This Journey Desperately Awaits

A long hot bath...
breathing in I feel peace, breathing out I feel peace...
sun salutation a, sun salutation b, tree pose, dancer pose, shavasana...
oatstraw, passion flower, kava, feverfew, lemon balm, lavender...
foot baths, massage...

These are some of the activities, plants, rituals I've entwined into my life to help me learn to relax my body, mind, and spirit. With each passing day, however, I realize that I am so tightly wound and desperately hoping, pleading, seeking to be released from whatever it is that keeps me this way.

This blog is my faithful attempt to explore how my body reacts to the stresses of daily life, my mental chatter, and all the  ingrained habits I've created. It's my time to whole-heartedly learn to relax and unwind.

Let's start with some simple definitions:

re·lax·a·tion

(rē'lāk-sā'shən)    n.  The act of relaxing or the state of being relaxed. Refreshment of body or mind; recreation: played golf for relaxation. A loosening or slackening. A reduction in strictness or severity. Physiology The lengthening of inactive muscle or muscle fibers. Physics The return or adjustment of a system to equilibrium following displacement or abrupt change. Mathematics A method of solving equations in which the errors resulting from an initial approximation are reduced by succeeding approximations until all errors are within specified limits.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

un·wind

(ŭn-wīnd')    v.   un·wound (-wound'), un·wind·ing, un·winds v.   tr. To reverse the winding or twisting of: unwind a ball of yarn. To separate the tangled parts of; disentangle. To free (someone) of nervous tension or pent-up energy. v.   intr. To become unwound. To become free of nervous tension; relax: liked to unwind with a cocktail before dinner.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

So this the goal. Here I go...