RELAXATION EXERCISES

Myofunktional Exercise  Collect ion

Application:

No Illustration

This chapter gives a general description of a collective group of exercises and details which are sharing the here described facts. 

Apriori about the term: For the patient there would rather the characterisation ‘unwind’ be appropriate as ‘relaxing’ commonly rather stands for diminishing the overstressing then for eliminating the strain. In the subject-specific connection we, indeed, should use the expression “Relaxation”: The musculature should not be deprived of any tension but rather eutonizised meaning down-regulated from a high working tone or a to high dysfunction tone into the stand-by respectively function tonicity in case the muscle groups in dysfunction are standing under a mostly continual hypertone. This can be the matter as well in the working as in the common stand-by tone.
The sequela would mean as well traumatisation for the musculature itself as for the surface epithelium (skin or mucosa) or, moreover, would result deformations at the hard tissue surroundings (see Anatomy, Area I, Page 10).
Therefore the application of the exercise will be recommendable, for example, after a straining work-out of the respective target musculature or for its reduction from a dysfunctionally caused hypertone or spasm back into its physiological frame of tonicity. Target muscles will, therefore, be all of the muscle tracks affected in our field.

Contents:

Reduction of muscle tonicity through fast and easily conducted movements or through a consciously and energy efficient ‘holding’ (maintaining) of a position over a long period.

From their contents the exercises will have to make the patient notice his malfunction and, in the follow, habituate an action pattern which will run in a physiological frame while the desired function is gained.

Mainly stretching and habituating contents will be performed. Feed-back stimuli are playing an important role (see FEEDBACK-EXERCISES)

Materials:

Exercise specific.

Procedure:

- Previous exercises:

Pre-exercises are left out of consideration. Should the RELAXATION EXERCISE be positioned to loosen the musculature after a straining work-out, the latter would stand for the pre-exercise. As muscles in hypertone mostly show a state of high sensitivity threshold (unsensitive) also in this case it would be recommendable to create a physiological sensitivity the same being combined with the orientation of the respective system part in relation to its neighbourhood (Orientation).

-Starting position: Exercise specific.
- Step-by-step-description: The procedure either is exercise specific.
-1 Generally the muscle action is brought to the patients conscious.
-2 In the following step will be worked out to conduct a physiological tonicity.
-3 The last step will be the habituation and embedding into the unconscious, i.e. the habituation.

- Timing:

Kinetic exercises with the contents of a ‘shaking-out’ will be conducted for about 3o seconds. Static position where a position is maintained (mostly a physiological stand-by position) as low toned as possible will commonly have no time limitation prescription as they represent the permanent tension to be integrated in the normal body posture.

Characteristics:

Relaxation, (Habituation), Organ Stereognosis.

Remarks:

As the carry-out tonicity will not be judged easily by the therapist he will have to explain spirit and purpose of the measure to the patient in a descriptive manner as to initiate his self-assessment.

Discussion:

RELAXATION EXERCISES are integrated into the training on one side, as described above, in the mode of an ALTERNATIVE EXERCISE with the purpose of loosening as to create a more comfortable training course. Much more relevance, though, is given to the employment as a therapeutic measure in case of the tendency of the target musculature to fall into spasm. in these cases the patient will have to consider the method as an emergency equipment which he will have to apply when he , during a routine monitoring, catches himself in an act of cramping, or when he is preparing mentally for a period longer in advance (as in night time) to avoid spasms.

The following list is aggregating the exercises which are working towards relaxation. The follow-up of the exercises derives from a translation of the alphabetical order in the German language.

Instructions:

Exercise specific.

LIST OF EXERCISES

(Follow-up from translation of the alphabetical order in the German language.)