Heavy

My homunculus is getting so relaxed.  He has been in and out of consciousness for the past two days, which is great because I can finally get some work done!  But, I'm not finished yet: it's time to kick this Week of Relaxation into another gear.  Today we're going to add some progressive relaxation techniques to our meditation in a sort of odd, metacognitive thought sandwich.  Yum!

Progressive relaxation works!

Yesterday, we added a mantra to our meditation arsenal as a strategy for self-distraction.  I felt very ninja-warrior during the whole process, didn't you?  Today, we are going to do some visualizations during our relaxation session with the goal of relaxing our tense, type-A muscles.  Specifically, we're going to focus our attention and "send" our mantra to each part of our body while imagining a feeling of deep muscle relaxation.  We will start at our feet and, progressively, move up our body, allowing each body part to feel more relaxed and more "heavy".

Heavy

Task: Progressively relax the muscles of the body for 15min.

Info: Each time you repeat your mantra imagine the word entering a part of you body.  When this happens, imagine a feeling of deep muscle relaxation penetrating the target area.  Imagine that the body part feels "heavy".  Move up your body after each visualization.  Start from your feet again after reaching the top of your head.  I get impatient with this when it doesn't "work" the first time.  However, I've found that moving on to the next target area is a good strategy.  After a few passes, I normally feel pretty loose.

Goal: Feel like a rag doll.

I really hope The Happy Homunculus has been a fun read - please give feedback in the comments.  Are these meditation-oriented challenges fun? Thanks!

Links: Return to the Week of Relaxation - Continue to the next Daily Mind Game