Learning to Take It Easy Isn’t Being Frivolous

I am stuck in traffic on the San Diego Freeway. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. I think of the day’s frustrations at work. I can still hear the trilling of telephones and the cacophony of the newsroom even though it is 6 p.m. and I am now off work.

Traffic stops and goes. I turn off to Newport Beach. Finally, I see the sign that points to Coastline Community College--Newport Center. I park and run into the building. As I hurriedly take my seat, I note that I am already late to my stress-reduction class.

The proper name for it is Psychology 146--Biofeedback 1. The community college catalogue describes the course as “designed to reduce job and personal stress; includes discussion of the stress cycle.”

As in many community college night courses, my fellow classmates vary widely in age and occupation.

Orange County’s eight community colleges are part of my education beat. In recent years, amid criticism of their curricula, Sacramento has put all of the state’s community colleges on a starvation fiscal diet.

“The community colleges offer too many frivolous courses,” snapped a legislator I once interviewed. I suppose that assemblyman would include a stress-reduction class in that category.

But the people in this class are all refugees from a stressful work world, seeking to make their lives a bit more manageable. Is that a frivolous pursuit?

On this Monday, our instructor, psychologist Lee Solow, introduces a guest lecturer, LaWana Heald. “I’m a biofeedback therapist,” Heald tells the class. She smiles pleasantly as the class stares at the array of electronic equipment she brought with her.

“In biofeedback therapy, one thing we monitor is muscle tension,” Heald says. “You often tense a lot of muscles in your body without knowing it. Sometimes it causes stiff necks, and I’m sure many of you can relate to stiff necks. So we try to help you get tense muscles to relax.”

One instrument gauges tension by measuring tiny amounts of electricity generated by muscles as they tense. It is called an electromyograph. Heald asks for volunteers. I raise my hand.

She hooks me up to the machine with wires connected to patches taped on my arms. I am seated, and my arms are at rest. Next, she explains the electromyograph’s needle gauge, which ranges from zero to 12.

“A reading of about 4 is normal on this,” she tells us before turning on the switch.

The needle swings immediately to 12, then dives off the chart. Finally, as I try harder to relax, the gauge settles at 10, well into the highly stressed range.

Next, Heald leads the entire class on a relaxation exercise.

In her soothing, pleasant voice, she says: “Start with your eyes. Let them relax, sink in. Now the top of your head. You feel it relax, as if you’ve had a refreshing massage.”

I feel particularly good by the time Heald is telling us to relax our shoulders. I feel loose in the chair. I shut my eyes, enjoying the sensation of relaxation.

“Now you can open your eyes,” Heald says a few minutes later. She gestures to the electromyograph. “Look at what the readings show for Bill. He went from 10 all the way down to 2. See, Bill, you can do it.”

I feel as if I’ve hit a grand-slam homer.

Heald proceeds to teach us other relaxation techniques. Student volunteers are hooked to various tension-measuring and body-temperature-measuring devices. They watch the machines to see how their thought processes--the mind--can change the readings on the gauges.

As I leave the class, I feel unusually fresh, despite the fact that it has been a long day.

Once again, I am reminded of the great value of some community college courses. This one, lasting nine weeks for three hours each Monday--and worth 1 1/2 credit hours--is costing me a total of $7.50.

And it’s already proved useful in dealing with editors, freeway traffic and other stresses in my life.

No big deal, maybe. But not frivolous either.