The Art Of Letting Yourself Go

Who says I’m tense? I’m perfectly calm, I tell you. I’m as cool as a—cubercum. I mean a cucumber. I can lift a cup of coffee without spilling it, provided I hold on to my wrist with the other hand, and when I go to bed I sleep like a top. (Sometimes I spin all night.) I’ve been reading a book on how to relax, and I’m completely cucumbered—I mean cured.

It’s this do-it-yourself fad that’s sweeping the country these days. We’re all wound up tight, the doctors warn. The accelerated pace of modern living and the effects of the war (all those sergeants yelling “Tension!”) are causing people’s nerves to snap like garters.

The way to get hold of yourself is to let yourself go. Don’t worry about being worried. Be loose. The trouble is that the looser I try to be, the tighter I get. I’ve taken all the doctors’ cures to give me peace of mind, and now I’d like to give them a piece of my own. It isn’t the tension that makes people tense. It’s this effort to relax that’s tying us all in knots.

My friends got me started. Not that I really had anything to be alarmed about, they assured me. It was just that several of my classmates had keeled over recently without warning and, after all, a person my age shouldn’t push too hard. I ought to have a few good years left in me yet, if I was careful. “Take it easy,” they suggested. “Stop thinking about your work, or you’ll get ulcers.”

So I stopped thinking about my work and started thinking about ulcers instead. The more I thought, the more I became aware of certain little symptoms I’d never noticed before. There was a fluttering sensation in the pit of my stomach, for instance, and my pulse sounded funny. The following morning I nicked myself while shaving. My friends couldn’t have been more pleased if I’d cut my throat. “Better take a day off,” they advised. “Stay home and read the papers, and don’t even answer the phone. Put everything out of your mind.”

I finished the papers, and it was only 8:30. I read them a second time, including the society notes and Want ads, and looked at my watch again. Nine o’clock. Everybody else would be getting to work about now. I wandered aimlessly around the room, emptying ashtrays, straightening pictures, then stole another glance at my watch. Nine-thirty.

Might be a good chance to catch up on some correspondence. But that would be too much like working. Still nine-thirty.

The phone rang suddenly. I started to reach for it, then gritted my teeth and counted the rings: six, seven, eight. Suppose someone was sick, or the building was on fire? The phone stopped ringing just as I snatched up the receiver. All I got was the dial tone.

I began to circle the room faster and faster, snapping my fingers and waiting for the phone to ring again. “Relax,” I muttered to myself. Maybe a breath of fresh air would help.

“Relax!” I yelled at the elevator boy, and I set off down the street at a brisk stride, gradually increasing to a dogtrot. My knees were knocking as I galloped into the club, and I had to brace both elbows on the bar.

“What you need,” my friends told me, “is to relax. You’re nothing but a bundle of nerves. Look how you’re gripping that glass.” I loosened my grip, and the glass shattered on the floor. They glanced at one another significantly.

“A clear case of nervous tension,” one said. “Now, here’s a little book that cucumbered me. It’s called How to Relax.” I noticed that he kept getting up and sitting down, and drumming his fingers as he talked.

“Before I read it, I’d jump three feet in the air if someone said ‘Boo!’”

I said, “Boo!” and he jumped four feet in the air. “I’ve gained a whole foot,” he said delightedly, “since I read that book.”

The jacket blurb was unnerving enough. “How close to the BREAKING POINT are you?” it demanded in large, black type.

My fingers fairly flew as I opened the book to the first chapter, titled Passive Relaxation: The Secret of Mental Peace.

Passive relaxation, the explanation explained, is not what you do. It is what you don’t do when you stop doing something. To make the whole thing even clearer, there was a drawing of a very thin man, wearing only a pair of polka-dot shorts, lying on five sofa pillows in an attitude which seemed to me about as relaxed as that of a shady banker awaiting the arrival of the federal examiners. “You too can find Mental Peace,” the caption urged, “if you will learn to Let Your Muscles OUT.”

I had a little trouble locating enough pillows, but I added a copy of Who’s Who and a telephone directory, and arranged myself on top of them, holding the book overhead in order to follow the instructions.

“First, unlock the forehead.”

I smoothed the furrows in my brow.

“Now the ears.” I let my ears out.

“Now the jaw.” I unlocked my jaw.

“Now the back.” My spine was as limp as a lily—but along about this point I discovered that my jaw was locked again, and in addition I had developed such a crick in my neck that I had to bang on the floor for my wife to come help me up. “What are you doing?” she asked, opening the door.

“I’m not doing,” I explained.

She shut the door quietly.

The next chapter was called How to Woo Sleep. “Put everything out of the mind,” the book said, “by closing the eyes and concentrating on a small, black object, such as a punctuation mark.”

Well, I shut my eyes and concentrated on a period (.). The trouble was that I kept thinking of other periods until I had a whole row of them (……), which reminded me of my income tax form, which made me think of a dollar sign ($)—and there I was, wide awake again.

I tried to concentrate on a comma (,) instead, but for some reason it hopped up and turned into an apostrophe (’). Meanwhile, the period kept wandering back and forth in my mind until suddenly it halted under the apostrophe and made an exclamation point (!). I sat bolt upright, shouting, “What!”

“Everyone should learn to breathe,” the final chapter stated. This seemed like pretty good advice, because there are lots of times when breathing comes in handy.

“The proper method,” the lesson began, “is to inhale all the way!” This was vividly illustrated by the same man in polka-dot shorts: “Bend over from the waist with the arms dangling loosely between the thighs, fill the lungs with air and hold it.” I propped the open book on the bureau, filled my lungs with air and held it.

“Step Two: Force the air up, UP, UP out of the diaphragm into the upper chest.”

I clenched my fists and forced the air up, up, up until it was crammed under my collarbone.

“Step Three: Still holding your breath, go into a slump. Sag for all you’re worth. Relax the muscles completely.”

I could practically feel my tension slipping away. My face was growing black, my knees sagged lower and lower, my body slumped forward—and my head collided with the corner of the bureau as I toppled on to my face.

The doctor said later that there was nothing to be alarmed about. My stitches should be out in a couple of weeks, and what I really needed was a nice, long rest. “Relax, that’s all,” he told me. “Put everything out of your mind. Just let yourself go.”

From Reader's Digest, May 1960

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