Next direct your attention to the forearm muscles, starting again with the left arm. You probably will not need to remind yourself how the tense muscles on either side of the forearm feel; and, in any case, you should not try to build a ‘tension test’ into your regime.
A good way to relax forearm muscles is as follows.
a. Lie down in your relaxation room. After a few pendulum breaths rest the elbows on the floor and raise forearms and hands upwards towards the ceiling. Then let hands ‘gravity flop’ at the wrists. Repeat this five times.
b. Then, using the right hand (we are again dealing with right-handed people), feel the degree of relaxation at the wrist by lifting the left wrist and letting it fall back again. Stay with this hand and lower arm relaxation feeling.
c. Transfer your attention to the right hand. Immediately you will note that the right wrist and arm will be much more difficult to relax after a gravity flop exercise than the left. Practise the right arm and hand gravity flop several times until you can get them to become as relaxed as the left. This may need 10 or 20 flops, all practised alongside pendulum breathing. Eventually some semblance of equal relaxation will be learned. Stay with this feeling.
d. Repeat gravity flops, using both arms. Check for equal relaxation.
