Progressive Muscle Relaxation. The health-promoting effects of this widely used method for stress management are well-known: it helps to relieve muscle tension, reduce physical strain and psychological stress, prevent pain, and alleviate pain conditions. This book, designed as a text guide for self-learning and group work, offers a new and interesting perspective. What Dr. Edmund Jacobson truly intended is revealed in the original of Progressive Relaxation, as conceived by Edmund Jacobson and published in this form for the first time in German. It is a simple, practical exercise program that can be easily performed anywhere and at any time. The special effect, essential to Jacobson, is the way in which the alternation between tensing and relaxing individual body parts is practiced, which increasingly heightens body awareness.