A pretty common question for a lot of us: ‘How do I reduce stress – because I’m sure that’s creating muscle pain for me…’
To answer that question, here’s a short story on how stress works.
Reach out and pick up something – a cup of tea, glass of water – anything. How heavy is the thing you’ve picked up? Probably somewhere between 20g and 500g.
Now – the absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it.
If you hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem.
If you hold it for an hour, you’ll have an ache in your right arm.
If you hold it for a day, you’ll really have a problem.
In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer you hold it, the heavier it becomes and that’s how stress works.
It’s a function of not letting go.
If you carry your burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, you won’t be able to carry on. As with the the thing you picked up, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again.
Everyone carries burdens. They could be emotional or physical. So try to do one simple thing:
Before you go home tonight, put your burden down and rest a while.
Don’t carry it home.
You can pick it up tomorrow.
With muscle tension, this means fully relaxing – 100%. Lie on the floor if you have to – just relax fully and simply breathe.
For emotional tension (which often causes physical tension) just set your burden down for a while. Let it go and rest.
Just let it go.