The Relaxation Program



Stress

Some stress we need and some we don't. The tensile stress in your guitar strings is a good thing. When muscles shorten they generate a tensile stress in the tendons and the contractile forces are converted into movement, that's a good thing.
If you have heavy strings on a guitar made for lights the tensile load will be too large and the neck will be damaged. In the same way excessive myofascial contraction will change our shape and that's not such a good thing. Not a lot is known about what makes connective tissue tense although common experience reminds us that when we're mentally or emotionally stressed we react physically. Whether these are changes to facial expression, posture or "gut reactions" they all involve the interaction of the nervous and muscular systems and the connective tissue bed.

Why tai chi?

Physical relaxation skills, such as those you'll find here, aim to counter the physical affects of ongoing stress, regardless of it's cause. Tai chi teaches us, amongst other things, to move with as little physical stress as possible, effortlessly moving in and out of sometimes very awkward positions. This takes practice and the mastering of some very elementary skills, some of which are equally applicable to musicians.

The exercises are graded to increase your skill levels as you progress through them. You will not get to the end and know tai chi, you need to find a teacher for that, but you will have been presented with some of the most useful life skills that you could ever have.

Progressive Relaxation Exercise



The technique

Relaxation exercises tend to be classified as either mental or physical. Mental relaxation techniques generally involve visualisation and are commonly used in therapeutical situations and even many spiritual traditions.
Musicians tend to spend enough time in their heads so I prefer physical exercises such as this one. Importantly for the rest of the program it begins the process of focusing on specific areas of your body.
It is called a progressive relaxation exercise because you gradually progress through your body, first relaxing your face and head and moving down to your feet. You need to start by getting your breathing steady. The basic breathing technique is to fill your lungs up all the way to the bottom. When your diaphragm contracts it pulls the lungs down and pushes the lower abdomen out, as if the air was filling your belly. Take a few deep breaths so that your belly rises with the inhalation and falls with the exhalation, keep your upper body relatively still, especially around your shoulders, you don't want the secondary respiratory muscles to work here.
The basic technique is simple. You work through different parts of your body, clenching as your breathe in, hold for 3 seconds and relaxing as you breathe out, repeat a few times and move on to the next one, the full sequence is below. Just try this first, with your hands making a fist is probably easiest.

The full body relaxation exercise

To start with you need to get comfortable, lie on a bed with a pillow under your knees to take the strain off your back and a small cushion or towel rolled up under your neck to support the natural curve in your cervical spine.

  • Start by getting on contact with your breathe. Allow your abdomen to rise as you breathe in and fall as you breathe out. When you feel like you’re in a rhythm move on. If you're finding it difficult don't stress, just do the rest of the exercise and it'll come to you eventually.
  • Shut your eyes tight, count to 3 and relax.
  • Open your mouth as far as you can, again count to 3 before closing it again.
  • Clench all of the muscles in your neck, count to 3 and relax.
  • Pause for a few seconds and just allow yourself to breathe.
  • Raise your shoulders up toward your ears, feeling the muscles at the top of your shoulder contract (upper trapezius and levator scapula), count to 3 and relax.
  • Pull both shoulders forward to close your chest, feeling your pectoral muscles contract, count to 3 and relax
  • Now pull both shoulders back, squeezing the two scapula together so that the rhomboid muscles between your scapula and spine contract, count to 3 and relax.
  • Push your arms down into the bed feeling the muscles at the back of your upper arm contract (triceps). Count to 3 and relax.
  • Clench the muscles in the front of your upper arm (biceps). Count to 3 and relax.
  • Clench both fists and feel your forearm, hands and fingers all tighten. Count to 3 and let it go.
  • Pause again.
  • Clench your abdominal muscles, not enough to pull your upper body up off the bed, but almost. Again count to 3 and relax.
  • Push your upper back down into the bed feeling the muscles all the way up your back contract. Count to 3 and relax.
  • Clench the muscles in your buttocks, count to 3 and relax.
  • Pause again.
  • Straighten your legs as hard as you can, feeling the muscles at the front of your thigh (quadriceps) contracting. Count to 3 and relax.
  • Push your heels down into the bed and be aware of the tension in the back of your thighs (hamstrings). Count to 3 and relax.
  • Point your toes to the floor and feel the muscles at the back of your calf contract (soleus and gastrocnemius). Count to 3 and relax.
  • Flex your ankles, pointing your toes up toward your head. Muscles at the front of your calf, on the outside of your shin (the anterior compartment) will contract. Count to 3 and relax.
  • Spread your toes and point them up toward your head, feeling muscles in your feet and the front of your calf contract. Count to 3 and relax.
  • Curl up your toes, feeling the tension in your feet and the back of your calf. Again count to 3 and relax.
  • Breathe and lie there for as long as you like.
  • When you’re ready to finish, focus on the back of your head, your back, buttocks and the back of your legs. Feel the contact with the bed and how heavy you feel.
  • Slowly wriggle your fingers and toes, move your arms legs and shoulders. Gently allow your body to unwind and peel yourself off your bed.
  • Take a few breaths and focus on your lower abdomen, be aware of the breath rising and falling before opening your eyes.

Horse Stance


You’ll need to find a playing position where you can maintain the relaxed, grounded sensation you achieved with the progressive relaxation and focused awareness exercises. The first step is to get a solid stance that will allow your upper body to relax. This stance is called ‘horse stance’ because it resembles the position you take when riding a horse. The aim is to create a posture in which your legs take the weight of your upper body, allowing it to relax:

Horse stance - lateral view

  • Stand comfortably with your feet shoulder-width apart and the outside of each foot parallel with the other.
  • Unlock your knees by bending them slightly only until you feel that you’re taking all of your weight with your legs.
  • Straighten your lumbar spine a little so that you tilt the top of your pelvis up and the bottom of your pelvis forward.
  • Now be aware of the top of your sternum, the bone in the middle of your chest that your upper ribs connect to,and lift it. This will pull your shoulders and head back while keeping your chest relaxed.
  • Allow your arms to hang loosely at your side and be aware of your whole upper body being lifted, as if a string was attached to the top of your head pulling you up.

This is the basic stance in tai chi practice and and also work well when you're playing your guitar. It typically takes some time to become comfortable with, short hamstrings tend to fatigue and lock the knees up every now and then. Hamstring stretches will help as will keeping the hip muscles relaxed and maintaining tone in the core hip flexor and abdominal muscles.

The Tibetan Drum


This exercise resembles the motion of the hammers on a Tibetan hand drum. It's another one that adds movement to the basic horse stance albeit a little more vigorous than the previous. The emphasis here is on allowing the movement that originates from the pelvis to find its way to the hands without being impeded by any tension in the pelvis, the upper body or the arm and shoulder.

  • Get into horse stance.
  • Take some time to relax the muscles deep in your spine. Imagine your spine made of jelly and use focused awareness to make it heavy.
  • Stand with your arms at your side. Make two fists with your thumbs on the inside.
  • Push one side of your pelvis forward. It should be like a pelvic thrust but you’re only doing it on one side. This will cause your spine to rotate and arms to swing freely by your side.
  • When you get to the end of the movement push the other side of your pelvis forward to take you back to the other side.
  • Keep going left and then right slowly at first. Keep your upper body relaxed, your lower body solid, and move only from your pelvis.
  • Your upper body will move but only because it’s being dragged around as you push from the pelvis.
  • Allow your arms to hang loosely so they are the last part of your body to be dragged around by the movement at the waist.
  • Your arms are like the string and your fists the hammers striking the drum. They are free to go wherever their momentum takes them because they are relaxed. The movement is being driven from the pelvis.
  • As you pick up the momentum the push from the pelvis will thrust a little harder and the arms will swing a little more.
  • Make your fists impact just below the bony protuberance at the front of the pelvis and at the same level at the back. You want to hit where there’s soft muscle tissue, not bone so you can hit reasonably hard.

 

Focused Awareness


Focused awareness is a term that I use to describe an essential component of the rest of the relaxation program. Martial artists and practiced meditators know it intuitively but they had to learn it too. Essentially it means that you can focus on a particular part of your body and allow it to relax. This is a good exercise to get started:

The following full body relaxation is similar to the progressive relaxation exercise but it doesn’t require that you contract your muscles before relaxing them. The contraction is just a technique to bring a focus to specific muscles. Here we’ll dispense with that technique and learn to consciously relax our body by directing our awareness to different areas.

The Breathing Exercise


The postural stability of the horse stance takes away the need for a lot of the upper body adaptations that can affect the neck and shoulders. Combined with an efficient breathing pattern that doesn’t load your secondary respiratory muscles it’ll allow you to lose a lot of the myofascial tension in your upper body.
In horse stance your lower body is stable and it’s easier to bring your breath down into your lower abdomen:

Another breathing exercise

The advantage of modelling our relaxation program on tai chi training is that it teaches us to be at the same time, relaxed and keenly focused, ready to strike. This exercise, sometimes used as a warm up in tai chi class, begins the process of incorporating movement with our breathing/relaxation exercises.

  • Stand in horse stance.
  • As you breathe in, slowly raise your arms to your side with your palms facing down. Keep your arms straight and bring them up to a level just above your shoulders.
  • As you breathe out, let your arms fall to the level of your shoulders as you relax your arms, shoulders and upper body.
  • Breathe in again and turn your hands palm up as you lift your arms directly above your head until your palms face each other about 30 cm (12 inches) apart.
  • Breathe out and bring your hands directly down the midline of your body about 30 cm in front of you, again allowing your arms, shoulders and upper body to relax.
  • Bring your arms back to your sides and repeat a few more times.

Your lower body needs to be solid but not stiff, allow it to move slightly up and down with your breath as well. In this exercise you are localising the relaxed sensation to your shoulders and upper chest, which is where you want it when you’re playing.
The key to this exercise is the out breath. Rather than actively bringing your arms down, simply allow them to fall. If you can tune in to the sensation of falling as your arms come down you’ll have got what you need from this exercise. You need to recall this sensation of letting go every time you see the word ‘relax’.

 

The Standing Chong


This is another breathing exercise that you’ll do standing up. We use it in tai chi practice to make fine adjustments to posture. Traditionally it is used to enhance the flow of chi in the upper body, the practitioner allows the chi to flow through the arms and across the chest in a circle. Whether or not we are impressed with these ancient ideas at the end of the day it works and these theories simply explain our experience. We can take another perspective on what is happening.

Movement is energy, enhancing the flow of energy is the same then as enhancing the ease, or flow, of movement. For movement to be easy we need to remove as many of the postural and myofascial obstructions as possible.

  • Stand in horse stance
  • Bring your arms up in front of you as if you are hugging a tree. You've almost made a circle but your handsdon't meet. They should be about 30cm (12 inches) aprt.
  • Allow your arms to rest as much as they can. Relax your shoulders and let your elbows fall to your side so that you're using the absolute minimal muscles toine to hold them up
  • Imagine your wrists leaning on a rail so that your arms have no weight at all.
  • Go over your stance and make sure you are solid in your legs and relaxed in the upper body.
  • Lift your sternum and relax your chest.
  • Breathe gently into the abdomen and feel your chest soften with the rhythmic movements of the breath. With every out breathe remember that sense of falling that you learned in the breathing exercise.

If you stay here for a little while you’ll start to develop little aches where the myofascia is tense/blocked. As you focus in and relax these areas the muscle tone will change and you’ll fall into a slightly different position. This is much different to the old approach to postural problems where you were told to lift your head, or pull your shoulders back. Rather than actively pushing yourself into a new shape you are passively allowing yourself to fall into one. Not easy at first but much more effective.

Tai chi chuan - walking



  • Start in horse stance, put both hands over your lower abdomen.
  • Shift your weight onto your right foot, lift your left foot and bring it into meet your right and then back out to step to a point just in front of where it was in the horse stance but pointing out at about 45.
  • Only when your foot is down shift your weight forward on to your left foot. Your pelvis needs to be at the same height as you shift your weight so adjust the amount of flexion in your knees so that you don’t bob up and down.
  • Now rock back onto your right foot again and straighten your left by turning it at the heel once most of the weight is off it.
  • Now shift forward onto your left foot again and bring your right foot to meet it and loop back out for another step, again just in front of where it was originally, pointing at 45.
  • Only when your foot is in position shift your weight over, again without bobbing up and down.
  • That’s it, now you just repeat these steps. Come back to your left, straighten the right, shift forward onto the right as you step with the left foot, etc.

Tai chi chuan - wave hands like clouds


Tension in the upper body will cause myofascial pain in the neck, shoulders and arms. This more advanced taiji exercise will help resolve much of that tension:

 

  • Start in horse stance and turn your waist to the right. Bring your right hand across your body with the palm facing down and raise it to the level of your left shoulder.
  • Rotate your left wrist so that the palm is facing upward toward your right hand as if your holding a beach ball. Check that your chest is open and shoulders relaxed.
  • Push your left leg into the ground so that your waist turns to the right.
  • When your waist is facing about 30˚ to the right push your right leg ito the ground so that your waist turns back to the left.
  • As you’re turning to the left your right hand continues moving to the right but comes down in a circle as you lift your left hand and turn your wrist to face your left palm down.
  • By the time you’re facing straight ahead your holding that beach ball again but your left hand is on top.
  • When your waist is about 30˚ left you push your left leg into the ground, turning to the right.
  • Bring your left hand around in a circle and lift your right hand, mirroring the sequence you just did on the right side.
  • Again you’re facing straight ahead with the beach ball.
  • Repeat for as long as you like, keeping your arms relaxed and your hands as soft as clouds.

Tai chi chuan - the palm strike


When you feel comfortable with the walk move on to this one. The palm strike illustrates most of the essential principles of tai chi and is also relevant for guitar players. The aim of the technique is to transfer the force generated by pushing into the floor with your leg through the rest of your body to the palm of your hand. Learning this exercise will develop:

In order for this exercise too feel right and work well you need to be relaxed in the upper body and strong and stable in the lower body. This exercise will help develop these traits. The upper body relaxation facilitates a smooth flow of movement from the pelvis to the hand. It will take some practice but is well worth the effort.

  • Take a variation of the horse stance that has your left foot pointing out 45˚ counterclockwise and your right foot about a foot’s length in front of you.
  • Turn slightly to the right before you push your right hip forward and turn to the left.
  • Try it again but this time push your left leg into the floor, as your waist turns to the left.
  • Do it again and push with your right hand as your leg pushes into the floor and your waist turns.
  • According to Newton’s Third Law, if you push on the floor either the planet moves or you do. Let’s assume it’s you. Imagine as you push into the floor that the floor pushes back, up from your feet, through your waist all the way into the tips of the fingers of your right hand.
  • With practice you’ll be able to relax your whole body so that the movement will flow, like a wave through water, from your legs, via the fling at the hips, to the tips of your fingers.

Traditionally in tai chi we talk about moving energy, or qi, smoothly through the body. In order to do this it is necessary to combine a series of complicated messages to and from the nervous system to a musculoskeletal system that is operating efficiently to create a movement that seems to flow like water. That is also what we are trying to do as musicians

Sitting


None of us will play standing all of the time so we need to be able to adapt everything that we've learned so far to a sitting posture. We also have to reprogram our nueromuscular system to abandon the bad habits of a lifetime and sit in a way that supports the natural curve of the spine.

This exercise will help you find a new way to sit.

 

If the postural muscles at the front of your pelvis are not strong enough to hold you up then muscles in your back will have too much work to do and will soon fatigue. Squats are a great exercise to increase the tone in your hip flexors and the modified sit up exercise will tone your abdominal muscles. There are a number of products on the market that claim to strengthen these important postural muscles, yoga and Pilates are also good options.
When you re comfortable with the sitting exercise above take it a step further.

This may take a bit longer, especially if your back is a bit stiff anyway. Apply all of the relaxation and focused awareness skills to any areas that aren t flowing so easily and persevere. This is the best exercise for back pain that I've ever seen. It removes much of the strain from the small lumbar muscles that are constantly stressed keeping the spine stable.
Grab you're guitar again. You now face a number of challenges.

 

Every position you take will cause some strain on your body and the best solution will be different for everyone. This is why you learn a variety of skills here, you need to adapt them to your own body, your guitar, your style of playing. I will make one rule though:
Any sitting position needs to support your upper body to allow the hands most efficient access to your guitar.
Here are some other points to remember before you move on to developing a comfortable sitting position.