You already know how progressive muscle relaxation for sleep is supposed to work. You start at your feet, squeeze for five seconds, release, breathe, and move upward until your shoulders drop and your jaw unclenches. On good nights it helps. On most nights, you skip it because you are too tired, too wired, or you fall asleep halfway through a 20-minute audio and wake up again.
That is not a willpower problem. Willpower alone did not hold because you tried to add a new routine at the lowest-energy moment of the day, in the dark, with no cue and no feedback. Apps and scripts cannot tell that you hold all your tension in your calves and stomach, that you rush the release, or that you quit after three nights because nothing felt different.
A personalized approach starts with what you have already tried. Maybe counting breaths made you anxious, maybe stretching in bed woke you up more, maybe the full-body sequence feels too long. Together you shorten it to a 6-minute version you can do under the covers, pair it with lights-out and phone-on-charger, and decide exactly when to start tensing and how hard.
On weekly 45-minute voice calls, you review what actually happened: which nights you practiced, where your mind wandered, what helped your body feel heavy. Then you adjust the order, the pacing, and the bedtime cue so it sticks without forcing it. Over weeks, progressive muscle relaxation for sleep becomes automatic, not another task to remember when you are exhausted.