Mindfulness Techniques
February 2021
By: Ashley Charzuk, CPSW, HRS, CCSS
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness has been defined as a moment-to-moment awareness of one's experience without judgment. This means being present in the moment, with a feeling of acceptance.
For When You’re Super Anxious And Need a Quick Solution – Whole Body Muscle Tensing and Relaxing
This exercise switches on the parasympathetic nervous system (“relaxing” nervous system) more quickly than the others. It’s also more impactful than the others because it engages all the muscles of the entire body. This powerful impact can help you “snap out of it!” even in tough situations.
I gather that this exercise is a relative of Progressive Muscle Relaxation. In Progressive Muscle Relaxation, you relax and tense each muscle group progressively and reach deeper and deeper states of relaxation as you go. That takes time though. This one is more of an emergency measure. I’m calling it “Whole Body Muscle Tensing and Relaxing” because you do it with your whole body system at once rather than progressively. Because you tense and relax your whole body it’s much faster. If you are facing anything that is anxiety provoking, like a meeting or public speaking for example, this one can be done quickly. If you have more time, you can do it over again several times, or instead do Progressive Muscle Relaxation.
Instructions:
Take a very deep breath in with your mouth open; fill your lungs up.
Hold your breath.
While holding your breath, tense muscles all over your body as tense as you can – face, fingers, toes, shoulders, stomach, butt, legs etc. – without injuring yourself (if you have a known issue go easy on that part of your body)
Count 5-10 seconds while holding your breath and keeping all muscles tense.
Then relax everything, let go of all the tension in your muscles and
Slowly let your breath out.
