First Step Marketing

Focus upon your breathing

To start, close your eyes and focus your attention upon your breathing. Listen to the soft whistling sound as the air flows in and flows out. Be sure that you are belly breathing—your belly should be moving in and out as you breathe.

After about a minute or two of concentrating on your breathing, start counting sequentially from one to ten as you inhale and saying to yourself, RELAX as you exhale. For example, on the first inhalation, say ONE and see the number one being drawn in your mind. On exhalation, say RELAX and see the word RE–LA-X-X-X . . . in your mind. Continue the counting process until you feel quiet and your mind is focused and undisturbed by intruding thoughts.

When your mind is actively occupied with the number sequence and saying, RELAX, then it will be difficult for other thoughts to distract you. Ultimately, just saying the word, RELAX, will evoke the relaxation response in you, but for the present it will be necessary to go further.

Relaxing your muscles

Systematically relaxing your muscles will help you to move more deeply into a relaxation response. Try the following approach.

Focus upon your forehead muscles, just above your eyebrows. Feel them become loose, … warm . . . heavy . . . and relaxed. Now down to your eyebrows, . . . very relaxed. Your cheeks and mouth muscles, . . . very loose, . . . very relaxed. Your jaw muscles, . . . nice and loose, letting your lower jaw drop open if it wishes. Now your neck muscles, front and back; letting them become warm, . . . loose, . . . and very relaxed. Now let your shoulders drop as much as they want … Notice how good it feels to let that tension go.

Now relax your arms, both of them together. Feel the tension flowing in waves down your arms and out through your fingers. Your arms feel more loose and relaxed with each breath out. Now your back muscles. Feel them sinking down . . . and down into the chair (bed, grass) . . . Just further and further down, . . . down .. . down . . . More and more relaxed . . . Now focus upon your chest muscles. Feel them become more loose and relaxed with each breath out. That’s it, very relaxed. And now, your abdominal muscles. Letting the tension go, more and more relaxed with each breath out. Very relaxed, . . . warm and relaxed. And finally, your legs. Just let the tension flow down and away, leaving your legs very loose, . . . very relaxed. That’s it, very relaxed.

And now, the entire body. Letting any residual muscle tension go. Feeling very relaxed. Very, . . . very re-lax-x–x–ed. Quiet, . . . calm . . . and . . . re-lax-x–x–ed.

If you are still with me and not nodding or snoring in a very relaxed stupour, I should add just one more technique. One of the major reasons why rigid and inflexible relaxation programs fail is that the user becomes bored. The more variety you can put into your relaxation practice, the greater your motivation to continue practising is likely to be. Try the following scenes as attention focusing techniques.

Focus your attention

Focusing your attention might sound easy, but it can be quite difficult, especially for the person with a very active mind. The counting series and the muscle relaxation approaches will start you on the way, but you may well need further assistance to get your mind relaxed. Try one or more of the following scenes. Make the scenes as real as possible, experiencing as many of the sensual aspects as you can.

Walk through an English garden

I am standing on a small hill overlooking a garden below on a warm and sunny day in early summer. I can feel the sun’s warmth on my forehead and cheeks. On the level below, there is a lovely garden bathed in deep verdant green and punctuated by numerous flower beds filled with summer flowers. The garden is inviting and I walk over to the marble staircase which leads down to the garden.

Starting at the top step, I step down to the next and with each successive step, I can feel myself becoming more and more relaxed. Stepping now down to 18 . . . 17 (feeling the smooth, cool marble under my bare feet) . . . 16 . . . 15 . . . (counting slowly as I exhale) . . . 14 . . . (feeling more and more relaxed) . . . 13 . . . 12 . . . 11 . . . 10 . . . (down and down) . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . (deeper and deeper) . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 … (very deep now) . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 .. . and 1 . . .

Down at the bottom of the steps, I can feel the warm, soft grass under my feet and I can smell the sweet fragrance of the summer flowers hanging heavily in the air. I walk over to a garden statue of a Grecian goddess and touch the smooth surface of the stone. Very smooth with soft flowing lines. It seems that the sun’s rays penetrate the marble and meet somewhere inside the smoky white stone.

Further along in the garden, I come to one of the numerous flower beds with flowers of every colour and hue. Standing in front of a circular bed, I can hear bees buzzing from flower to flower. There are several butterflies moving about the blossoms. The fragrance is very sweet and strong. I can smell the perfume as I feel occasional soft puffs of warm air brushing against the left side of my face.

I approach a large fountain which is spraying fine jets of water into the air. I can hear the splashing and spattering of water as I approach. The mist from the spraying jets is picked up by the breeze and I can now feel the fine droplets landing on my face. Very cooling, while my face feels quite warm from the sun. The sun’s rays create a vivid rainbow with intense colours of red .. . orange . . . yellow . . . green . . . blue . . . and violet.

Further along in the garden, I come to a large lake with two swans, one black and one white, drifting so peacefully and effortlessly in unison. They glide through lily pads with white, pink and mauve coloured flowers. So quiet, tranquil and relaxing. Very, very relaxing.

I sit down on the bank of the lake and then lie back on the soft, warm grass. So comfortable and quiet. I can feel the warmth of the sun softly penetrating my entire body. So relaxed, very relaxed. As I lie there, I am quite alone and free from problems and concerns. Just me, warm and relaxed, alone and quiet by the lake. Very quiet, very tranquil and very calm .. .

At this point you would progress to the next step in the procedure. However, an alternate scene will be presented for those who suffer from hayfever or pollen allergies or for those who simply do not like gardens, lakes, or swans.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Learning to Relax at Work

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 2:00 am and is filed under Business Management, Career Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.