Simple Path to Relaxation

Posted by reallynicearticle on December 16th, 2020

A simple path to relaxation.

Who doesn't want to be relaxed? What won't we do for it? We will pay a lot of hard-earned money on flight tickets and expensive resorts just to get away from our normal life and relax. We will submerge ourselves in boiling bubbling water, let people manipulate our muscles, use candles, drugs, music, and who knows what else just to relax, to forget about our troubles and smile a bit. Maditation

So what if I tell you that we are completely missing the point by doing all of these things just to relax? Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that all of that is bad for you, or not necessary. What I am saying is that all of these 'therapies' are pointless in the matter of relaxation. Such therapies are all good ways to spend time, to be together with friends or lovers, and maybe, on a good day, they are also a way for a temporary local relaxation. But these activities are not a solution, and we find over and over again that the tension comes back and we very soon forget all about being relaxed. We find ourselves back in heavy traffic, in front of the annoying boss or kids or waiter, but there will be no hot water to soak our troubles away. We look for solutions from outside, but these are not really effective or permanent in solving the problems from the outside world as we perceive and experience it. Our outside reality is unable to solve itself.

These methods or therapies, as you already know, are only a treat after a long day (or even year) of being tense. They are not a solution for the day (or year) that comes after.

But don't worry there is a solution! Or maybe not!
Yes, I know it is a little bit confusing, but sometimes the truth is. In the next few paragraphs I will try to explain what I mean by this statement (and don't worry, I promise the following paragraphs will not be as pessimistic as the introduction J - they will be very optimistic). There is a way to become more relaxed and it is very easy - it doesn't involve any pain, loss of money, or 7 years in Tibet! Actually, it is so easy and under our noses that this is exactly the problem. Again I may seem confusing, so let us just begin.

Understanding the problem.

The way I see it, those so called 'relaxation solutions' and therapies will not really help us to relax because they are not really relaxing - they just give us an illusion of relaxation because in their nature they are happen in a relaxed environment (because we arranged it), and therefore in the same moment they make us think that we are relaxed or becoming relaxed. These therapies to help us relax are just illusions because life is not one big Jacuzzi and not one long vacation on the beach.

A wise man once told me I shouldn't try to be happy in a temple in the Himalaya, but in a 1 bedroom apartment downtown with two children and a mortgage. And you will probably say 'of course, but at least it help us relax for a little while' and I would say no - it helps us lie to our selves that it did.

Real relaxation is not about a sunny beach and a beer. It is about being stuck in a traffic jam, running late, trying to renew your insurance on the phone having waited on hold for 40 minutes, to be then hung up on just as you see a passing scooter swiping past your mirror and... to smile! And when the girl from the insurance company answers on your second attempt, real relaxation is to be nice to her, telling her 'good morning'.

A real relaxation is an inner thing, it suppose to follow us where ever we go and to be part of our permanent reality and not an outside temporary environment which we created in order to make us think we can be like that all the time, we won't unless it will be part of us, an inner understanding that will help us stay relax all the time or at least most of it (without a need for candles, a spliff or pink floyd).

And this where I get to the point of the 'maybe no solution', and by saying that I mean that we, and when I say we I mean the western society or all of us who were born and razed in the west, we are screwed!

We are screwed because we were growned and educated from age 0 in a very tensed environment where everybody were running nervous around us and had no time and had to be quick. We grow up in a society which believes that the right way is not with a guitar on the grass but with a laptop on the subway or on the plane on the way and up the steps without a break. Many of us lived (and still are) in big cities (and even small) which never stops, full of traffic and pollution and people who are so nervous they forgot to look in each other eyes.
We saw it and felt it since we were babies, it is burn in us and we are programmed to act like this. Some of us got it a bit and some of us (mostly men) got it a lot and it might never change.