Last week I had an important priority to decide. I felt positive excitement, and at the same time physical tension and mental pressure to choose. The world is moving fast, and I want to move in rhythm with it, while my nervous system don´t - if I don´t help it.

My job is to know that to scroll for couple of hours, try to think everything through, or call a friend for advise on top of the cognitive overload - is the best strategy, to make the worst decisions.

So even though I did some shopping scrolling, called mama, and watched a part of a TV show - I still remembered about the power of relaxation and emotional processing. And I know that going down from the mountain of stress into a peaceful state - is too scary alone.

I joined a musical healing and meditation class with Krisana Locke at Sha-la Yoga studio in Berlin. It was creatively human, deeply relaxing and nourishing experience. With self-ironical acknowledged of a personal growth, since the last time I saw that view from Watergate. (the night time Oberbaumbrücke and the Spree.)

After the meditation, my thinking was surprisingly clear and productive. Like everything was easy and obvious. My mood, priorities and planning were set shortly. So let me talk about why relaxation is not laziness, and why our brain resists letting go of tension, and how to trick it into actually relax agains any "rationality".

Fact one: even one word can create additional tension

We mostly think of tension as something physical: sitting long hours or hiking and carrying heavy bags. But a lot of it is made by the mind and it´s predictions.

In the 1930s, physician Edmund Jacobson, the father of annoying Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR), measured the tiny electrical activity in muscles. He found that when people only imagined bending their arm, their arm muscles became measurably active.

Later we found that a single thought, even a single word like "deadline" or the name of a difficult person, can switch on a bit of tension somewhere: the jaw, the shoulders, the stomach. Most of the time we don't notice it. We just notice, by the evening, that we are exhausted.

Why tension gets stuck in humans, and why most of animals don't have this problem.

A zebra chased by a lion has a massive stress response. Then the chase is over, and so is the stress. A few minutes later a zebra is chilling again. Because zebra doesn't continue judging the lion or own abilities. And she is not searching the course of faster runners, comparing prices on the internet.

Zebra can do something most humans can´t. Just keep calm again immediately after stress.

We people just oposite - we can even switch on the same (lion) stress response with a thought: a memory of unfair argument, a worry about future. The body reacts to the stressor as if it were in the room. And because this thing never was present, the body never gets the signal "it's over". (That´s why moving your eyes to the left and right kind of relaxing - works as reminder to that wild animal part of the brain, that everything is safe around.)

Just because the mind keeps replaying of old situations and future scenarios. Add keeping a habit of "pushing through", and after a while the body forgets what its real baseline feels like. That's how tension gets stuck.

Fact two: an anxious mind can't live in a relaxed body, it´s all connected

In the 1950s, psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe described reciprocal inhibition: two opposite states can't fully exist at the same moment. You can't be deeply relaxed and highly anxious at the same time. Jacobson put it even more simply: an anxious mind cannot exist in a relaxed body. This idea became the basis of his systematic desensitisation, one of the first evidence-based treatments for anxiety.

Later, cardiologist Herbert Benson described the relaxation response: slower heart rate, slower breathing, lower blood pressure. It's the physical opposite of fight-or-flight, and we can bring it on deliberately.

And here is the problem of how to make yourself believe and being sure that it is "safe" now to relax.

When we are tense, relaxing feels like a luxury, or even a risk (because we are already seeing everything through a lenses of the state of an animal that is running away). And our minds create very similar thoughts that are reflecting this state - "If I let go now, I'll crush and lose control." "I'll fall behind." The stress system says: stay alert, do something. So we don't trust the very thing that would help us most. We are exhausted but continue running.

Why my thinking got easier after the meditative musical healing class?

Overstimulation from an accumulation of too much sensory input (screens, multitasking, memorising, multiple people talking) created mild stress hormones.

Musical healing session served as a beautiful signal that it is safe to process. ( Lower Stress and Cortisol that narrow your cognitive focus, allows associative thinking, which makes the mind more open and playful, expansive, and unconventional problem-solving, activate Memory Consolidation - bring together the bits of information you gathered earlier, which brings, "aha" moments.

In 1980, psychologist Stanley Rachman wrote about emotional processing. Emotional experiences need to be absorbed, a bit like food needs to be digested. When they aren't, they keep coming back: as intrusive thoughts, restlessness, tension, a feeling that something is "unfinished".

Undigested emotions also cost thinking capacity. According to attentional control theory (Eysenck and colleagues, 2007), anxiety takes up working memory. Part of the mind is busy scanning for danger, so less is left for clear decisions.

So after the session, I asked myself a few simple questions:

1. What do I feel right now about my later ideas?
2. What is this feeling relly about?
3. What I actually believe would be right in this situation?
4. What can help to do it better? etc

Somewhere in between those questions people usually need to pause. That pause is emotional processing time. And then, at some moment, things can feel more clear. Even if there is nothing you can do.

There is a neat piece of science behind the first questions. In a 2007 brain-imaging study at UCLA (Lieberman and colleagues), simply putting a feeling into words reduced activity in the amygdala, the brain's alarm centre. Naming a feeling works like a gentle emotional relief.

The problem of motivation: why the brain won't do the obvious

Now the self-ironic part. I teach relaxation. I love to research. I even have a beautiful handout called "rationale for relaxation". And my first instinct last week was still to solve everything by thinking harder, late in the evening, with my shoulders somewhere near my ears.

Why does a brain that knows better still not do it?

• Thinking feels like doing. Going over a problem once more gives a sense of control. Relaxing feels like doing nothing.
• The reward comes later. Our brain prefers relief now over benefits later, and relaxation pays off with a delay.
• It's a skill, and skills feel awkward at first. The first sessions of PMR or cognitive defusion can feel slow or even boring. And in silence, thoughts get louder before they get quieter.
• We don't know what we're missing. If you have carried tension for years, it feels normal. It's hard to want a state you have never really felt.

How to trick the brain: let sound do the work, feel the benefit, want to keep it. Get your motivation for home practice.

This is why I like sound sessions as a doorway. You need no skill at all. You lie down and listen. The long, deep tones of gongs and singing bowls give the mind something simple to follow, so it stops debating with the mirrow.

What else relaxation gives you

Relaxation, both physical and cognitive, is a skill. You can reach it after sport, a supportive conversation, time in nature, home meditation, or a sound healing session. Once you have it, it pays off in many places:

• Clearer thinking.
• More creativity.
• Better sleep.
• Easier social life. A calmer body reacts less and listens more. It's easier to be present, to be curious, and to say no when you need to.
• Progress in therapy. With a lower baseline of anxiety, it becomes easier to face difficult situations and to practise new behaviour.

What to do if you are stressed and tense for too long?

Here is my main advice: make your first experience of relaxation a full-power one like i did in Sha-la studio. A whole sound bath, a long guided PMR session, an afternoon in nature without your phone. Not two minutes squeezed in between but a proper long session.

Why? Positive reinforcement. When your brain experiences, even once, how much more relaxed it can be, the reward becomes real. Most of us massively underestimate this. We think "I'm fairly relaxed", until we feel the difference.

That first strong experience becomes your pleasure reference point and your motivation. Then daily practice keeps you close to it: five to ten minutes of PMR or a cognitive defusion exercise like Leaves on a Stream etc. These take some time to learn. But now you know why you are doing it.