Dynamic Relaxation

I heard this phrase on a recent podcast with Woody Harrelson. The context of the conversation revolved around the ability to relax enough to allow for your true capabilities to come through. The inner critic often silences or represses our best performance.  If you can relax enough to shut that down and then provoke some form of dynamism the best of what you have to offer may show itself.

We all get into ruts, the day-in day-out nature of things lends itself to monotony. The same thing happens with movement. We develop a strategy that works, whether it be walking, weightlifting or swimming. We utilize that strategy repeatedly, until it fails or no longer provides the outcome we desire. The repeatability of this strategy makes it nearly subconscious; it affirms itself with every successful movement. It becomes rigid. We lose the ability to relax enough for a new strategy to dynamically evolve and if a problem arises, we may no longer have solution.

Dynamic relaxation sounds like an oxymoron, but it really describes two aspects of the same coin. In order to move, you must have space to work within. The rigidity we create reduces available space and limits our movement options. Relaxing, reducing muscle activity, creates the space needed to move differently. You now have the ability to dynamically produce a different strategy to solve your movement problem.

Imagine a chalk board (you remember those?) filled with all of yesterday’s work, there is no space to write today’s thoughts. You have to erase the board (relax), in order to deliver today’s new ideas (dynamism). If we can learn to relax the old, rigid ways of doing things, new dynamic stuff comes to be.

Austin Ulrich, Physical Therapist