Relax, lets do it...

A relaxation experiment?

According to my course pre-joining instructions I needed to get myself into a state of deep relaxation as an experiment.

Now, relaxed is not exactly my natural state. In fact the last time I was really relaxed I was in a beach bar in the Caribbean drinking rum and coke and as it was over twenty years ago I was a good deal younger and a great deal more confident than I am today. Still, it was all par for the course (literally) and besides how hard can relaxing be?

The paper said: ‘perhaps you want to prepare first: are you going to lie down, or sit down? Use music or silence? Any other techniques?’

All good questions that I didn’t have immediate answers for - to lie or sit, sit in silence or lie listening to music, the other techniques… maybe I should cross my arms, or shut my eyes? Should I wear loose clothing? No clothing at all? Could I have a few beers to get me in the relax zone?

I was pretty sure that the beers were not going to be allowed as part of the experiment and all this thinking about relaxation had begun to stress me out, but I needed to give it my best shot so I continued fully clothed and arms akimbo (sorry about the image that just popped into your head, you know the naked one).

It was a hard to decide where to try the exercise. I thought trying it in the car and driving off to somewhere isolated, maybe with a view. But in the end I decided that I’d worry about passers-by thinking me odd. Not that I’m not odd, I am odd in many ways as you all well know, but the oddness of a middling-aged man sitting in his car with his eyes shut and his hands resting in his lap… well, I ask you.

At one point I thought about going somewhere like a church (well a church actually, I’m not sure that there is anything like a church except a church), but didn’t feel comfortable with that either. I’m not at all sure how God might feel about me crashing one of his buildings to do an experiment when I can't even be bothered to pop in for a chat.

BOOM!
'WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?’
‘just experimenting.’
‘EXPERIMENTING? EXPERIMENTING WITH WHAT?’
‘relaxation technique.’
‘RELAXATION? TRY BLOODY PRAYER. IT WORKS FOR ME.’
BOOM!

I didn’t feel that any of our downstairs rooms at home were relaxing or even empty enough to let me to try this effectively this first time. They are all a bit cluttered at the moment what with the building and piles of flooring all over the place. Just thinking about the mess to come once walls and floors have eventually dried and the dehumidifiers are switched off fills me with a deep angst.

I did consider the big room in the cellar, its empty(ish), light, has low ceilings and is nice and quiet - but in the end I ruled that out on the grounds that subterranean relaxation might be mistaken for death and a quick interment would not be good for my health. For it is written: ‘Never put temptation in the way of your spouse lest she succumbs and gets on the blower to the undertaker.’

Anyway, I knew that I wasn’t going to find it easy to relax anywhere as I have a bit of a problem relaxing. Well, when I say a bit, I mean a lot, and I’m not talking about that ‘always keeping busy’ thing that people do, I’m talking that ‘I can’t keep all this crap out of my mind without a glass or two of wine to relax me’ thing.

Anyway, in the end I decided on the bedroom at the cottage. It’s a very small room, more a large cupboard really, and it has really low ceilings. I’m used to sleeping there, so I thought that it wouldn’t be so hard to relax in a room where I sleep. I seem to feel more comfortable in smaller spaces; I think I may have been a badger or a cornflake in a previous life. Perhaps I’ll try to regress myself at some point in the future and see if my name was once Brock or Kellog.

On the day of the experiment I got lucky with the weather, it was sunny and warm for once. We are way out in the countryside so not many cars pass along the lane and Gaynor and Holly were out shopping. It was a good opportunity to give it a try. I decided not to tell them what I was doing, maybe so that they wouldn’t ask me what I was going to do or how it had gone afterwards, but most probably to avoid those funny looks that they give me when ‘he’s up to his weird stuff again.’

I thought about having a bath or shower but decided that it was making the whole thing too much of a ritual even though ritual is my middle name. Well, not literally my middle name, Kevin is actually my middle name, although thinking about it Ritual would be more acceptable. Andrew Ritual Height. Yes, I like Ritual as a middle name, it has the same ring as Endeavour (as in the Morse). Great initials also – ARH. A kind of choked scream of disbelieving desperation, and there’s not much remit for relaxation with those initials. If only I could use an exclamation mark at the end of it like Prince’s squiggle.

I didn’t drink any coffee or tea after breakfast in preparation, just some fizzy water. I have no idea why I decided to do this but it seemed like a good idea at the time – caffeine and all that I guess. Not that I can really say that I’ve ever experienced a caffeine jag, but relaxing was going to be difficult enough without tempting the coffee demon to put in an appearance.

I considered playing music, but worried I might just end up listening to the music and I seem to have lost that particular habit a while back. I can’t remember the last time I listened to music with intent. Music has become just the stuff that is on in the background on the radio, not a conscious decision at all. Anyway, I’m not sure that music relaxes me and what would I listen to – punk rock, classical, Gregorian chanting, Barry Manilow?

A while back I used a CD of thunder and rain falling on the ground to help me relax and sleep, but I couldn’t find it. If I had found it I would probably have stuck that on, I really do find the sound of falling rain and distant thunder soothing – not the bloody big crashes that shake the house when it’s directly overhead though, although they are exciting. BOOM!

As a child I’d rush to my bedroom window and watch for the lightening forks. I still do actually.
‘Don’t stand too close to the window, you’ll be struck.’ My mum used to warn me.

It never happened though, pity really, I hear that it enhances your susceptibility to unexplainable phenomena – ESP, future vision, the seeing of ghosts, talking in tongues, conversing with higher beings, that sort or thing. That is, if you survive the initial one billion volts running through the fabric of your being.

In the end I decided that silence would be best, but there seems to be no silence. I realised this as I listened to the sheep and birds outside the closed window. I could also hear the low hum of a lawnmower or strimmer buzzing in the distance.

Sometimes to help me sleep I do A-Z’s to take my mind off things. I focus on making an alphabetical list of islands, car makes, fruit and vegetables, animals, minor ailments, anything really. I thought about using this technique because it does help me forget those things that rattle around in my mind. But I didn’t know if falling asleep was an allowable outcome for this particular experiment and was worried that if I used an A-Z to help me relax that I would and end up snoring, dribbling, grinding my teeth and swearing alphabetically.

I lay on top of the bed with my eyes open and focussed on the white ceiling about five feet above me. At first I found myself listening to the birds and sheep but after a couple of minutes they became background noise and even the hum of the – what was it A chainsaw? – became quite comforting.

I tried to stay as still as possible without turning myself into a statue. I felt comfortable but couldn’t say that I was noticeably relaxed and things that I hadn’t done, but needed to be doing, kept popping into my mind. So to try to stop this happening I decided that I would focus on a single image and tried to imagine a red apple floating in a blue sky. I closed my eyes as I found this helped me realise the image.

There it was, a big red apple, floating in a blue sky and wearing a bowler hat. Now where had that bloody bowler appeared from? Oh well, easier to go with the flow. I decided I’d consciously try to relax my body, so imagined my body going numb from the toes up - first toes, then knees, thighs, stomach, fingers, arms, shoulders, all the way up to my head. I’d used this before and think I read about it in an article on insomnia years ago and it worked well, seeming to help relax me. I think my breathing changed and became slower at this point. I could still hear the birds in the distance and the dentist’s drill as it buzzed across the landscape, the apple in the bowler hat smiled down upon the sheep as they danced a waltz in prettily painted reared-up pairs of cloven feet in the fields far below him. Were they dancing to Barry? Was that Mandy they were swaying along with?

I heard a car go past outside but it hardly disturbed me. God was driving. He was off for a few rum and cokes at the beach bar down the road, the one with the palm trees, he was meeting that dentist with the drill and they were going to say a prayer for all toothache sufferers.

‘BLESSED ARE THE TOOTHMAKERS, FOR THEY SHALL…’

I didn’t quite catch the end of the sentence as the sound of the rain and distant thunder drowned Him out, the chanting of all those Gregorian monks and cornflake eating badgers didn’t help much either. It was really uncomfortable on these boxes of flooring and the sound of that bloody dehumidifier was really getting on my bloody nerves and then Rene Magritte and the bloody coffee demon showed up uninvited, all paintbrushes and Nescafé.

Arse, Bollocks, Crap, Dildo, Enema…BOOM!

I awoke with a dribble splattered start.

AGH! After all that relaxing my nerves were in shreds so I put on the kettle.

Maybe a strong black coffee would work for me where deep relaxation technique had failed, or at least I thought it had.