Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
Pacing the kitchen while you build the case against someone keeps the whole system revved. The same twenty minutes spent counting breaths or noticing your feet usually lands somewhere else entirely. If the argument will not leave your head, make the movement demanding enough that there is no room left for it.
Those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God (Quran 13:28). What you fill the time with is what settles you, and a moving body is no exception.
الرعد
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised controlled trial, two weeks of aerobic exercise reduced post-traumatic stress symptoms, and how much people gained varied with what they attended to while exercising. It was a short trial with a small sample and it was not about anger. Still, it supports the point that where your attention sits during movement is part of what the movement does.
Fetzner MG, Asmundson GJ. (2015). Aerobic Exercise Reduces Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial.. Cognitive behaviour therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Attention decides what the body is practising, so the same activity can rehearse the fight or interrupt it.
An open hand has meant coming unarmed for a very long time. If that meaning does something for you, keep it. If it does not, the gesture still works.
Press ups on clenched fists give the hands something close to striking, while the effort and the counting take the story out of it.
Automatic is not the enemy. An out of date automatic is. The aim is to practise the calmer response until it runs on its own, the way the old one already does.