Stiffness in students

[Gerry Seymour]

The technique I learned to do with behavior therapies, specifically anxiety, (don't use it because I do Substance abuse counseling not beh.) is progressive muscle relaxation. A friend of mine uses it for people with BPD and she says it works really well.
Progressive muscle relaxation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's the one!

 

[pgsmith]

How do we help him understand to be loose?

Give him more experience.

 

[JR 137]

Why fight the tension? Go with it and teach him Sanchin kata.

I'm not being too serious here, in the off chance that people want to argue Sanchin.

 

[GiYu - Todd]

We've had a couple students like this who were extremely stiff. They tended to rush each step of a technique, then stop before doing the next step. Getting them to flow the individual mechanical steps into one smooth technique seemed to take forever. Over time, they reduced the stiffness and got better. But several times, when they just couldn't relax, we did a long series of exercises to exhaust them (and everyone else). It seemed to help by making it difficult for them to tense up.