Relax

If you’ve ever been in a beginning acting class or a yoga class, you have probably encountered one exercise or another to teach you how to be aware of your body and how it holds itself, or how to relax so that your natural breathing takes over. In many cases it involves your lying on the floor while the instructor guides you through identifying muscle groups, tensing them, then relaxing them. By the end of the exercise you’re a puddle.

This awareness comes in very handy when you find it difficult to get to sleep: if you can calm your muscles into relaxing (and smooth out your breathing thereby), you’ll drift off more quickly.

Here’s something I’ve noticed in my own body recently. I start out the night on my back and do a quick “flush” of tension down my body to my feet. All is well, and I’m calm.

But then, as my muscles relax, I realize that the points where my body touched the bed before are not where it wants to touch the bed now. My spine has elongated, my shoulders flattened, my hips and legs stretched. I do another “flush,” and my body spreads out a little more. I may do this a couple of times as I realize that my body wants to relax again.

The lesson here is one of SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION: When working on your work, give yourself enough time to realize that the work wants to stretch, to take up more room (or less), to go in a different direction. That’s why nearly every creativity guru will tell you to temporarily ABANDON the work — walk away from it, leave it in the drawer for a while, come back to it later.

Just like the relaxation exercise does for your body, ABANDONMENT allows your brain to let go of the work, to stop gnawing on that one problem, and to approach it from a different direction later.

Am I suggesting you go take a nap? Sure, why not? A hot tub works, too. You have my permission.