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Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
This is why advice that stays in the head tends to slide off anger in particular. Something has to change in the body as well: the breath slowed, the shoulders dropped, the hands unclenched, the feet moved. Give the body a different job rather than arguing with it.
Remember when He gave you sleep as a reassurance from Him, and sent down water from the sky to cleanse you (Quran 8:11). Frightened people were settled with sleep and water, which are bodily things, before anything was explained to them.
الأنفال
إِذۡ يُغَشِّيكُمُ ٱلنُّعَاسَ أَمَنَةࣰ مِّنۡهُ وَيُنَزِّلُ عَلَيۡكُم مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ لِّيُطَهِّرَكُم بِهِۦ وَيُذۡهِبَ عَنكُمۡ رِجۡزَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ وَلِيَرۡبِطَ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِكُمۡ وَيُثَبِّتَ بِهِ ٱلۡأَقۡدَامَ
Remember when He gave you sleep as a reassurance from Him, and sent down water from the sky to cleanse you, to remove Satan’s pollution from you, to make your hearts strong and your feet firm
Qur’an 8:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In an exploratory study, deliberately raising heart rate variability through slow breathing dampened the autonomic response to an inflammatory challenge, which is evidence that breath reaches systems well below anything you can decide about. It was exploratory work with a small number of people, so it is a hint rather than a finding to lean on. It does support the general point that the body can be reached from the outside in.
Lehrer P, Karavidas MK, Lu SE, Coyle SM, Oikawa LO, Macor M, Calvano SE, Lowry SF. (2010). Voluntarily produced increases in heart rate variability modulate autonomic effects of endotoxin induced systemic inflammation: an exploratory study.. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The state is being held in the body, so changing what the body is doing changes the state.
You may hear that humming floods you with nitric oxide and drops your blood pressure. Humming does raise nitric oxide in the nose. The rest of that sentence is a leap.
Find something with nothing in it to look at: sky, a blank wall, a ceiling, a stretch of grass. Do not concentrate on it. Let your attention spread out over it.
For a child who is boiling over: eyes closed, fingers gently over the ears, and a long humming breath out. They can feel the buzzing inside their own head.