When I teach relaxation skills or biofeedback, I encourage my patients to practice twice a day at roughly the same times each day so that their bodies and brains begin to treat to their “behavior medicine” in the same way that they would adjust to a daily oral medication.
People who have regular meditation practices also tend to follow regular schedules in implementing their practices.
While I firmly believe that a regular schedule is the best way to implement any type of relaxation protocol, I have seen too may cases of individuals who stopped practicing because their lifestyles made it difficult to maintain a regular relaxation schedule. In other words, the schedule became the problem and led to non-compliance. Relaxation had become too much like work.
While a good argument can be made for the notion that making a regular time for relaxation should be a priority for any emotionally healthy individual, that is a topic for discussion at another time. For the present, I would much rather see a person take some time for relaxation even if it is not the same time every day and even if it is shorter than is utilized in any formal relaxation or meditation technique and even if it doesn’t follow any established protocol.
Taking a few minutes for deep breathing while closing your eyes and thinking of a relaxing scene is a good way to start. It interrupts the stress cycle and begins to make you conscious of the importance of relaxation and stress management.
A child who learns to be comfortable in the water at an early age may develop a swimming style that isn’t as perfect as someone who took formal swimming instruction, but s/he can still develop a lifelong enjoyment of swimming. Similarly, someone who develops his or her own method of relaxation practice is more likely to continue to use the individually developed technique rather giving up and stopping a formal practice because it requires a practice schedule that the person finds to be burdensome.
Relaxation is a self-rewarding activity because it feels good and reduces stress.
And who knows? If you don’t work at relaxing, you may learn to enjoy it enough to seek formal training in meditation, biofeedback or some other relaxation technique – and thereby learn to fit it into your schedule on a regular basis.