Progressive muscle relaxation for children and teenagers

The Ltd. Diploma psychologist Anneke Nielson and the chief physician of the Pain Clinic Kiel Prof. Dr. med. Dipl.-Psych. Hartmut Göbel have developed a new modern version of progressive muscle relaxation for the treatment of children and adolescents.

The CD also contains a thought journey for relaxation. This method is favored among classic relaxation training for headaches, especially migraines, as it is the easiest to learn and has also proven to be the most effective.

The procedure is based on an active perception of tension and relaxation in the muscles and enables you to actively bring about the deepest possible relaxation in the body, but also in your experience.

The CD provides a form of classic relaxation training specifically designed for use by children and young people. The procedure was extensively clinically tested with the participation of children and young people at the Kiel Pain Clinic.

For children: How the procedure works

“Progressive muscle relaxation” is a word that sounds very complicated at first, but behind it there is a really simple method: “Progressive” means something like “progressive” and “muscle relaxation” is another word for “muscle relaxation”, that is, it So it’s about “progressive muscle relaxation”.

With this type of relaxation, individual important muscle parts of the body are gradually relaxed. This is done by first tensing these exact muscles for a brief moment and then letting them relax completely.

You will notice for yourself that the tension in the muscles happens very quickly, but the relaxation phase until the muscles have become completely relaxed again takes longer, namely six to seven times as long! This is because all muscle fibers first have to loosen and loosen up again.

A total of six muscle groups are first tensed one after the other and then relaxed again. I want to briefly explain to you what exercises these are so that you can try out how the individual exercises work.

First comes the arm exercise : you tense the muscles in your arms by lifting both arms, bending them and clenching your hands into fists. You can imagine that you have a wet sponge in each of your hands and are squeezing it out. You will notice how both arms are really tense.

Then comes the forehead exercise : you tense your forehead and the upper part of your cheeks by knitting your eyebrows together as if you are annoyed and at the same time wrinkling your nose as if something smells bad. Do you notice how this exercise brings tension to your face?

Third is the lower part of your face : clench your teeth tightly and at the same time pull the corners of your mouth very wide towards both ears, like a broadly grinning smiley.

shoulder exercise comes : With this exercise, please pull your shoulders high and at the same time, as if you want to say "no idea"!

The so -called fuselage exercise , ie the exercise that affects the muscles of your upper body, goes like this: You breathe in deeply and pull your stomach firmly. A little like you wanted to close a much too tight trousers.

Finally, the leg exercise : you press your heels tightly into the floor and at the same time pull your toes up towards the face. As if you wanted to slow down on a sled with your feet while sledding.

That was all six exercises. You see, it's not difficult at all.

You can listen to audio samples here: