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How to practice relaxation:

These are the relaxation skills you need to practice so that you can use them in threatening or stressful situations -

• control breathing - you should breath from the stomach not from the chest and slowly.  
• relax your muscle - start with your face muscles and then neck, shoulders, back, arm, chest, buttocks, leg muscles and tell each muscle to relax one by one
• relax mentally - when you breath in think calm and when you breath out think release negative thoughts  

Firstly breathing - place one hand on your stomach and the other on your chest. In stressful situations your breathing will be from the chest and in relaxed situations from the stomach. Relaxation and breathing are closely connected so check throughout the day which you are using to breath the chest or the stomach. You can easily check by noticing which hand is moving up and down.

Practice breathing from the stomach so that your lower hand starts moving and the one on your chest doesn't breath steadily for 10 seconds or so then try to slow your breathing by counting 1-2 then 1-2-3 then 1-2-3-4 for each breath out and in.

After you have corrected your breathing relax your muscles one by one by telling them to relax. Relax face muscles, then relax eye muscles, relax forehead, jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, fingers, back, chest, stomach, buttocks, thighs, legs, backs of legs and feet. If you are very tense then repeat this step again. 

Now your body is relaxed it is time to relax your mind. Think of a calm scene such as a warm beach and imagine relaxing there in a comfortable chair looking at the waves as they wash onto the sand. As you breathe out think breathe out stress, breathe in calm. 

Enjoy being rested for at least ten minutes if you can and as an added extra imagine yourself confronting a problem situation and see yourself handle it confidently. 

Of course when you are in a stressful situation you do not have time to go through this entire relaxation technique but if you practice often you can calm yourself in seconds by running through some of these quickly and even automatically. Good luck! 

These relaxation skills can be used whenever you feel shy or nervous with excellent results, so try it!

If you're serious about beating shyness then click here and download the recommended self-hypnosis program - Overcoming Shyness now!

© 2005 Karl Perera   all rights reserved