Relaxation is the key to many therapeutic approaches to helping emotional problems in people. Anxious children can benefit greatly from learning to consciously relax.

General relaxation

Most parents have had at least one experience of relaxation, the chance to just lie or sit very comfortably with your eyes closed, breathing deeply. Adults usually enjoy the progressive relaxing of the muscles of the body. First you relax the hands, then the arms and shoulders, the neck, the jaw, the face and nose, the stomach, and then the legs and feet In general relaxation the body, mind and emotions are encouraged to relax in a calm, peaceful atmosphere for consistent periods and over a long time.

Teaching young children to relax

Parents can encourage an older child to lie down on the bed and read a book for half an hour every afternoon straight after school, as a way of unwinding.

You can try to teach specific relaxation techniques to young children but they get bored easily. Children's imaginations need something to work with, so they much prefer to play the 'Floppy Game' or do 'Magic Breathing' relaxation activities that use the imagination.

THE MAGIC BREATHING GAME

• First of all you close your eyes and you just pat your legs and your tummy and your arms and your head.

• Then you give your head a little massage, just by rubbing gently behind your ears, and you put your arms slowly, slowly by your side and you start to take big deep breaths.

• You breathe with your stomach, so that your stomach moves out and in. Just gently - ever, ever so softly.

• As you breathe you imagine that you have holes in your feet.

• As you breathe in through your nose or your mouth, the air moves all the way down through your body and then out of the holes in your feet.

• Just imagine that the cool air around your nostrils is fresh air and then the air goes in through your nose or mouth all the way down your body, and comes out as warm, lovely . feet breath!!

• It's like a nice big circle that goes from your feet, up to your head, through your middle and out again.

• You can do 'Magic Breathing' any time, even in the daytime.

• If you are waiting for someone or if you are a little bit scared, you can do 'Magic Breathing'.


THE FLOPPY GAME

The Floppy Game goes like this:

• Imagine that you are becoming loose and floppy.

• Imagine that your feet can be flip-flapped from side to side and that there is a ripple of rubber stuff that moves all the way up through your legs, into your body, through your neck and into your head.

• The rubbery stuff makes you feel a bit like jelly. All loose and floppy, and you take a great BIG deep breath and you relax and you feel really good, just like a big bowl of jelly, all loose and floppy.

• You're not going anywhere because the jelly is holding you together.

• You take another deep BIG breath and you are feeling good; relaxed and comfortable.