Exploring Emotions

Sit or stand comfortably with all your muscles relaxed (keep tense enough only to remain sitting or standing). now, using your memory or imagination, go ahead and get as angry as you can, but don't tense a single muscle.

What you will find, if you can keep your muscles relaxed, is that it is physiologically impossible to get angry. Anger cannot exist without muscle tension, and neither can fear. Therefore, training yourself to relax your muscles at will can help you recall knowledge and skills more easily, as well as enable you to prevent or free yourself in the middle of fear or anger. Not only that, it can help you break many unpleasant and unhealthy habit patterns by giving your mind-body a new memory of how to act or react in different situations.

Serge Kahili King has this to say about this particular exercise: I was with a friend, the same one who hikes with me, in a town called Kapaa waiting for my wife to pick us up. The friend offered me a taste of her ice cream cone, which I took, and it was very good. In a little while she offered me another taste, which I refused because I was cutting down on the fat in my diet. Later she asked me how I was able to refuse a second taste of such good ice cream. It was easy, I told her. All I had to do was keep my shoulder muscles so relaxed that I couldn't lift my arms to take the cone.