The Magic Way To
Instantly Relax At Work
Into A Calm State Of Mind

How To Relax At Work: These simple exercises can help you to relax at work within seconds, enabling the process of controlling your mind.

Richard Davidson narrates the response of a Buddhist monk to a loud sound, like a pistol being fired close to your ears. Since the response is triggered from the brain stem, the early reptilian part of the brain, an ordinary person cannot prevent flinching. Yet, not a muscle in the monk's face flinched. He is reported to have said that it felt “like a bird crossing the sky.” The responses of your mind can be controlled in many ways.

Imagine your mind to be a pattern recognition entity, that can be switched instantly from a mood of despair, or anger into a calm and peaceful state. That process is effective mind control.  As a preliminary step to that process, the following suggestions offer you some of the best ways to relax.

• Resolve the conflicting emotions competing for control in your mind, using the Self Improvement Plan in this website.
• Use a simple exercise to still the sudden turmoil caused by the unavoidable and daily assaults of life.
• Understand the mechanisms, which tense your muscles and keep them in that state.
• Follow the Herbert Benson advice on methods of quick relaxation.
• Manage your postures during work to prevent your muscles from sagging into painful body states.
• Consider the Noise Help solutions, which can reduce the vexing effects of noise in the work environment.

How To Relax At Work
Do You Accept A Possibility Of Failure?
With the self improvement plan (SIP) presented in this website, you can organize your major concerns and have a working plan for your life.The preparation of the plan may take an hour of focused effort. But, the process will give you an understanding of the conflicting issues in your life and enable you to set your priorities.

You will have learned to accept the possibilities of failure with maturity. Later, whenever you feel troubled, use the same SIP method to remain in a calm state of mind, where you can be more relaxed at work.

How To Relax At Work
Can You Quiet Your Visceral Reactions?
Even if you enjoy a stable outlook on life, you will still be subject to daily inconveniences and annoyances. Delayed flights, missed appointments, or angry colleagues will trigger minor visceral reactions. When adrenaline is triggered in the fight or flight response, it can easily set you into a blue mood for the day. Stomach pumping is a simple exercise to remove the persisting effect of a visceral reaction. When the sudden increase in adrenaline returns to normal levels, you will be in a better mood to relax at work.

How To Relax At Work
How Do Muscles Get Tensed?
Smooth muscles and skeletal muscles manage your life and cause your tension. On your skin, smooth muscles give you goose bumps. The smooth muscles of the ciliary and iris of the eye enable you to focus on this page. Other smooth muscles act in the trachea, large and small arteries, veins,and lymphatic vessels, the urinary bladder, uterus, male and female reproductive tracts, gastrointestinal tract, respiratory tract. In your skeletal muscles, bundles of parallel fibers contract and relax in opposition to enable you to walk in the park, or sit down for dinner. In these muscles, slow twitch fibers begin each movement and fast twitch fibers join in later to enable you to lean back, or shift in your chair.

The problem comes, because the slow-twitch fibers begin to act early and and are slow to return to their original relaxed state. Those muscle fibers tense and then take up to 30 minutes to relax. Persistent tension causes exhaustion. Fear, anger, guilt, shame and sadness send emotional signals, which tense muscles in anticipation of a need for action. Today, instead of a roar in the jungle, an emotional signal is triggered by a cell phone call, during lunch break. Your muscles tense and discomfort spreads as the tension signals enter a feedback loop with emotions, unless laughter, or a conscious decision relaxes those tensed muscles.

How To Relax At Work
Is There A Known Quick Relaxation Method?
Learning to relax quickly can become a habit. During the course of a day, stressful events as wells as poor postures will tighten many muscles in your body. Tensed muscles often remain tightened and do not automatically relax. Tensed muscles trigger irritability, which again increases tension. The two escalate in a vicious cycle.

Herbert Benson suggested a simple routine, which can enable you to relax quickly at work. Your RI has the capacity to instruct your muscles to relax instantly. Just as quickly as you flex your fingers, you can relax all your muscles. The following is a modification of the tips to relax, recommended in the book The Relaxation Response by Benson:

1. Lie on your back comfortably in bed, stretching out your legs and laying your hands on the side, palm upwards.

2. Close your eyes and sense the muscular tensions in your body. Then, beginning from your toes, tighten your muscles and relax them, progressing up to the top of your head.

3. Shift your body positions to make each relaxation step more comfortable.

4. Sense any muscle tension remaining anywhere in the body. Become aware of all the small tightnesses in your hands, your eye muscles, or neck muscles. Relax them.

5. Continue this for 10 minutes, until you have become familiar with any remaining muscular tensions in your body and practice relaxing those muscles. After a little practice, you will know how to relax at will.

6. Once you have carried out this exercise a few times, repeat the instant relaxation process, sitting in a chair, or standing in an elevator. You will find that after a couple of weeks, you will be able to instantly relax your body, wherever you are.

How To Relax At Work 
Is Your Posture Critical To Relaxation?
Since muscles can only contract, groups of opposing muscles must coordinate for you to sit down, or to tap a keyboard. 60,000 muscles in your body contract, or relax for you to work at your job. Throughout the working day, your major muscles must be sufficiently tightened for you to sit erect in your chair, or to stand up straight. If you allow your major muscles to relax, your posture will be wrong. Then you will place undue stresses on your weaker muscles, causing back or neck pain. So, you need a fine balance of tensions to be able to relax at work.

1. When you are sitting at your work table stretch upwards and sit up straight. Most back pain occurs because you place undue stress on your lower back muscles by slouching in your seat. Stretching your body upwards relieves those muscles. There is no need to continuously keep up the stretch over time. On a long car journey, stretching upwards every 15 minutes, or whenever you remember is enough. In course of time, sitting up straight will become a habit.

2. Position your computer monitor in such a way that you do not have to tilt your head back to read the screen. Holding your head in a tilted position for a long period causes neck pain. Lift your head up as if your head is being lifted upwards by your ears. Stretching up relieves pressure and substantially relaxes the minor muscles. Repeat this action whenever you feel any tension in your neck. With practice, this stretching process and good posture will become a habit.

How To Relax At Work
How Do You Deal With Disturbing Noises?
Noises can have an impact on your ability to relax. A barking dog, or a snoring spouse can disturb your sleep and cause you to be tensed during the day. Even in the office, just the sniffling sounds of an officemate who has sinus congestion can disrupt your focus and stress you out. “Small” noise problems can have serious consequences. Noise Help is an excellent website, which can help you to cope with noise pollution in in its many varied forms.

This page was last updated on 04-Apr-2016.