Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Stress leaves muscles braced long after the moment has passed, in places you stop noticing. Deliberately tensing and releasing teaches your body the difference between guarding and resting. This is one of the oldest and most-tested relaxation methods in clinical care.
When to use it
For when your shoulders have been up around your ears all day.
Two minutes, kept for you
How to do it
- 1.Start at your toes.
- 2.Squeeze tight for five seconds, then let go completely.
- 3.Move up: calves, thighs, glutes, belly, chest, hands, arms, shoulders.
- 4.Finish with your face, scrunching everything, then releasing it all.
- 5.End with three slow belly breaths, letting your whole body sink.
What to notice
The places that resist letting go. That's where you've been armoring. Breathe a little extra kindness there.
What the research says
This is one of the oldest relaxation methods in clinical care, taught since the 1930s, and the trials have kept coming: recent reviews across dozens of studies find large drops in anxiety. Most of that research happened in hospitals and clinics, where it gets studied hardest, so expect the effect to be real and probably gentler in everyday life. The mechanism as taught, learning to feel the difference between braced and resting, is the original one, and it has aged well.
If you want to see which of these your body responds to, that’s what the app is for →