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Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
The test worth applying is practical: is it safe, can I afford it, is it taking the place of something that works better, and would that money and time be doing more elsewhere. Pass all four and you can keep your Thursday appointment with a clear conscience. Fail one, especially the third, and mechanism becomes the least of the problems.
The mate is described as made 'so that he might find comfort in her' (Quran 7:189). Comfort is named as a purpose in its own right, not as a second best to something more technical.
الأعراف
۞هُوَ ٱلَّذِي خَلَقَكُم مِّن نَّفۡسࣲ وَٰحِدَةࣲ وَجَعَلَ مِنۡهَا زَوۡجَهَا لِيَسۡكُنَ إِلَيۡهَاۖ فَلَمَّا تَغَشَّىٰهَا حَمَلَتۡ حَمۡلًا خَفِيفࣰ ا فَمَرَّتۡ بِهِۦۖ فَلَمَّآ أَثۡقَلَت دَّعَوَا ٱللَّهَ رَبَّهُمَا لَئِنۡ ءَاتَيۡتَنَا صَٰلِحࣰ ا لَّنَكُونَنَّ مِنَ ٱلشَّٰكِرِينَ
It is He who created you all from one soul, and from it made its mate so that he might find comfort in her: when one [of them] lies with his wife and she conceives a light burden, going about freely, then grows heavy, they both pray to God, their Lord, ‘If You give us a good child we shall certainly be grateful,’
Qur’an 7:189read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A Cochrane overview of pain relief in labour found massage and touch among the approaches with some supporting evidence, while noting the trials were mostly small. Low risk approaches with modest evidence are a reasonable thing to use, provided nothing better is being displaced. The overview is about labour and does not settle how much of the benefit is expectation.
Jones L, Othman M, Dowswell T, Alfirevic Z, Gates S, Newburn M, Jordan S, Lavender T, Neilson JP. (2012). Pain management for women in labour: an overview of systematic reviews.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Relief you actually feel is still relief, whatever produced it.
This only holds while the thing is genuinely safe, affordable and additional; it stops holding the moment it replaces treatment you need.
Aching shoulders and a bad back are not separate from finding it hard to concentrate. Pain takes up room in your head, and there is less left for anything else.
You rarely need the whole tour. Pick the one place the tension actually lives for this person today, and work there.
Words for feelings tend to arrive after the body has been noticed, not before. Find the sensation first, then see what it wants to be called.