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Areas › Your body › Moving your body
That pause is the couple of seconds in which you get to decide whether something is a good idea. It is trainable, and stillness right after exertion is one place to train it. Two or three minutes is enough: sit, let your breathing come down, notice the urge to get up and do not act on it yet. The noticing and the not acting are both the exercise.
When the foolish address them, they reply with peace (Quran 25:63). Not answering the first pull is presented as a mark of character, and it can be practised.
الفرقان
وَعِبَادُ ٱلرَّحۡمَٰنِ ٱلَّذِينَ يَمۡشُونَ عَلَى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ هَوۡنࣰ ا وَإِذَا خَاطَبَهُمُ ٱلۡجَٰهِلُونَ قَالُواْ سَلَٰمࣰ ا
The servants of the Lord of Mercy are those who walk humbly on the earth, and who, when the foolish address them, reply, ‘Peace’
Qur’an 25:63read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised trial after early stage breast cancer combined exercise with dietary change and found improvements in psychological health alongside shifts in stress hormone regulation. It changed two things at once, so it cannot say which one did what. That is exactly the difficulty here too, since a class that ends in meditation is a bundle rather than a single ingredient.
Saxton JM, Scott EJ, Daley AJ, Woodroofe M, Mutrie N, Crank H, Powers HJ, Coleman RE. (2014). Effects of an exercise and hypocaloric healthy eating intervention on indices of psychological health status, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis regulation and immune function after early-stage breast cancer: a randomised controlled trial.. Breast cancer research : BCR doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Sitting with an urge without following it is practice at the very gap you want in daily life.
Start the movement slow enough that it is almost boring. Speed it up once it has gone smooth, and only then add the thinking part.
Nobody sits down at a piano and plays Mozart the first afternoon. Set the bar at this week rather than at the finished version of yourself.
A practice kept up for years stops being something you do and becomes part of who you are. That is when it no longer needs willpower.