Dear Reader,

This is a stress-reduction question, but welcome to those who were hoping to read about some dude and his overtaxed testicles.

Stress balls are those slightly-smaller-than-tennis-ball sized things that you squeeze to decrease muscular and overall tension. When you make a fist, with or without a stress ball in your hand, you're creating muscle tension. When you release your grip, muscular relaxation follows. Try it right now: make fists, squeeze a little bit, and hold for a few seconds. Okay, relax them, and feel the tension leave your hands and fingers. Wait a moment and do the same thing again; this time, breathe in when you tense your hands, and exhale when you let them relax a few seconds later. If you try this two or three times, squeeze a little harder each time as you go along. This process is called progressive muscular relaxation, and can be done with every muscle group in your body. Because acute muscle tension is followed by relaxation when you release whatever muscle area you're working on, this stress management exercise can flush out a huge amount of muscle tension from your head to your toes.

Back to your balls: whether they know it or not, people using stress balls are practicing what can be a very powerful stress management tool. A lot of folks are playing with their balls while in meetings and on the phone. They'd probably relax even more if they took a few minutes just to tense, release, and relax, focusing only on the parts of their bodies that will soon feel better.

Alice

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