Active relaxation
Relaxation is fundamental to being aware of your body - if you are tense or wound up, you will not be able to feel what your body is doing.
Many men have trouble relaxing because they are out of practice. Relaxation is a skill like any other. It requires some effort before anyone can feel comfortable with it. Relaxation is different to simply not working. Men who are unemployed often experience not working as anything but relaxing.
Most men know how to relax: it is difficult to forget entirely but, like any skill, it can become rusty through lack of application and use. Men who feel tense and overworked are sometimes in such a hurry to relax when they get the chance, that they throw themselves into it as they might attack a problem at work, without pausing to take a deep breath and assess what relaxation means.
Relaxing activities have several aspects in common:
- A sense of suspended time. When people relax, they take a time out from obligations that define the rest of their lives. The slow the pace a bit, sleep late and dawdle over the little pleasures they cannot find time for during the regular working week.
- A sense of living in the moment. Relaxing involves heightened concentration on the here and now. People tune into their bodies, their feelings, the people theyre with. They tryto tune out last weeks tensions.
- A sense of nonpressure, nondemand. Relaxation means doig waht you want, when, how, and with who you decide to do it. At its most fulfilling, relaxation is self-directed - no one pushes you to perform.
All these aspects of relaxation are involved in problem-free sex too. Having sex means taking time out from the stresses that define daily living. Lovers consciously slow the pace of their lives, concentrate on each other and savour the time they have reserved to lose themselves in nondemanding, intimate sharing.
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