How to Use Mental Pictures to Relax

PRACTICE EXERCISE: (To be practiced for at least 30 minutes daily)
Seat yourself comfortably in an easy chair or lie down on your back. Consciously "let go" the various muscle groups as much as possible without making too much of an effort of it. Just consciously pay attention to the various parts of your body and let go a little. You will find that you can always voluntarily relax to a certain degree. You can stop frowning and let your forehead relax. You can ease up a little on the tension in your jaws. You can let your hands, your arms, your shoulders, legs, become a little more relaxed than they are. Spend about five minutes on this and then stop paying any attention to your muscles. This is as far as you are going to try to go by conscious control. From here on you will relax more and more by using your creative mechanism to automatically bring about a relaxed condition. In short, you are going to use "goal pictures," held in imagination and let your auto­matic mechanism realize those goals for you.
Mental Picture No. 1
In your mind's eye see yourself lying stretched out upon the bed. Form a picture of your legs as they would look if made of concrete. See yourself lying there with two very heavy concrete legs. See these very heavy concrete legs sulking far down into the mattress from their sheer weight. Now picture your arms and hands as made of concrete. They also are very heavy and are sinking down into the bed and exerting tremendous pressure against the bed. In your mind's eye see a friend come into the room and attempt to lift your heavy concrete legs. He takes hold of your feet and attempts to lift them. But they are too heavy for him. He cannot do it Repeat with arms, neck, etc.
. Mental Picture No. 2
Your body is a big marionette doll. Your hands are tied loosely to your wrists by strings. Your forearm is con­nected loosely by a string to your upper arm. Your upper arm is connected very loosely by a string to your shoul­der. Your feet, calves, thighs, are also connected together with a single string. Your neck consists of one very limp string. The strings which control your jaw and hold your lips together have slackened and stretched to such an ex­tent that your chin has dropped down loosely against your chest. All the various strings which connect the var­ious parts of your body are loose and limp and your body is just sprawled loosely across the bed.
Mental Picture No. 3
Your body consists of a series of inflated rubber bal­loons. Two valves open in your feet, and the air begins to escape from your legs. Your legs begin to collapse and continue until they consist only of deflated rubber tubes, lying flat against the bed. Next a valve is opened in your chest and as the air begins to escape, your entire trunk begins to collapse limply against the bed. Continue with arms, head, and neck.
Mental Picture No. 4
Many people will find this the most relaxing of all. Just go back in memory to some relaxing and pleasant scene from your past. There is always some time in everyone's life when he felt relaxed, at ease, and at peace with the world. Pick out your own relaxing picture from your past and call up detailed memory images. Yours may be a peaceful scene at a mountain lake where you went fishing.