W1.5 Teaching Relaxation
a) How would you create a relaxed atmosphere in class?
b) Discuss suitable postures for relaxation.
c) Briefly describe a variety of relaxation techniques you might use in class.
d) Briefly discus any problems with teaching deep relaxation, and how you might deal with them.
‘…one experiences the non existing state of the body, the mind, the intellect, and the ego, and the Self is realised.’
(Yoga a Gem For Women, 1990: 294)
How I would create a relaxed atmosphere in class
A key means of creating a relaxed atmosphere is to feel relaxed myself so I would offer to my students that which I find relaxes me. Firstly, I want to mark a change in atmosphere between that of activity and inactivity. I would start by allowing my breath to become light and my voice soft and allow silent periods to increase.
I would ask students to prepare themselves for this section of the class by putting on warm clothing and getting blankets and supports. I myself would turn up the heating to help ensure they cool down slowly.
I would also dim the lights and close the curtains/blinds where possible or turn on a lamp if the choice is between brightly lit and dark, to create a dimly lit room, which will dull external sensory input and help them focus inwardly. Personally, I would rather refrain from using eye bags as this may feel restricting and cause claustrophobia in some students.
In some of my relaxation classes I would use music as a tool to focus the mind. This music will be smooth, flowing and positive in style. In this circumstance I would ensure the volume is sufficiently loud to enable their minds to engage with the piece. In other classes, I would use some background yoga relaxation music, which will act as white noise, helping their minds to still and move into the moment whilst at the same time being able to clearly hear my instructions.
With regards incense, I wouldn’t use lavender because I don’t like the smell. But in settings that seem uninviting for relaxation, I would burn sandalwood, checking no one objected in advance.
Discussion of suitable postures for relaxation
At this stage I would offer my students the following suitable postures for relaxation, which as they become familiar with my classes would require less explanation, enabling us to enter sooner into this important pre-meditative state.
Savasana or Supported Savasana (‘Shav’ meaning corpse, Copse Pose)
Savasana is often said to be the most difficult of all asanas. However, this is not due to the physical strain of the posture, but because most people find it almost impossible to completely relax the body. In fact, this pose is the best one for relaxation because it requires the least muscular effort to perform it.
In Savasana (corpse pose), hands should be sufficiently abducted 12-18 inches (Yoga Anatomy, 2001: 547) to achieve the least amount of muscular effort required to hold the position and hands should be supinated. Pronated hands create a closed feeling counterproductive to the desired feeling of release.
Savasana is said to have a revitalising effect on the body and would be the default pose that I would offer for relaxation unless students have a specific requirement that makes one of the below options preferential.
Supported Savasana
Students with lordotic cervical spines will most likely require support under the head to bring the forehead level with or above the chin. Students with kyphotic thoracic spines may also require head support in the same way (often the two curvatures come together) and I would encourage a gentle chest opening by placing a support under their chest area. However, it is important not to make this support too high so as to create tension by over-stretching the muscles of the chest. For students with lower back pain, I would offer support under the knees to create contact between the entire lumbar spine and the floor or the below options:
Semi Supine or Crocodile
Both these options are suitable for students with lower back pain. Semi supine is more suited to beginner and intermediate students who lack the flexibility in their rectus abdominis, serratus anterior and triceps and to relax into crocodile. Furthermore, the disadvantage with relaxing in crocodile even for the more advanced students is that whereas in supine the abdomen can push outwards as the diaphragm pushes downwards on inhalation, lying prone, the abdomen has no room to expand. This forces the muscles of the back to engage and lift upwards and outwards thereby inhibiting relaxation through the greater effort required to breathe. It should be noted that students who perhaps for psychological reasons find the openness of supine difficult to relax in, may find crocodile a good alternative as it offers more personal, inward, private space.
Lying Sideways
I would offer this to women at any stage in pregnancy but particularly beyond 30 weeks. Lying on the back can become particularly uncomfortable during pregnancy due to the weight of the baby pressing down on descending arteries and restricting the blood flow. It is preferential that these students lie on their left sides as this will help aid venous return to the heart although I would encourage them to lie whichever way is most comfortable.
Description and discussion of relaxation techniques I might use
I would not incorporate all the below practices into one class but rather, adopt one option from the list below and then lead into a period of silence (possibly with calming background sounds) and some positive affirmations.
Preparation for Relaxation Practices
In relaxation, abdominal breathing is crucial whilst the chest should not move. I will ensure that my students extend out their bodies more than they need so that as the muscles relax and lengthen, they don’t become bunched up but rather fit into place. Belling (The Yoga Handbook, 2008:147) suggests getting the mind to scan the body for any tension and then focusing on letting go of this area, which I would apply in class.
I would ask my students to: ensure the jaw is soft, part the lips lightly, separate the tongue from the roof of the mouth and allow the eye balls to sink into the head and the skin to smoothen out, relax the eye muscles, breathe through the nostrils and with each round of breath, allow the body to sink further into the floor.
Sweeping the Breath Up And Down the Body
In this practice I would ask students to inhale breath from their toes up to the crown of their heads and exhale from the crown of their head to their toes. Naturally the breath length should extend as the practitioner deepens into relaxation. I will ask students to observe how their inhalation merges smoothly into exhalation, but that exhalation does not merge so smoothly into inhalation. It is at the end of an exhalation that the diaphragm is soft and the least muscular effort is required enabling the student to deepen into relaxation. After a minute of this process many students will find themselves drifting so to keep them focussed I would ask them to reverse the process so they breathe in from the crown of their heads down to their toes and exhale from their toes up to the crown of their heads. This is a safe relaxation practice that I would be happy adopting at any stage in my teaching experience.
Golgi Tendon Receptor Relaxation
The Isometric tension and relaxation technique is a great method for stimulating the receptors that turn on and off the motor units that contract our muscles. By tensing our muscles, the Golgi tendon organ in the tendons connected to the muscles reflexly relaxes the muscles involved. So the harder the student tenses, the more the golgi tendon receptors will stimulate the release of those muscles. The more we practice switching on and off our motor units that control our muscles, the better we become at getting our bodies to relax. I have already been incorporating this exercise into my relaxation and my students loved it. Such a process is easy to follow and immediately effective. However, I wouldn’t use it all the time since some students will get bored and it is preferential to offer a greater range of relaxation approaches so people can explore this subject deeper.
Sixty-One Points Exercise
In this exercise, I would ask the student to focus their minds on a specific part of the body for one breath cycle before moving onto the next progressing in the order given in the image to the left. The idea is that once they have successfully covered all 61 sections, they will have become fully relaxed without letting the mind wander. I would avoid using this exercise to begin with because it requires patience to get through all sections and beginner students may not be ready to relax for the period of time it takes to complete the exercise. I would however like to try it later on with a group of dedicated yoga students.
The Use of Music, Visualisation, Poetry or Yoga Prose
I like to diversify the range of material that can be used in a yoga class to fit with my own cultural heritage. As such, I would in some classes, use a piece of soothing flowing classical music to offer a positive and simple way to focus the mind. In a musical piece I would engage the mind with the body by asking the student to imagine something moving to the music. In this scenario the main risk is that the students don’t like leaves and I’m asking them to imagine a leaf floating to the rise and fall of the sound. However, I think it’s important to express the character of the classes I teach so that people who do like that style can benefit from it.
Possibly when I become more familiar with my students will I introduce some poetry or readings from Patanjali that I think would be relevant to the class and benefit my students. However, I would avoid the Bhagavad Gita since this is an ancient Hindu script, abstract in content and religious in character. I would prefer to keep my classes secular so that they are open to people of faith belief and non-belief alike.
I would be even more careful using visulaisation to bring students into relaxation. This is because specific words and their meanings risk triggering memories and thoughts other than the ones I am asking my students to have. Even asking someone to imagine a place that they love will be based upon their experience of that place, the persons involved and the history of it all, and although the place may be special, the associated memories leading from it may be painful.
Another visualisation approach runs the risk of taking a person into a hypnotic state: imagine you’re walking down some stairs, you open a door at the bottom and it takes you into a room… In my view this dreamlike journey could also go wrong, what if the room is not one the student wants to enter? Being unqualified to deal with hypnosis, which this approach leans towards, I may find myself taking students far deeper into relaxation than I can handle.
Fun and exciting as they are, I feel it’s unnecessary to use visualisation methods of relaxation in a class now or in the near future when there are so many other effective means to reach that ultimate end of calm. It’s important to me that I find ways that don’t place my students emotional wellbeing at risk, particularly those suffering from depression or other psychological issues.
Concentration on the heart centre
‘Dharana is the binding of the mind to one place, object or idea.’ (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 1978: 171) Dharana is a practice that prepares the mind for meditation. By focussing the mind on one spot, in this case the heart, the student is learning to increase their concentration span. I would ask students to imagine inhaling and exhaling through this point. However, this exercise is also more challenging than other relaxation approaches because of the minds tendency to wander so I would offer this after gaining more experience in teaching relaxation to gain confidence in promoting this to my students.
Positive Affirmations
To apply this approach I would ask students to: think about their relaxation as something that they deserve; that in order to be good to the world they must be good to themselves; to think about how good their body and mind feel after completing this session and about how much their bodies can let go after this period of exertion. This is a process that I intend to use straight away in my classes. I think it’s particularly useful to beginner students who aren’t used to taking time out for themselves or who lack self-esteem.
Discussion of how you would cope with any problems you might encounter
In relaxation even the thought of moving signals nerve impulses to the brain to recruit some motor neurons thereby breaking the relaxation process. My role as teacher is to convince my students to remain in relaxation for as long as possible thereby gaining the maximum benefits.
To achieve this I need to consider the risk that more abstract relaxation exercises can cause the more ‘flighty’ students to go off into a tangent. As such, I would start teaching a course with the more basic and practical relaxation approaches mentioned earlier such as the Golgi Tendon Receptor Relaxation or the Sweeping of Breath Up And Down The Body.
The most obvious problem I will encounter is getting students out of their fast awake alpha brainwave patterns into slow beta patterns but not to the extent they start falling asleep. In the latter case, the eyes start to dart around under the lids, and this indicates the person has lost their ability to focus. For these students I will encourage them to try and maintain a steady gaze under softly closed eyes. For students that find it difficult not to fall asleap, I will ask them to gently retain tension in their mula bandha or to bring their feet closer together.