Muscle relaxation. Muscle relaxing drugs: classification and side effects when used

The facial muscles are very mobile. During every day, a person experiences many emotions: joy, anger, surprise, disappointment, and all of them are reflected on the face. Permanent job muscle leads to mimic wrinkles. Even in ancient times, people were able to determine the character of a person by the face. The folds on the forehead said that the person often frowns, which means that he is dissatisfied with something. The lowered corners of the lips also indicated a frequent pessimistic mood. But small wrinkles around the eyes, on the contrary, testified to a cheerful disposition. This is good example how tight emotional condition human is connected with the physical body. Therefore, relaxation of the facial muscles is very important for their normal functioning.

facial muscles

Since the facial muscles work all day, by the evening they need to relax. However, not everyone knows how to relax them. Gradually, the muscles get used to the tension and can no longer relax themselves. They are in this state even when a person is calm and does not experience any emotions. Prolonged tension of the facial muscles causes a feeling of spasm, tightness of the skin in the forehead, tightness of the face. As a result, blood circulation worsens, the skin of the face becomes flabby, dull, acquires an unhealthy color, becomes covered with wrinkles.

Wrinkles caused by fatigue of the facial muscles are localized in the corners of the eyes and on the forehead. Also, a person's nasolabial folds increase, cheeks sag and the entire relief of the face changes. Usually, after seeing such unpleasant changes on their face, women, and some men, try to save the situation with the help of cosmetics. But, unfortunately, no cosmetics are able to cope with muscle fatigue. Only special gymnastics for muscle relaxation and massage can help here.

The main causes of tension in the facial muscles are:

• the habit of constantly frowning forehead;
• the habit of chewing food on one side;
• malocclusion;
• the habit of sleeping on one side all the time.

A set of exercises to relax the muscles of the face

Exist simple exercises aimed at the work of the muscles of the cheeks, cheekbones, forehead. Their daily implementation will help relieve tension, reduce wrinkles, increase blood circulation, improve complexion and make the skin more elastic. Relaxation exercises are suitable for both women and men. Gymnastics should be done in a calm, relaxed state, breathing should be slow and deep. After each exercise, there should be a feeling of relaxation in the muscle being worked out. Before starting gymnastics, you need to take the most comfortable position.

Cheek exercises

1. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and try to raise your eyebrows as high as possible. Stay in this position for a few seconds, then exhale and lower your eyebrows. Rest a bit and repeat the exercise.
2. Inhale deeply and try to strain the wings of the nose as much as possible (as if inflating the nostrils), then exhale and relax. Do it several times.
3. Open your mouth and lift one corner up to get a "crooked" smile. Stay in this position for a few seconds, then relax the muscles. Repeat the same with the other corner of the mouth.
4. Alternately blink one or the other eye, feeling the muscles of the cheeks stretch up.
5. Wrinkle your face as much as possible, stay in this position for a couple of seconds, then relax.
6. Grab your upper lip with your fingers and gently pull it down. Without releasing your lips, try to smile and feel how your cheeks tense up.

Eye exercises

1. Taking a deep breath, close your eyes. Gradually strain eye muscles and then squint. Hold the muscles in tension for a few seconds, then exhale and relax. Repeat.
2. Make circular movements with your eyes, first clockwise, and then in the other direction (3-5 movements each). The head remains motionless.
3. Position your head straight, look forward. Without changing the position of the head, look up, linger for a second, then lower down. Repeat.
4. The head is straight ahead, the gaze is straight ahead. Without turning your head, look first in one direction, then in the other. Repeat the exercise several times.
5. Close your eyes tightly, hold this position for 5 seconds, then relax. Do the exercise 10 times.

Exercises for the muscles of the mouth

1. Bring your lips together with a tube and make an air kiss. Repeat the movement several times.
2. Stretching and rounding the lips as much as possible, draw the sounds “ah-ah”, “oh-oh-oh”, “u-u-u”, “uh-uh”, “i-i-i”, “ s-s-s.
3. Open your mouth and try to tuck your lips inward. Hold the tension for a couple of seconds, then relax the muscles. Repeat several times.
4. With closed lips, try to smile first with one side of the mouth, then the other. Then smile on both sides at the same time. Do it several times.
5. Open your mouth and pull one corner to the side as much as possible, then repeat the same movement with the other corner.
6. Arrange index fingers both hands on the corners of the mouth and smile while creating resistance with your fingers. To relax. Repeat the exercise 20 times.

Exercises for the muscles of the chin and neck

1. Tilt your head back and open your mouth. Without changing the position of the head, open and close the mouth.
2. Tuck upper and lower lip inward. Straining the muscles of the chin and neck, open and close the mouth.
3. Tighten your neck muscles and slowly pull your neck up, then return to initial position. Repeat.
4. Tighten your neck muscles. Slowly turn your head from side to side, making sure that your neck remains tense.
5. Put your palm on your forehead and try to tilt your head, resisting with your hand. Repeat the same with the back of the head, only now you need to tilt your head back, resisting its movement with your palm.

Massage to relax facial muscles

Facial massage is a great way to relieve tension and relax your facial muscles. In addition, it has a beneficial effect on the skin. Massage can be done in the evening before going to bed, and it is good for women to do it also in the morning, before applying makeup. Before starting the massage, it is necessary to cleanse the skin (wash, remove makeup) and apply a moisturizing or nourishing cream.

It is best to start the massage from the forehead area, pressing on the point between the eyebrows and gently moving the fingertips from the bridge of the nose up the forehead. Well helps to relieve tension in the forehead massage of the scalp. To do this, press your fingertips to your head and knead the skin in a circular motion, starting from the forehead and gradually moving to the back of the head, not forgetting the sides.

Now we can move on to the eyebrows. Eyebrows should be massaged with soft movements from the bridge of the nose to the temples. You can grab the skin of the eyebrows with your fingers and upper eyelid and gently pinch it.

The skin around the eyes is very delicate. Therefore, it should be massaged with extreme care. First you need to pay attention to the corners of the eyes, then gently stretch the area under the lower eyelid.

The cheekbone area must be massaged towards the temples. It is not necessary to press hard on the skin, it is enough to make tapping movements with the fingertips. Having groped for a tense area, you need to give it Special attention and gently pressing, massage in circular motions. The temporal muscles also need to be massaged.

Massage of the muscles of the mouth is carried out by pressing on a point above upper lip moving towards the corners of the mouth. Then you need to massage the point located in the center under the lower lip. To eliminate flabbiness of the chin muscles, you need to pat back side palms on the bottom of the chin.

It is necessary to walk with patting movements over the entire surface of the face until a feeling of warmth and light tingling appears. This will increase the relaxation of the facial muscles.

Finishing the massage, it is necessary to gently probe the entire face again to find the points where there is still tension. If there are any, you need to massage them a little more. After that, you should cover your face with your palms and sit like that for a minute. The massage is over.

Regular exercise and massage will help not only relieve muscle tension, but also preserve youth and beauty of the face for a long time.

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Muscle relaxation

A significant part of muscle tension is acquired, therefore, with the help of regular training and certain exercises you can get rid of it. Relaxation is a skill that can be developed and used to overcome psycho-emotional problems and find peace.

The ancient Greeks highly valued sports and reasonable physical activity, because they noticed that with their help the body is unloaded not only from excess energy, tension and muscle clamps, but also from the emotional oppression of problems. Therefore, regular muscle work gives a good vitality, is the prevention of hypodynamia, allows you to peacefully throw out experiences and stresses.

Training is used as the main relaxation technique in modern psychotherapy. progressive muscle relaxation. What makes it special is its ease of learning and application, and most importantly, this training is based on physiological mechanisms and therefore has an effect, regardless of the strength of self-hypnosis and faith in this exercise. The only option when progressive muscle relaxation will not give a positive effect is if you do not complete this exercise, do not bring the load to the required level.

Back in 1929, Edmund Jacobson described the basics of relaxation training in his book Progressive Relaxation. It is also known as neuromuscular relaxation (NMR). Based on the results of experiments, Jacobson proved that emotional reactions are projected into the body in the form of muscle tension. That is, the law of conservation of energy is fully valid in mental sphere. Figuratively speaking, the psychic energy that has arisen (if emotions have not been manifested) does not dissolve into non-existence, but passes into the energy of muscle tension, and we are not always aware of this. People who do not adequately express their emotions and do not know how to properly release tension often form the so-called “muscle shell”. Over time, unspoken emotions turn into muscle clamps which, in turn, have a negative impact on psychological state human and lead to the development of bodily ailments, such as hypertension.

The stronger the emotional stress, the more pronounced the tension of the skeletal muscles. Such a reaction

due to the presence of cortico-muscular connections: excessive tension of the cerebral cortex leads to immediate muscle excitation. There is also a feedback - relaxed muscles form the conditions for inhibition of the activity of the cells of the cerebral cortex. The question inevitably arises: how to effectively relax the muscles? Jacobson proposed to achieve relaxation, using not passive inactivity, but active load - by increasing the load on the muscles, causing them to overwork and - a paradox! – the subsequent inevitable relaxation.

The forced modification brought to your attention this method allows you to achieve relaxation through tension, using overwork (created by rapid and intense static muscle tension) and subsequent natural physiological relaxation of the muscles.

AN EXERCISE

Before doing the exercise, take a few seconds to muscle stretching and tendons, as well as warming up the joints. Then we move on to the exercise itself.

Let's start with arm and shoulder muscles. Clench your hands tightly into fists. Mentally count ten seconds, calmly and slowly. At the same time, hold the maximum muscle tension for all ten seconds. The meaning of this tactic is to keep muscle tension at a constant high level: while you are tensing up, the muscles begin to gradually get tired and “waste” the charge of energy that was thrown into them by the emotional “explosion”.

Now engage the muscles of the forearm (the forearm is the part of the hand located between the wrist and elbow joints). To qualitatively strain the muscles of the forearms, bend your arms at the wrist joints, bringing your fists as close as possible to the inner parts of the forearms. Muscles that could not be strained in this area should be tried to be reduced by volitional effort.

The next stage is the tension of the muscles of the shoulders. Do the same as in the previous steps, plus spread your arms to the sides, bend them at the elbows and tighten the corresponding muscles with all possible force. You should take the pose of an athlete showing off your biceps. Feel the tension in your shoulders.

Moving on - tension back muscles. In order to achieve tension in this area and do it safely for the back and spine, it is necessary, firstly, to bring the shoulder blades together as much as possible and, secondly, to lower them down from this position. Then you can feel how your spine has taken the position of the so-called " spinal column". It is in the “pillar” position that the vertebrae are located one above the other and you do not risk “pinching the roots” or “knocking out” the discs with an awkward movement or lifting weights. We need such a position of the spine for a safe and at the same time strong tension of the back muscles. So, tighten your back along with the tension of the muscles of the hand, forearm, shoulder, that is, with everything that you did earlier. Mentally count from one to ten.

Now let's move on to the most difficult part of the work - facial muscles. The face is the main expression of our emotions, from joy to aggression. Schematically, it can be divided into three parts: the upper part includes the forehead and eyebrows, the middle one - the eyes and nose, the lower one consists of the jaws, lips and cheekbones. Let's try to strain all three muscle groups in turn. To tense your forehead, you can forcefully raise your eyebrows or bring them together with an effort. It is better to use raising and lowering the eyebrows alternately. Focus on the feeling of tense forehead muscles and try to remember it.

Then move on to voltage. middle zone, namely the muscles surrounding the eyes and nose. First, close your eyes tightly, as if you had soap in your eyes, or as children do when they are very frightened. Then tighten your nose. To fully tighten the muscles of the nose, you need to wrinkle it, as in the very bad smell. At the same time, try to tighten the wings of the nose. The lower third of the face will be effectively brought into tension if you clench your jaws and stretch the corners of your mouth "from ear to ear" in the maximum possible smile.

Now we need connect all three pieces, and it's not easy. Moreover, there are nuances. For example, it is impossible to raise your eyebrows and squint at the same time. Therefore, remember the tension that arises in the forehead when you raise your eyebrows and mentally help yourself when you squint. Or use only frowned eyebrows in the complex. In the end, you should look like this: furrowed brows, squinting eyes reduced to the bridge of the nose, nostrils of a wrinkled nose parted to the sides, clenched jaws, nodules instead of cheeks and a smile from ear to ear.

Necessarily remember the tension, because the main thing is not aesthetics and not even the correct execution of this task, but the intensity of the tension of all the muscles on your face. They, as we had the opportunity to verify, although small, are very sensitive to current emotions. Do not forget to mentally count to ten, but concentrate not on the count, but on the tension.

Let's move on to the next anatomical area - to neck. The difficulty lies in the fact that at first it will be unusual for you to strain the anterior and posterior muscle groups of the neck at the same time. Therefore, lower your chin to your chest, and then throw your head back and remember the feeling of tension that arises in both positions.

Now try to hold the brush on the weight and press on it with your chin. Then you can feel the tension in the front muscles of the neck. Then hold the back of the head in place with the palm of your hand (closer to the crown of the head), and try to overcome the resistance of the hand with your head. Then you can feel the tension in the back muscles of the neck. Remember the work of both muscle groups - you have to strain them using muscle memory.

Move on. The next muscle group, the tension of which we have to master, is the muscles abdominals. To strain them, imagine that they want to hit you in the stomach. At the same time, create tension in the perineum area - bring the buttocks together and pull the perineum into you. Repeat the exercise two or three times, counting to ten to yourself. Now do this exercise in combination with all the previous ones.

Let's get busy feet. Let's start with the feet. To tighten the muscles of the feet, you need to forcefully bend your toes, as you did with your fingers, clenching them into fists. Then you will feel the tension in the arch of the foot. To tighten the muscles of the lower leg, you need to pull the feet towards you (without straightening your toes!). Do it with effort. And then, in the second step, bring your socks together and spread your heels.

Now strain thighs and buttocks. To do this, sit up straight and feel like a tumbler: tighten your buttocks and sway a little from side to side. Now, from this position, stretch your legs forward at a right angle and feel how the thigh muscles tense up. Connect the tension of the muscles of the thighs and buttocks with the tension of the feet and lower legs, as we did just now. Feel the unified tension of all muscles lower extremities, from fingertips to buttocks.

Now repeat all previously studied stresses. Gather your fingers into a fist, bend your hand towards the inside of your forearm, and your forearms at your elbows. Spread your arms to the sides and tighten the muscles of both shoulders. Now bring the shoulder blades together and, feeling a skin fold between them, lower them down. Lock the head in the process of tilting forward, while creating resistance. Add to this the appropriate facial expressions. Count to ten to yourself and do the exercise with total dedication. Remember: you need to achieve maximum tension in order to then be able to fully relax. Do this with such an effort that will allow you to exhaust all the energy in the muscles.

So are you ready to tense up completely. Recall the feeling of tension that you previously caused in the upper body. Repeat everything from beginning to end quickly, but slowly, trying not to miss anything. Now tighten your whole body and with maximum effort. Count to ten and lean back in your chair, carefully examining your sensations. A significant part of your body will relax, but most likely you will be able to find those areas where at least a minimal degree of tension has been preserved. If there are more than three zones of these sections, you need to repeat the complex again, in the same sequence. Then feel the current state of your muscles, smoothly and slowly, going into all, even minimal, sensations along the way from the feet to the back of the head. If there are three or less zones of tension, albeit minimal, the cycle can not be repeated, but only the muscles that maintain tension can be loaded. Moreover, to create such a load, you can use not only the static muscle tension from the complex we studied, but also the dynamic load from any exercises you know (normal exercise, gymnastics, aerobics, shaping, etc.). We identify a specific muscle that is in a state of tension, and then we try to determine what action or movement can involve it in the work (for example, when the back muscles are tense - push-ups from the floor, legs - squats, etc.), first creating additional tension, then overwork and subsequent inevitable relaxation.

The main principle is not so much the correct execution of all elements of the complex (although this is important) and their consistent implementation, but the usefulness of the work done by the muscles and subsequent relaxation. Because this is what we want to achieve, and tension for us is only a means to achieve the desired result. Burn the extra "adrenaline" in the "furnace" of muscle work!

By mastering this technique, you can do a mini-relaxation exercise in cases where it is not possible to perform a full cycle. For example, on a bus or train: close your eyes, slow down your breathing, mentally tell yourself: “Relax!” - and slowly tighten and then relax the muscles of the arms or legs, back or neck. With the right amount of training, this mini-exercise can be almost as effective as the full version.

13. RELAXATION We all need to relax. Some do it well, others find it difficult. This also applies to children. Relaxation helps us do things better and run more smoothly. When we relax, the pain subsides, we