What are the best relaxation exercises to reduce anxiety?

Many relaxation exercises can help to reduce anxiety. Effective strategies are often based upon the mind and body being interconnected. These include meditations, breathing exercises, and visualisations.

Many of these relaxation exercises take commitment; i.e. they need to be practiced regularly (even when you are not experiencing anxiety). Doing so renders them significantly more useful at times when you are experiencing stress and anxiety. Further to these specific exercises, anything that helps you to unwind (massage, physical exercise, spending time with friends etc.) can be useful in managing anxiety, and can reduce your susceptibility to experiencing it. A healthy lifestyle in itself also has an effect, and so you should strive for this if you wish to improve the wellbeing of your mind and/or body; regular exercise in moderation, limit consumption of highly processed foods, caffeine, alcohol and other drugs, and have an appropriate amount of sleep and water.

A psychologist can assist you in building your toolkit for reducing stress/anxiety, by providing more information on visualisations, meditation and breathing exercises that you may find useful. Furthermore, they may assist you in identifying and resolving/managing factors that contribute to you experiencing anxiety.

In terms of relaxation exercises, I usually find that yoga exercises, pilates
exercises, and stretches usually work well in reducing anxiety, that is what I hear.

Anxiety can sometimes be very difficult to cope with. I guess that everyone would love to have just one or two techniques that work for everyone. Unfortunately, there is simply no one best technique used to manage anxiety that works for everyone. This is why it is useful to consult a psychologist. Everyone is different. There are many techniques that can be used to manage anxiety. What a psychologist does, is works with the client to discover what works best for that client.

One client may respond very well to daily meditation. Another client will try the same kind of meditation and conplain that her or his throughts race and therefore that that kind of meditation makes her/him feel worse. This is where the psychologist can offer a client a range of other strategies that may work much better for each particular client. 

I could not imagine anything more stressful than jumping out of a plane and landing with a parachute. I would personally, choose a yoga class to relax me. However, someone that I know comes back from these parachuting weekends feeling very relaxed. We are all different. The key is to choose a technique that works for each individual person.

I would re-enforce the message of many of the above responses - the best practice will depend on your individual needs and temperament. The key to beating anxiety is stilling the voices in your head and one of the most effective, and proven, ways of doing that is to practice mindfulness. The University of Massachusetts ran a study in which 90% of the people who undertook an 8 week mindfulness course reported significant reductions in anxiety. Other studies have shown that mindfulness can reduce symptoms OCD, ADHD and depression while increasing resilience and optimism. 

Mindfulness is effective and easy to practice. Here's a simple, and delicious, way to start.

Mindfulness with Chocolate

Place a square of chocolate on your tongue. Become aware of the flavour, texture and sensations of the chocolate in your mouth. Now notice when your mind starts thinking about something else. Gently redirect your mind back to the experience of eating the chocolate. What are the sensations in your mouth as you chew and swallow it? Every time your mind wanders, bring it back to awareness of eating the chocolate.

This simple exercise is the first step in teaching your mind to focus on the present moment. With a bit of practice, you will be able to focus your mind more easily on the things that really matter and quieten down the thoughts that make you anxious.
Mindfulness is not about emptying your mind. It involves paying attention to the here and now without criticizing, praising or trying to change things. Simply observing and being aware of whatever’s there. It's an effective way to move from overwhelm to clarity.
http://www.adoreyoga.com/

Progressive Muscle Relaxation can help (I do it as an aid to sleeping well).

It is described here: http://www.amsa.org/healingthehealer/musclerelaxation.cfm .

The simple answer is, yes! there are many relaxation exercises available to reduce anxiety.
An important step I believe: is creating time and space each day to practice relaxation

• turn off the tv, mobile phone, computer
  
• create a sound and environment that you feel relaxed…
  

• awaken your senses
  
• close your eyes
  
• become aware of the smells surrounding you
  
• listen to the sounds of your own breath and the surrounding noises
  
• feel your inhalation and exhalation through the nostrils
  
• feel your ribcage expand as you inhale and contract as you exhale
  
• lick your lips and swallow
  
• squeeze hands into fist tight, and release outstretch the hands, repeat 3 times
  
• focus on your breathing inhaling and exhaling
  

Dependant on how long you have had the anxiety, like everything else in our life, the repetition of that anxiety feeling goes from short term memory to long term memory and then becomes a habit.

Without information on what has caused the anxiety in the first place, or how long it has been in your life, it is difficult to advise the best action you should take - a few pointers are listed below that may be helpful.

1.  Always check with your medical practitioner for any underlying health issues that may require treating and discuss with your doctor any suggestions contained here.

2.  The first consideration might be to release the anxiety.  As a hypnotherapist of 25 years of practice that has dealt in trauma and pain management and child abuse (sexual/psychological), I know there are many ways to release feelings and emotions from past issues.  You can also learn Self Hypnosis (akin to meditation) for relaxation.

Make sure you get someone well trained in this area.

3.  You can consider creating a new habit with LaughterYoga.  Don't worry about the fact that this is the last thing that you want to do.  Our brain reacts to what we do as well as our body creating changes physiologically.   

A saying here that is so true - Fake it until you make it - Prof. William James, 1884

Laughter from the Mind - Laughter from the body

I have shown below a video by Dr. Madan Kataria, who is the Indian doctor and founder of LaughterYoga.  He explains why it works and how simple it is to do.  You can go along with it as he teaches his class.  You can look up on the Internet for a Laughter Yoga - Suburb - State, near where you live.  They are all over Australia and in 75 Countries around the world.

http://youtu.be/5hf2um

When I did my counselling course many years ago, as trainees our homework was to go home, look in the mirror, pull a funny face and laugh at ourself.  Initially it felt stupid, but eventually it catches you at how ridiculous it is and you really do start laughing.  Another time when I did the same thing, instead of laughing, I had sad tears run down my face.  This is also fine, as it is a cleansing and release that leaves you feeling peaceful.

4.  One client found that when she was asked to consider that anxiety is nothing more than a label that describes her feelings.  She was asked each time that she was about to feel anxious to use other labels interspersed between the anxiety label.  For example, saying; anxiety, table, anxiety, window, anxiety, laughter ... and so on.  This she found helpful as it normalised that it was just a label to her feelings, and she repeated these other labels until the anxiety went away.

But again I caution here as I don't know how bad your anxiety is - do you get panic attacks or any other symptoms etc. etc.