Relaxation Exercises and Restless Legs

In order to sleep well, it is important for everyone to be as relaxed as possible when you go to bed. Headaches or stress are not conducive to falling asleep. For someone with restless legs, this is even more important. Such a person may need an extra aid to be able to relax. I am thinking, for example, of relaxation exercises.

I myself do physical exercises every night before going to sleep. I also sit quietly for a while, without doing anything. You can call these types of exercises yoga or mindfulness. However, you can use the term relaxation exercises as well.

Someone I know well created a website with online relaxation exercises. He has already helped many people with that. I can imagine that it may also be worthwhile for people with RLS to try these exercises. It could be that you fall asleep more easily with and that the quality of your sleep even improves.

In this blog I therefore deal with the following questions:

  1. What are relaxation exercises?
  2. How can relaxation exercises help with RLS?

What are relaxation exercises

Relaxation exercises are exercises that help you relax. It’s that simple. Everyone needs it to a greater or lesser extent. There are always things that you worry about or that you are busy with. However, every now and then the pressure has to be taken off.

There are several reasons for doing relaxation exercises. You can roughly divide these reasons into two groups:

  1. A stressful situation
  2. Daily relaxation

If a stressful situation lasts too long, you will burn out. This is also called a burnout. You can then have to deal with complaints such as depression, fatigue, insomnia or physical complaints. It is, of course, better to make sure that it doesn’t get that far.

In fact, you should allow time for relaxation exercises every day. You get used to paying attention to your well-being every day. At the same time, you will also notice it earlier if you are not completely in balance.

Different types of relaxation exercises

There are different types of relaxation exercises. Muscle relaxation is one of the best known relaxation exercises in the Netherlands. In this exercise you successively tighten certain muscles and then release them. This is also called Jacobson’s Progressive Relaxation.

Another well-known form of relaxation is called autogenic training or suggestive relaxation. In this exercise you evoke a feeling of heaviness and warmth in your body. The exercise uses the power of suggestion. You could think of this as a simple form of self-hypnosis. This relaxation exercise is fully called Autogenic Training Schultz.

A third relaxation exercise is visualization. You use your imagination for this. You imagine that you are in a different place, for example somewhere in nature or where the weather is nice. This place gives you a positive and pleasant feeling.

You may find some exercises more appealing than others. Of course you will only find out if you do them yourself.

Restless legs

At the beginning of this blog I indicated that it is extra important for people with RLS to be able to relax. After all, if you cannot sleep well at night, it is so human that you get stressed. The more stress you experience though, the more difficult it will be to fall asleep.

I also have my own methods for relaxing at night when the legs are playing up again. Apart from doing physical exercises and the massage of my calf muscles, I pay attention to my breathing. I also consciously try to relax all kinds of body parts. Many years of experience with yoga, meditation and mindfulness help me with this.

However, I can also imagine that someone does not have this kind of experience, but just needs a tool to fall asleep better. By falling asleep I mean both at the beginning of the night’s rest and at all those times when your legs keep you awake. Listening to a relaxation exercise could help.

Website relaxation exercises

I already mentioned that I know someone who has a website with relaxation exercises. He offers various forms of relaxation. I wrote a bit about it above.

You can use those exercises daily or every now and then. Some people will be more focused on direct effect. If you suffer from restless legs at night, the goal is of course very acute: you cannot sleep and you want to fall asleep again.

Other people may be aiming for results for the longer term. If you are more sustainably able to relax at certain times, you can benefit a lot from that in daily life. The great thing is that the exercises are suitable for both purposes.

If you’re interested, you can try three exercises for free:

  • a basic exercise
  • muscle relaxation
  • autogenic training

Click on the link below to listen to these three relaxation exercises:

https://www.ontspanningsoefeningen.com/rb

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