How To Achieve Profound Relaxation

Relaxation is simply preformed by allowing muscle tissue to release tension. If
you can move, you have the ability to control muscle tension in your body as well.

Profound relaxation is learning to let go of all tension not directly related to a
specific task you are preforming at the moment. Your heart will still beat, you will
still be able to breath, but all unneeded tension will be let go.

Such deep levels of relaxation can be a valuable tool to learn, allowing better
control of stress, tension, sleep and hormone releases in the body. It can allow
you greater flexibility and with much practice better fine motor control and
endurance.

There is no specific technique that works better than others, so if you know a
relaxation system already that causes you to pay close attention to where tension
is in your body so that you can let go of it, then using that regularly and seeking
to relax to ever deeper levels should get you to a profound state of relaxation with
a few practice sessions.

There are a few things worth noting, that may aid you in practice however.

1. You will never let go of all tension in your body. Keep striving to find the
   tension that is hidden from you and to let go of it. In this way you will gain the ability to let go of more and more tension on demand, until you can go totally limp with simple a decision to.
2. Your normal state is one of relatively high tension. You even tend to
   hold tension while you sleep. This means that while practicing relaxation
   techniques, tension has a tendency to try and creep back into your body. Learning to keep your attention on the task at hand, relaxing, will allow you to reach deeper levels fast.
3. Relaxation is not hypnosis. The focusing aspect of some relaxation
   techniques has been used in hypnosis for a long time, but it is a separate
   phenomenon. Relaxation techniques give you control over you body and remove some distractions, but they will not ever allow someone else to take control of your mind.(Not that hypnosis is control of a persons mind…But that is a full topic in itself.)
4. There is no way to fail at relaxation. You simply keep letting go of tension over and over again until it is gone. It just takes practice and as with all things, daily practice is best.

Once you have the basic skill down you can easily begin to practice fairly
sophisticated muscle control techniques.