Relaxation techniques

Helping your child to learn to relax can help reduce anxiety. This can have a beneficial effect on pain and breathlessness. It is also an activity that can be done with other members of the family to relieve stress.

Muscle Relaxation

Learning to relax your muscles can be helpful both for pain control and nausea feelings. The idea is that you are helping your child notice the difference between having tense muscles and relaxed muscles. They can then quickly ease tension when required.

For very young children it can be helpful to imagine that they are a rag doll so encourage them to be all floppy. You can work through the body from arms, hands, shoulders, head, tummy, legs and feet to make them all floppy like a rag doll. Having a real rag doll or picture of one can help your child understand what they need to be doing.

For children aged 6 and over

Encourage them to lie down and keep the room as quiet as possible. Read out the following script or ask someone with a soothing voice to record this for you. It is important that they do not over tense and hurt themselves. If this seems unsuitable for your child, guided imagery may be better and is discussed below.

  • First let's start with your hands. Make a fist with your right hand. Pretend you are trying to squeeze the juice out of an orange. Hold it for three counts - one - two - three, and relax your hand.
  • Now make a fist with your left hand. Squeeze the orange again. Hold it for three counts...and relax. Notice that your hand is not tense but relaxed and calm.
  • Now bend your right arm and left arm as if showing off your muscles...that's great! Hold it for three: one - two - three, and relax. Notice how nice your body feels when it is relaxed.
  • Now raise your eyebrows and count to three - one - two - three, and relax. Now relax your whole face.
  • Now screw your nose up as if a butterfly has landed on it and you want to get it off! Hold it for one - two - three and relax.
  • Now clench your teeth together and pull a face and hold it for one - two - three and relax. Notice how relaxed your face feels now.
  • Now pull up your shoulders towards your ears like a tortoise going back into his shell. Hold it for three, one - two - three, and relax.
  • Take a nice deep breath and try and put your shoulder blades together at the same itme. Hold for one - two - three, and relax.
  • Now imagine that your right big toe has a piece of string on it, and pull your foot towards you. Feel the tension in your thigh and hold it for one - two - three, and relax.
  • Now do this with your other big toe and feel the tension in the other thigh and hold for one - two -three, and relax.
  • Check that your whole body is relaxed. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation.

You can move onto guided imagery after running through this exercise to help deepen the relaxation or use massage.

Teenagers will not need the accompanying imagery, just the part of the body to be relaxed.

Using guided imagery

Guided imagery can be helpful to encourage a child to relax and to calm down if they are distressed or in pain. It can be used in combination with pain medication. It is also something you can do with your child that is soothing and non-invasive.

Imagery is about imagining a place or a story in the mind and focusing on this. It can be used along with muscle relaxation or on its own.

  • Start by asking your child to lie down and close their eyes.
  • Help them to focus on keeping their breathing nice and calm. Sometimes counting helps to do this by breathing in for three and out for three.
  • Ask your child what they would like to think about to help them relax, this could be could be a beach or a jungle or it could be your garden. To help your child focus on this place, ask them questions that may help deepen the imagery. For example if a child enjoys thinking about the beach ask them:
    • Imagine that you are walking along the beach.
    • What colours can you see? Notice all the colours of the water and the sand?
    • Can you hear the gentle lap of the waves?
  • Ask what can they feel – perhaps the sand in between their toes or the warm sun warming and calming their body.
  • Ask who is with them – maybe their family or other people that make them feel safe?
  • Fill in the detail for them. You may want to add some soothing music or sounds that reflect this special place they have chosen.
  • Ask them to focus on this scene and whenever they feel they need to relax they should think of this special place.

Try to help your child create a really rich picture of their scene. Some children may like to create a story using their favourite place or things. For example this story is written for a child who liked the thought of flying on a magic carpet like Aladdin. These exercises are really helpful for children over the age of six. For younger children they can still benefit from little stories, especially using characters from their favourite story books or TV programmes.

  • Make a picture in your mind of a flying carpet. Choose all your favourite colours to decorate it!
  • Now you can get onto your flying carpet. Perhaps you are bringing along someone for the ride, someone who makes you feel safe. You can take all your favourite things with you on the carpet but you can pack up all your worries and pain into a case that you lock tightly with a padlock as they are not coming with you.
  • Now you are ready for your trip. You can hear a whooshing sound and your carpet is rising into the air. As it rises you can feel a lovely gentle breeze on your face. Take a nice slow breath of fresh air as you rise further up. With each breath you feel more and more relaxed.
  • Look down and you can see your suitcase getting further and further away from you: it feels so good. If you notice any other unpleasant feelings, throw them off the magic carpet.
  • The higher you go the better you feel. You can see all the villages below - look at what else you can see. Can you see the forest in the distance? If you would like to visit it you can direct your magic carpet to wherever you want to go. You are flaoting down to a magical village where you see a golden lamp. This lamp is given to you. This lamp is very special and when opened, your favourite soothing colours slowly drift out making a gorgeous rainbow. You follow this rainbow - where is it taking you?
  • You feel so light and calm. You are really enjoying this ride. You can go up into the clouds if you want. Just take a nice slow breath in and as you breathe slowly out your carpet rises higher and higher. You feel so light and free. You are completely relaxed and calm.
  • When you are ready you can land wherever you want. Take a nice deep breath and breathe out slowly as you land.

Combine this with gentle massage, if this can be tolerated, to ease tension.

You can also take images of some of your children’s calming places and put them on the wall or carry them around with them.

Teenagers may still prefer to use the imagery of a special place to help them relax. They may also like to use images of soothing colours that they can imagine painting on their bodies to relieve pain. Or they can imagine turning down their pain using imaginary dimmer switches once they have relaxed. This also helps them take some control. You could also use some nice calming music to aid the relaxation process. This could be classical or sounds such as the ocean or a rainforest.

There are many relaxation resources that may be of help. For example, RelaxKids.com is a website where you can order relaxation stories on CDs and in books including superheroes stories, wizard stories, and princess stories and nature stories. There are also some for teenagers. 

If you would like any further help about using relaxation techniques please ask the play specialist or Clinical Psychologist.