Reducing muscular tension

When you play guitar some muscle tension is inevitable, even desirable. The trick is making it work for you and not against you.

1. You don't need tension in your shoulders. We tend to lift them when we get stressed and this has a major effect on our ability to hold our arm comfortably. Always try to keep your shoulders relaxed.
2. Other muscles, especially in your forearm, will obviously need to work when you're playing and this requires them to generate some force and create tension in the connective tissue holding everything together. This is a good thing when the force isn't too great and if it's released when not needed.
3. Even the good muscle tension will do you damage when you keep it up for too long, practice is good but eventually you just need to put the thing down.
4. It's not always that easy to just relax, if it were we'd all be doing it. If you find it difficult to reduce muscle tension in your body or you'd just like to be able to do it better I'd strongly suggest you check out TeachingTheWorldToRelax.com.