The Laboratory of Relaxation

    During meditation tonight, I had started out with many wandering thoughts. I couldn't believe how many there were in fact, but this was simply an indicator of how much I had missed the meditation process. And during the space of the practice, I kept trying to look into the source of those thoughts. Eventually, my body relaxed, but how did it do so? Admittedly, it was only during the second period, almost toward the end of the meditation, that I had really allowed my body to relax and release. There are many approaches, it seems, not just one, to relaxation, and I have almost found meditation to be a sort of ''laboratory" where I learn what relaxation principles tend to work well. I will mention a few here.
   Perhaps the easiest way I have found to relax is not to even think about relaxing at all. If a person's focus is on the method of meditation practice, there is no need to try to arrange the body into a particular state of being. When a person is reciting loving kindness, for example, they simply use the intention to extend wellness to create a relaxing and peaceful situation. The important thing here is to cultivate the correct attitude of not trying too hard  to relax or even to attain relaxation. If it so happens that my body and mind state are agitated, then I can make space to allow that agitation to arise, without getting caught up in its particulars. It is like simply observing the energy of the agitation rather than trying to look for the root causes and get rid of them.
     There is another way I have found helpful and that is to observe tension with bare awareness. I found that when I was sitting today, I became acutely aware of a general feeling of tension in my forehead, neck and shoulders. As I truly embodied and beheld the force of that tension, something inside me released, and I was able to let go of it to a great extent. I recall reading about ''progressive relaxation", a technique where a person gets muscles to be as tight as possible and then releases them, in order to get a sense of what 'release' is really about. The release almost comes from fully acknowledging the pain of that situation rather than trying to rationalize it. It is like seeing how hard it is by really and fully accepting that it's hard or painful, thus in some way merging with it.
     The third visualization that I found most effective is to imagine a  compassionate being whose love is so vast that they share the pain with you. I found this approach to be very relaxing as well, especially because there is no longer an isolated self that is feeling the suffering.
   I have also come to have great confidence in the ability for just sitting in simple silence to calm the body. Radical silence and being present, still and not engaged in anything is also a way to stop the thoughts from stirring up, and it's often taken for granted. As long as I am in an observational awareness. I no longer live in my thoughts, and this practice can be very rejuvenating even if it is not hooked up to any particular method of practice.