The Beach Relaxation Exercise

This exercise is wonderful for relieving tension and inducing sleep. If you love the beach and love to watch the waves, then this is a great one for you. It is not uncommon to fall asleep before ever finishing the exercise, but if you finish the exercise and are still awake, do it again slowly. You may want to experiment with sleep-inducing tapes or CDs for this exercise. Specifically, you’ll want to find a tape or CD with the sound of ocean waves, as this exercise involves some visualization about the sea. You can take the visualization as far as you want to, picturing the beach, your outfit, the weather, etc. However, this might become distracting. For the simplest version, simply imagine that you are lying with your feet pointed towards the ocean.

• Start by closing your eyes and performing a breathing exercise to help induce general relaxation. Once you have started to relax and feel comfortable, you can begin your visualization.



• As you breathe in slowly, start to imagine your intake of breath as a wave coming onto shore. Then, as you breathe out, picture the wave returning to the ocean.



• Now breathe in and imagine a wave hitting your toes. As you breathe out and the wave withdraws, it pulls with it all of the tension in your toes. You can imagine that you are made of sand and that the waves wash away your toes, slowly dissolving them into the ocean.



• With your next breath the wave hits your feet, and again, as you breathe out, it recedes and takes with it the tension in that area of your body.



• Continue to repeat this process and slowly move up your legs to your torso, arms, chest, shoulders and finally your head, gently washing the tension from your whole body.

As you continue practicing this exercise, slow the process down with each successive practice and “dissolve” progressively smaller areas of your body each time to gain the maximum benefit.

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