Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a stress management technique that is easily learned, fits many settings, and affects various kinds of stress. Since the technique involves no equipment, regular times, or special training it is one of the most practical means of dealing with stress in daily life. PMR is useful in dealing with immediate events and daily stressors, but it also helps increase your general ability to cope with chronic stressors--and you can learn it in one simple session.
There are many kinds of stressors that make up a "stress continuum" and they range from chronic stressors (such as poor health or financial worries) to immediate stressful events that occur in everyone's life (Wheaton 88). PMR is often used following stress caused by "daily hassles" or immediate, one-time, stressful events. After fighting traffic to get to work, for example, you might try PMR before starting your day. Discrete stressful events, such as receiving bad news (a project needs to be redone or a child is sick), also call for PMR. Chronic and discrete stressors affect your health in different ways, but they are also interconnected as each type has "indirect effects through other stressors" (Wheaton 110). When you are incapable of coping with event stressors you will have less resistance to chronic stressors. PMR, by managing daily stress, fights chronic stressors' ability to affect your general well-being.
Your PMR sessions 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. Some recommend, for example, that you practice deep breathing sessions before PMR and make it a "prelude to other activities such as visualization exercises [or] self-hypnosis (Wayne)" PMR has two essential phases. The first consists of creating tension in a specific muscle group and then experiencing the subsequent relaxation. The second consists of...