Relax!

It is 1998, and a few very generous experienced skydivers agree to let me jump with them, despite my low jump numbers. During the jump, I can’t quite orient my body in the direction it needs to be while staying close enough to the others to present a grip and take a grip. Eager to learn, when we debrief afterwards, I ask what I did wrong, and the answer is that I need to relax.

One of the hardest things to do on command is relax. Intuitively, it feels like the antithesis of doing what one is told to do. Beginning skydivers hear it all the time, and the natural reaction is, “Sure. Throw me out of an airplane two miles up into freefall—then tell me to relax!” After a few jumps or a few hundred, it starts to make sense. When you loosen mentally, you begin to loosen physically. When you remove tension from your muscles, you are less stiff. Your body flows with the wind, rather than fighting it. That flat spin you couldn’t explain goes away. That tendency to go where you are looking reduces. The need to push away with the right hand in order to slide to the left–rather than reaching toward the direction you want to go—slowly integrates into your reflexes.

For me, this process took hundreds of jumps and still needs constant reinforcement. If you have to think about how to move each muscle and joint to move, you can’t relax. Wherever you are right now, were you consciously aware of all the muscle expansions and contractions that you did to get there from wherever you were right before? No, because you can now just think “I want to go there, and you do.” You have a relaxed walk.

It is 2022 and I go to a chiropractor for the first time. I knew going in that being relaxed would help. I knew he would “trick” me into relaxing by telling me to inhale deeply, and then exhale fully, and that he would press my ribs into place on the exhale. When he took my head in his hands and tilted it just so, I consciously relaxed my neck. I think that must be rare among first time patients, because the doctor got a satisfying crack of my vertebrae with a sudden motion, and remarked with some surprise, “You relaxed.”

Physical and mental relaxation are both skills that can be taught, that you can learn, and that benefit from practice and experience. It’s hard to do one without the other. People use meditation, music, and yoga. It’s unlikely there is one best way for everyone to do either. We can find ways that work for us.