10 Benefits Of Progressive Relaxations For Your Mental Well-Beings
In terms of this article, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), or “Progressive relaxations,” is one of the relaxation techniques people can use regardless of their expertise levels on doing exercises.
As its name suggests, Progressive relaxations are for easing the tensions of the muscles in different body parts, such as the back of the neck, stomach, or wrists and forearms.
All you need for doing Progressive relaxations are just focus, attention, and quiet spots where you won’t get disturbed.
Apart from being easy exercises to do without any specific gear, Progressive relaxations also have benefits. 10 of the benefits are listed below:
1. Relaxing Your Muscle Tensions
As the name suggests, one of the 10 benefits of Progressive relaxations is the ability to relax your muscle tensions.
By managing the ins and outs of your breaths during the exercises, you can make your body muscles feel more relaxed.
Doing so will even enable you to eliminate temporomandibular joint (TMJ) diseases that involve your jaw muscle pains.
2. Reducing Anxiety And Panic Levels
A few weeks of routine Progressive relaxations have great benefits in reducing anxiety levels, regardless of whether the anxiety is generalized or a result of stressful situations.
After all, practicing Progressive relaxations on a routine basis will make your body physically relaxed. Hence, your anxiety and panic levels will decrease. As a result, your problem-solving abilities increase.
3. Improving The Quality Of Sleeping
You can also use Progressive relaxations to improve the quality of your good night’s sleep.
After all, relaxation exercises eliminate insomnia symptoms, such as restlessness due to stressful psychological conditions.
According to some research results, the Progressive relaxations’ benefit in improving sleeping qualities can even work for pregnant women.
Routine care and treatments of any form are not enough to improve sleeping qualities. Instead, do at least 20-30 minutes of Progressive relaxations every day, and see how the results are.
4. Balancing Your Heart Rates
Another of the 10 benefits of Progressive relaxations is that it can balance your heart rates by relaxing your body muscles, especially on the shoulders and chest.
As a result of more balanced heart rates, you suffer less from heart-related diseases such as hypertension. So, it’s safe to say that the Progressive relaxations are great for those of you who have over-the-top heart rates.
5. Reducing Neck And Low Back Pains
Neck and low back pains can be excruciating pains people have to experience.
This applies to stressful and busy workers and pregnant women, and people who experience lots of mental and emotional stresses in general.
According to some research results, you’ll need to practice Progressive relaxations for at least 8 weeks.
Other than it’s possible to reduce symptoms of chronic low back pains and nonspecific neck pains, it’s also possible to improve the overall life’s quality and physical functions.
When listening to Progressive relaxation podcasts, don’t forget to add accompanying music backgrounds to enhance the positive effects.
6. Decreasing The Frequency Of Migraine Attacks And Nauseous
Like neck and low back pains, stresses, including everyday stressors, are major triggers to migraines.
When you experience migraines, you’ll feel intense pains in your face and head.
This occurs because the serotonin levels are getting lower for people with migraine attacks. Some people may also experience nausea as a result of migraine attacks.
To eliminate these and boost your serotonin levels, focus on the areas of your forehead, around your eyes, mouth, and nose’s bridge. Close your eyes as tightly as you can before you start your Progressive relaxation exercises.
7. Improving The Quality Of Oxygen In Your Blood Streams
Blood streams are important to sustain humans’ internal body systems.
At the same time, blood is also closely tied to the quality of oxygen in the human body. That being said, the quality of oxygen goes hand-in-hand with the quality of bloodstreams.
Progressive relaxation techniques become a solution to improve the quality of both, especially for people with high blood pressure problems.
As a result of the oxygen quality improvements, the blood inside your body will pump according to the normal pace and directions.
8. Decreasing Your Rates Of Breathing
Higher rates of breathing often involve people experiencing shortness of breath or other disturbances when breathing.
This can be a nuisance, but then again, it depends on how frequent and accurate your Progressive relaxation exercises are during the months.
Since many Progressive relaxation movements involve relaxing poses, letting go, and releasing the held body parts during exercises, doing so on a routine basis may decrease your breathing rates.
Consequently, your breathing activities will be normalized, and your daily activities won’t get disturbed.
9. Improving Systolic Blood Pressures
Another amazing benefit we can learn from the 10 benefits of Progressive relaxation is that relaxation exercises can improve systolic blood pressure. Again, this benefit is great for people with high blood pressure.
Adding music therapy elements to your Progressive relaxations can also improve your systolic blood pressures, especially if your internal body workings have been exhausted to some levels.
10. Reducing Mental Chatters
Racing thoughts may seem harmless at first glance, but they can be dangerous in the long run.
They can be even more disturbing when you sleep since they are the predecessor of insomnia symptoms.
Doing Progressive relaxations daily helps in balancing your brain wave activities.
The beta waves, the brain waves that will go unstable when you have endless mental chatters, will decrease, and the alpha waves will increase.
So, your mind becomes more relaxed as the mental chatters in your head dissolve.
Now, there are dozens of references for doing or listening to the Progressive relaxation podcasts.
It’s not only wellness on meditation podcasts that you can listen to. You can also use well-known platforms such as YouTube or mobile apps designed for improving your mental well-being.
Your therapists can also help to guide you to this relaxation technique.