If you’ve been concerned about your blood pressure, here’s an angle you’ve probably not heard much about. That’s the affect of isometric exercise on your blood pressure.

The definition of an isometric exercise is that a muscle contracts, but does not change length. For many of us, as we age, our muscles engage in increasing amounts of low-level isometric exercise, all the time, even when asleep!

Here’s how it works …

Left unattended, your neuromuscular system, over the years, automatically accumulates increasing amounts of chronic muscle tension. For example, if muscles on one side of your neck tighten from holding a phone on your shoulder all day, then the opposite side must contract to stabilize the bones and joints, especially countering the force of gravity.

So various muscle groups are constantly pulling against each other in a tug-of-war.  If done on a frequent basis, this becomes chronic. But since they are usually approximately matched in strength, neither muscle wins the combat, and they stay about the same relative lengths, but tighter overall.

Any extended or repetitive action will do this including work-related manual tasks or sitting slouched on a couch or chair with your muscles out of balance. Your muscles are stabilizing — or fighting — each other all day and all night long, not to mention compressing their respective joints in the process.  (This long-term, chronic isometric contraction is quite different in effect than lower-intensity, rhythmic, short-duration isometric contractions that actually LOWER blood pressure.)

You might now see that many muscle pairs in your body are in some level of isometric combat with each other.

Now…

In his excellent book Somatics,¹ Thomas Hanna discusses research² showing that isometric exercise (even covert low-level isometrics) quite markedly increases blood pressure³ and potentially leads to congestive heart failure, especially in the elderly.²

So what do you do about this?

For many of us, all we need do is incorporate basic Muscle Tension Reduction Strategies in our daily lives. This can be as simple as sitting or lying with your attention on your breathing, with your breaths slower, more deliberate, and longer in duration than usual. (Don’t worry about or force the depth of breath; that usually happens naturally, by itself, over time.)

To enhance this process, after a few minutes, begin focusing on different parts of your body for a few minutes each. See if you can feel as if that body part is sinking into the floor — or melting if you are sitting — while keeping some attention on your slower breathing.

Don’t try to mentally force your muscles to relax, but to sink your awareness into those muscles, seeing if you can more deeply feel the tensions, which spontaneously relaxes them.  While 20 minutes twice a day would be great, even one minute several times a day can work wonders.

If you REALLY want to get your Tension Reduction Strategy working, start doing basic Conscious Stretching, but VERY gently with small movements of stretch.

Yes, some people have such deeply held and trauma-based tensions that they need more aggressive intervention, but most of us will be surprised at how much result we’ll get with this simple approach.

References

1. Hanna, T. Somatics. Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1988, pp. 73-74
2. Petrofsky, JS. Isometric Exercise and Its Clinical Implications. Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, 1982, pp. 125, 128, 129.
3. http://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/9201.html.

[Ed. Note: David Scott Lynn is the developer of DSL EdgeWork: Yoga/Bodywork/Whole Health Therapeutics, and has been in practice for 30 years. Learn more by clicking here.]

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