Relaxation

Funny to think but at the moment of this writing (730, March 24, 2008) Carol is in an airplane flying somewhere between California and Texas.  That’s where she will next set down in Dallas TX for transfer to a flight to La Guardia.   She is going to NY, NY for a conference, where she will participate in an international panel on creativity and dance.

I could have gone.  I like Manhattan.  But the last few springs I have traveled off to conventions, I come back and within a week I am sick with something, sometimes just a cold, but one spring I got bronchitis, so I decided a few weeks back that I would not go with her and felt bad about that, until it came time for the trip and then I was glad I had decided not to travel because I am feeling so darn pooped out.  

I am getting my usual spring allergy attack and still do not seem to have adjusted to the change in the clock.  I wake up these days at around 530 and can’t get back to sleep no matter how I try.  So I get six or six and a half hours sleep.  That’s just not enough.

I have a few days here that I might use to rest up.  The last quarter isn’t quite wrapped up.  I am waiting for the Teaching Assistants I supervise to post their grades, but I do have things pretty well set up for my class next quarter.  The problem though I am learning is that to rest up one must be able to relax.

Being tired and having a little time off might seem an opportune time to relax.  But being tired is not the same thing as being relaxed, and having the time to relax doesn’t mean one will do so.  I mean I would like to give it a go, but I don’t think I know how to relax.  I need perhaps to take some classes in the art of relaxation.  I should perhaps consult with niece Caroline who majored in Leisure Studies on some things I might read about how to relax.

But that’s a problem itself.  Reading up on relaxation isn’t the same thing as relaxing.  In fact getting up a reading list on how to relax seems a kind of chore that runs contrary to one’s overall goal—i.e. to achieve a state of relaxation.

The metaphor is low but it seems to me there should be some sort of relaxation sphincter somewhere in the psyche.  When I attend to my bodily functions I am only able to do so by the relaxation of certain sphincters, and I must say—at the risk of appearing perverse, polymorphous—that I experience the relaxation of said sphincters as very positive.  Yes, true nothing is done precisely but something is accomplished.  Or the other way around perhaps.

I should go no further with the sphincter metaphor.  But the fact that I can’t find that sphincter, if there is one, and that I can’t even conceive of relaxation as something other than a problem with possible metaphysical dimensions would seem to indicate I am pretty far from being relaxed.

One Reply to “Relaxation”

  1. Take a yoga class that includes meditaion time, or get a massage. Also practive relaxation breathing. Breath in for a slow count of 4 hold it for 2 and exhale 4. You have to take a deep breath into your stomach, (like when singing as you mentioned in a previous entry). I use this at the Dentist. I believe I was born with a natural talent to relax, it’s a gift.

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