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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Try it on a small one. Notice it start, keep your hands still and your mouth closed, and count how long it takes to fade. Slow breathing gives you something to do while you wait. Having watched it pass yourself is worth far more than being told that it will.
God is enough for us: He is the best protector (Quran 3:173). Those words were said by people facing a real threat, which is where a short line has to work if it is going to work at all.
آل عمران
ٱلَّذِينَ قَالَ لَهُمُ ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّ ٱلنَّاسَ قَدۡ جَمَعُواْ لَكُمۡ فَٱخۡشَوۡهُمۡ فَزَادَهُمۡ إِيمَٰنࣰ ا وَقَالُواْ حَسۡبُنَا ٱللَّهُ وَنِعۡمَ ٱلۡوَكِيلُ
Those whose faith only increased when people said, ‘Fear your enemy: they have amassed a great army against you,’ and who replied, ‘God is enough for us: He is the best protector,’
Qur’an 3:173read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review of slow breathing practices found consistent shifts towards the calming side of the nervous system, along with reports of comfort and calm, while noting that the mechanisms are still incompletely understood. It gives you something to do with your body that is not the thing you want to do. The studies are physiological rather than recordings of people mid argument.
Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, Garbella E, Menicucci D, Neri B, Gemignani A. (2018). How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing.. Frontiers in human neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An urge that goes unfed runs out of fuel, and having seen that happen once makes the next one easier to sit through.
Faces in the curtains, a figure in the dark: the part of you that spots danger would rather be wrong ten times than miss once. It reads people the same way.
When someone protests that swallowing their feelings is unnatural, agree with them, because it is. Then add the part they have not said: it is also necessary, and there are better ways to do it than swallowing.
Under most anger sits a refusal: this should not be happening. Letting the fact stand as a fact, without agreeing that it is fine, takes a surprising amount of heat out of it.