Do you find it difficult to get the stresses of the day out of your head at bedtime? Do you struggle with anxiety and worry? Do they keep you up at night? Anxiety and stress are common barriers to sleep, and progressive muscle relaxation, or PMR, is an easy, effective way to manage them.
What Is PMR?
Progressive muscle relaxation is not new. It was first introduced in the early 1900s by Dr. Edmund Jacobson. In fact, PMR is often called Jacobson’s relaxation technique. He developed a strategy to help patients struggling with anxiety.
The idea is to tense and then relax muscles, one at a time, to relieve stress and soothe anxiety and worry. While Dr. Jacobson created this exercise specifically for anxiety, it is now often used to manage insomnia as well.
How to Do It
The simple idea behind PMR is to tense or contract muscles and then relax them. Here are some easy steps to get you started:
- Focus on one muscle or part of the body. It doesn’t matter where you start.
- Contract that muscle while deep breathing in for about five seconds.
- Don’t tense the muscle to the point of causing pain.
- Exhale and quickly relax the muscle.
- Repeat for all muscles and areas of the body.
You may find initially that it helps to have a voice guiding youand keeping you focused. You can try the progressive muscle relaxation audio track on the BetterSleep app to take you through some specific exercises. This session is designed to get you ready for sleep by focusing on tensing and relaxing muscles to eliminate stress and lower anxiety.
How Does PMR Improve Sleep?
PMR really does work. According to anxiety, stress, and insomnia research, people who use any type of PMR to relax fall asleep more easily and sleep longer. So how does it work?
Stressors and anxiety trigger the stress response in the body. This is the hormonal reaction that primes you for “fight or flight.” It’s a state of heightened awareness and alertness. The more you experience it, the harder it is to relax and sleep.
So if you struggle with anxiety, or even just ordinary stress, any strategy that can bring your body back to the relaxation response will provide relief. In a state of relaxation, your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing slow down. You’ll feel calmer and have an easier time drifting to sleep. Progressive muscle relaxation relieves anxiety and therefore insomnia.
Another way PMR may help improve sleep is by taking your mind away from intrusive thoughts. By focusing on your muscles, you can calm and slow those racing thoughts that tend to overwhelm you at night.
What Are the Additional Benefits?
As mentioned, PMR was first developed to help patients with anxiety. Later it was found that it may help patients with insomnia. In fact, it may help with depression, stress, and more.
In one study, researchers found that PMR reduced symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. And in another study, they found that PMR helped to decrease feelings of anger, tension, and anxiety.
PMR may also help to reduce lower back pain and neck pain. In one study done on patients that had chronic neck pain, researchers found that PMR may actually help to reduce nonspecific neck pain. And in another study examining the effects of PMR over the span of 8 weeks, they found that PMR may also help to reduce lower back pain.
Overall, PMR offers a variety of benefits. And it doesn't stop there either; it may also help:
- Improve systolic blood pressure
- Decrease the frequency of migraine attacks
- Reduce temporomandibular joint (TMJ) symptoms
It’s clear that PMR can help you improve your life in many ways. Whether you want to use it to help with stress, pain, or sleep.
Mastering Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Once you get comfortable with tensing and relaxing individual muscles and small muscle groups, you can progress to the next level. First, work on tensing and relaxing larger muscle groups altogether: feet and legs; arms and shoulders; chest and stomach; back and neck. This allows you to get to fully relax quicker.
Eventually, you can progress to relaxation only. Practicing PMR regularly will give you a good sense of what muscle tension feels like. Now when you feel anxious and tense you can pinpoint and relax specific muscles. With practice, a release-only strategy can be as effective as progressive tensing and relaxing. To do it, you simply relax the muscles that are tense, rather than progressively contracting and then relaxing muscles.
Practice Makes Perfect
Relaxation techniques like PMR are not quick fixes or miracle cures for anxiety or insomnia. Like many things, it takes practice to get the best results. Try progressive relaxation every night before bed to make it a habit and to get better at it. Think of it as a type of athletic training. Before long, anxiety and worries will be much less overwhelming and quality sleep easier to achieve.
Conclusion
PMR is a powerful wellness practice you can use to help with not only sleep, but also stress, pain, and more. It’s a relatively easy practice, and as you do it more, it’ll become easier and easier. You may get to the point where you can use just the releasing method to identify and relax muscle tension.
However, as mentioned, as you’re first learning how to do it, it may be best to have a voice to guide you through it. Doing this will help you stay focused and on track with the necessary steps and methods of PMR.
If you’re looking for additional support, you can try BetterSleep for free today!
