You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve got a bit of a tension problem. No, really. I even recently decided to try one of those relaxation tapes.
So I get out my little twelve-year-old Aiwa portable cassette player, lie back on the bed, slide on my headphones and press the play button. A woman’s voice comes on, soft and soothing:
“You are about
to be taken on
a journey. To a
place where…”
Dammit! The fucking sound is only coming out of one ear. I play with the headphone cord. Still one ear. I move the volume dial and hear some static. It’s a fucking short. I press down on the dial, and that seems to fix it. For a second, at least:
“I want you to tense the muscles in your calves CRACKLE
tighten, two, three,
four, and release…”
FUCK! Goddam motherfucking PIECE OF SHIT!
I press down hard on the volume dial, and suddenly everything is working great. I start to relax. I close my eyes and let the woman’s voice guide me:
“Concentrate on your breathing. Breathing in through your nose for two counts and out through your mouth for four. Ready? Breathe innnn one thousand, two, one thousand, and outttttt….”
I do as she says and I start to feel the tension melt away. My breathing is slowing down and I begin to concentrate on her voice. She speaks about letting my thoughts come and go, about not dwelling on my problems. Then she tells me to breathe in slowly.
Breathe in? What the? But I just started breathing out. Do you want me to fucking hyper ventilate or something? You stupid bitch. Maybe if you were fucking breathing with me instead of yapping away about me floating on a goddam cloud of air we’d be more in sync!
Fuck this. Relaxation Tapes suck.
You’ve got me rolling this morning. Try Yoga with Baron Baptiste. All these health guru relaxation roadies suck!
I do both yoga and tai chi. But there is no way I can do them to tapes, videos, DVDs, etc. I need a REAL instructor who can respond to my questions.
I also hate the stupid music and the soft-spoken people who tell you what to do on the tapes.
I also hate earphones that don’t work because the short out, crackle and do other annoying crap.
I am off to my yoga session.
There was one I used to have that had this late-middle-aged guy whose voice suggested a penchant for cigars backed up by what I swear to god sounded like funeral/haunted house pipe organ music. Needless to say, relaxation didn’t exactly come naturally.
These days, I just put on a Boards of Canada CD (highly recommended for relaxation: “Music Has The Right To Children” by them) & make up my own words, and that seems to work for me.
No, no, no, the best thing is to just learn how to meditate. Block all thoughts out of your mind and just practice being quiet for fifteen minutes each day.
I also learned a cool breathing/relaxation trick in high school. I could teach it to you if you want!
Wow. Who knew I was in the company of relaxation experts. Thanks for all the advice. Being the introvert that I am, the thought of doing meditation with a live instructor doesn’t thrill me. I like my privacy.
My problem is trying to think about nothing for 15 minutes. I can barely do that for 5. As you can tell by my posts, I’ve always got stuff going on in my head. Speaking of which, the new medication hasn’t stopped the voices completely. But instead of commanding me to kill, now they just tell really bad jokes.
I can think of nothing for hours at a time.
That is a talent. Uhhh…I think.
I can think of stuff that doesn’t amount to much for days on end, maybe that’s a weird sort of happy medium. Or the byproduct of unemployment.
That was a really weird thing to say, Smiv.
And this surprises you, Glovia?
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