Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a stress management technique that is easily learned, can be applied in many settings, and is useful for various types of stress. Since the technique involves no equipment, allotment of time, or special training it is one of the most practical means of dealing with stress in day-to-day living. This applies primarily to dealing with immediate events and daily stressors, but it also helps increase the individual's general ability to cope with chronic stressors.
As Wheaton notes, there are a variety of types of stressors that constitute a "stress continuum," and they range from macrostressors, which are non-event stressors "that occur at the macro or social system level" such as economic recession, to the immediate stressful events that occur in everyone's life (88). A technique such as progressive muscle relaxation is usually invoked at points of high stress caused by the so-called "daily hassles" or immediate events. After fighting traffic to get to the office (a daily hassle) one might engage in PMR prior to beginning work. Discrete stressful events, such as receiving bad news (a work project needs to be redone or a child has taken sick), also call for PMR. Chronic stressors--which are "continuing problematic conditions in our social environments and roles"--and discrete stressors "affect health independently" yet are also interconnected because each type has "indirect effects through other stressors" (Wheaton 104, 110). A body and mind incapable of coping with event stressors or daily hassles will have less resistance to chronic stressors. Thus PMR, in managing immediate stress can have a lesser, but important, cumulative affect on the ability of chronic stressors to affect an individual's well-being.
Sessions of PMR can last from 5-10 minutes or as long as 30 minutes. Many experts recommend that PMR be made a part of a general program of stress-directed relaxation. Wayne, for e...