensing and releasing tensions in the 16 different muscle groups. Jacobson reasoned that since muscular tension is usually followed as a by product of anxiety, one can lower and reduce anxiety by understanding and learning how to self relax those muscular tension. (McCallie et al., 2006)

Joseph Wolpe (Conrad and Roth, 2006 ) further adjusted this technique for use with systematic desensitization in 1948. Subsequently, both Bernstein and Borkovec in 1973 (Bernstein and Borkovec, 1973) came out with adjustments to the technique to suit cognitive behavioral stress management. Empirical proofs also supports the use of progressive muscle relaxation in high level tension responses and mind body techniques such as: irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, reducing tension headaches, adjunct treatment in cancer and chronic pain management in inflammatory arthritis.(McCallie et al., 2006)

Let us take a closer look at what exactly is progressive muscle relaxation and how does this technique work. The idea behind progressive muscle relaxation is simply that of isolating one muscle group at a time, then intentionally creating muscle tension for 8-10 seconds, and then allowing the muscle to totally relax so as to release the tensions.

Taking for instance, when we take our right hand and tighten it into a fist with all our force, we can feel the muscle tension slowly increase in our hand and all the way up to the forearm. The longer we hold the tension and force, the more tense the arm becomes. The body will then become conscious that it does not feel comfortable in this position at all, where pain might even start to occur.

The above demonstrates an instance of intentionally exaggerated muscle tension in the body. When such tension exists around the forehead, one would usually experience headache and if it is around the neck area, a neck ache would be experienced. When the body continued to hold the muscle tension and then all at once, relax and totally let go, a difference will be felt when the hand is allowed to flop down onto the lap. The muscles around the arm now start to relax, and the muscle tension slowly flows away and disappears.

Based on the principle of muscle physiology, this process of relaxation is proven to work. The muscle has to relax whenever tension is being created in a muscle and then release. This happens because the muscle does not have a choice and it must react in this manner.

The interesting part of this process is that the muscle will not only quickly relax back to its pre-tensed state, and when it is allowed to rest, the muscle will become even more relaxed that it was before the tension was created. When this procedure of creating tension in the muscles and then releasing of the tension is applied to every major muscle group of the body, all of these muscles will become more relaxed prior to the beginning.

The main idea to initiating the relaxation response in this way is to take control of the voluntary muscles through creation of tension in them, followed by forcing them into a state of relaxation. When the body is aware of the presence of the tension, it will respond by triggering the muscles to relax, where the rest of the other components of the relaxation response will naturally follow.

Lesser oxygen is needed for relaxed muscle and hence the rate of breathing is slow. Since the heart does not require to be beating so fast to supply oxygen out to tense muscles, heart rate and blood pressure decline. Thus the normal blood flow will returns to the belly and digestion resumes where the belly is calmed and also the hands and feet are warmed up. As a result, this series of body adaptations all occur and fall naturally into place as the voluntary muscles are being directed into a state of relaxation, and changes in mood followed which make the body feeling calm and refreshed.

The progressive muscle relaxation procedure teaches you to relax your muscles through a two steps process. Through repetitive practices, the body quickly learns to recognize and differentiate the associated feelings between a tensed muscle and a completely relaxed muscle. Using this simple knowledge, the body can then induce physical muscular relaxation when the body first becomes aware of the signs of the tension that accompanies anxiety. With physical relaxation, the mental will also be more readily focused and able to maintain more calm.

To further enhance the benefits of being both physically and mentally relaxed, the body need to always stay as relaxed as possible. This is achievable if there is a positive transfer of the muscle relaxation technique into daily activities. Using the principle of Taichi, it focuses on slow rhythmic movements in a graceful manner where they mind and body is in a relaxed condition while the body is maintaining the correct postural alignment.

When we talked about the body being in a relaxed position, it does not mean that the muscles are not being used. In fact, Taichi can be considered as a high intensity aerobic exercise when practiced using the correct scientific approach and postural alignment. However, for many amateur Taichi practitioners, it is often difficult for them to maintain both physically and mentally relaxed especially when they are too focus on trying to remember the Taichi movements and applying the taichi principles.

Thus, the progressive muscle relaxation techniques offer a good foundation or pathway where individual can use it to initiate the body relaxation, then transferring this relaxation state into Taichi practice where it can further be used to achieve both mind and body relaxation and lastly to habitualise it into daily activities.

Hence, as we can see there is a positive transfer of muscle relaxation from practicing progressive muscle relaxation technique to taichi and lastly to maintain this state of well being and feeling of relaxation during normal daily physical activities.

To begin practicing the progressive muscle relaxation technique, we can either sit in a comfortable chair or lying on the bed. The main objective is to get as comfortable as possible, and tries to avoid wearing any tight clothes or shoes and also not to cross the legs. As for the breathing, take a gradual deep breath and let it slow gradually and slowly.

What we are going to perform is alternately tensing and relaxing specific major groups of muscles. After tension is released, the muscle will become even more relaxed than before the tensing. Focus on the feel of the muscles, especially the distinction between tension and relaxation. Over time, the body will become aware of any tension felt in any specific muscle and be able to reduce that tension. This is known as kinesthetic awareness. Before performing the progressive muscle relaxation, if one has any problems regarding pulled muscles, broken bones, or any medical contraindication for physical activities, need to consult the doctor first.

1. Hands – Clench the fists tightly to tense it and then relaxed. Next, the fingers are extended fully to create tension and relaxed.

2. Biceps and triceps – Elbow flexion to tense the biceps and relaxed by dropping the arm. Next, the triceps are tensed up and then relaxed by dropping them.

3. Shoulders – Pull back the shoulders to tense the muscle and then relax them. Next, push the shoulders forward or hunch it to create tension and then relax.

4. Neck (lateral) – Keep the shoulders in a neutral and relaxed position, the head is then rotated slowly to the right, as far as possible and then relax. Next rotate to the left and relax.

5. Neck (forward) – Press down the chin and tuck into your chest to tense the muscle and then relax. Hyper extension of the neck is not advisable as it could create too much stress on the neck.

6. Mouth – Open up the mouth as wide as possible to create tension and then relaxed. Next, the lips are pressed together as tightly as possible to create tension and then relaxed.

7. Eyes – Open the eyes as wide as possible to tense the muscle and then relax. Next, close the eyes tightly to tense it and then relax.

8. Gluteus – Press the gluteus together tightly and raise pelvis slightly off chair to create tension and then relax.

9. Quadriceps – Fully extend both legs and raise them above the ground to tense the muscles and then relax. Next, press the feet (heels) into the floor or foot rest to create tension and then relax.

10. Abdominal – **** in the stomach as much as possible to create tension and then relax completely. Next, push out the stomach to create tension and then relax.

11. Calves and feet – Plantar flexion to create tension and then relax. Next, dorsi flex as much as possible to create tension and then relax.

12. Toes – Fully extend the toes outward to create tension and then relax. Next, bend the toes up as far as possible to create tension and then relax.

Lastly, let the whole body to remain relax for a while and feel the relaxation of all the muscles. After continued practices, there should be a gradual progression in muscle relaxation and then habitualising this into Taichi practices and finally to daily activities. These relaxation exercises will not eliminate tension, but when it arises, the body will be aware immediately, and the body will be able to respond positively to remove the tension away.

REFERENCES

BERNSTEIN, D. A. & BORKOVEC, T. D. (1973) Progressive relaxation training: A manual for the helping profession. Champaign, IL: Research Press.

CONRAD, A. & ROTH, W. T. (2006 ) Muscle relaxation therapy for anxiety disorders: It works but how? Journal of Anxiety Disorders Volume 21, Pg 243-264.

HOLLAND, J., MORROW, G., SCHMALE, A., DEROGATIS, L., STEFANEK, M., BERENSON, S., CARPENTER, P., BREITBART, W. & FELDSTEIN, M. (1991) A randomized clinical trial of alprazolam versus progressive muscle relaxation in cancer patients with anxiety and depressive symptoms. Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vol 9.

MCCALLIE, S, M., BLUM, M, C., HOOD & J, C. (2006) Progressive Muscle Relaxation. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, Volume 13, Number 3, 13 July 2006 , pp.51-66(16).

OHMORI, F., SHIMIZU, S. & KAGAYA, A. (2007) Exercise-induced blood flow in relation to muscle relaxation period. Vol 6

SERMSAK LOLAK, M., L, G., CONNORS, J, M., SHERIDAN & WISE, T. N. (2008) Effects of Progressive Muscle Relaxation Training on Anxiety and Depression in Patients Enrolled in an Outpatient Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program. Vol. 77, No. 2, 2008



By: Yip See Kit