Actively, Deeply, Progressively Relax – the First Wellspring / First Pillar

The parasympathetic relaxation response enables deeper learning and recall, plasticity, creativity, nuanced immune response, wound healing, deeper states of meditation, better sleep, greater charisma, better physical learning, greater mobility and faster recovery from exercise.

When most people say they are relaxing; i.e., “Netflix and chill,” their bodies are still in a sympathetic fight/flight/freeze/fawn response.

Zoning out in front of a TV, or mindlessly doomscrolling, may be forms of passive entertainment, but for the above benefits, we want to engage active relaxation. Active relaxation means applying localized awareness to the relaxation response, literally telling each muscle group to relax in turn.

Going deeper into relaxation is most easily accomplished on each exhalation. So one could become aware of a muscle or bodypart on inhalation, perhaps engaging or contracting or flexing or stretching the muscles on inhalation, and then consciously relaxing them on exhalation – letting go of tension, melting tension, sinking body weight into the floor, collapsing tensegrity.

Lying supine on a firm surface, such as Shavasana on the floor, further induces relaxation in the skeletal muscles with each exhalation.

Progressive relaxation involves placing awareness in one body part at a time, expanding, flexing, or activating muscles on inhalation, and relaxing them deeply on exhalation, one or more times before proceeding to the next adjacent body part, until every part of every limb, the torso, genitals, neck, face, scalp, jaw, diaphragm, and internal organs are all deeply relaxed.

A very simple progressive relaxation:
Inhale – gently inflate or expand, Exhale – relax, sink, collapse, and melt the following
Head x 3 breaths
Thorax x 3 breaths
Abdomen/ Pelvis x 3 breaths
if there is time, then run through
Left leg x 3 breaths
Right leg x 3 breaths
Left arm x 3 breaths
Right arm x 3 breaths
Whole body x 3 breaths

While listening to a recording of someone else telling you to relax might initially feel like a vacation from responsibility, it makes your ability to relax dependent on the will and intentions of others.
Narrating the experience for yourself (either in real time in your mind, or by recording the narration to your phone and playing it back to guide you through the process) and repeating it daily with make you more responsive to your own positive self-guidance, and less responsive to propaganda, suggestion, and control by others.
Do a bunch of practice with your own narration, and occasionally have an intimate guide you through the relaxation to create deeper connection. And repeat the process at other times with you narrating for them.

Practicing once per day for 3 to 15 minutes will make a shift in your nervous system.
Practicing 2 to 5 times daily for a whole month will completely shift your personality.