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Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
Most people wait for the sigh to arrive by itself at the end of a hard hour. It does not have to be the last thing that happens. Doing one deliberately, and naming what you have just done, turns something involuntary into something you can reach for. Practise it while you are calm so it is there when you are not.
It is God who has given you the night in which to rest and the day in which to see. God is truly bountiful to people, but most people do not give thanks (Quran 40:61). Something given and mostly unnoticed is a fair description of the sigh you have been carrying around all along.
غافر
ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلَّيۡلَ لِتَسۡكُنُواْ فِيهِ وَٱلنَّهَارَ مُبۡصِرًاۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَذُو فَضۡلٍ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِ وَلَٰكِنَّ أَكۡثَرَ ٱلنَّاسِ لَا يَشۡكُرُونَ
It is God who has given you the night in which to rest and the day in which to see. God is truly bountiful to people, but most people do not give thanks
Qur’an 40:61read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An exploratory study found that deliberately raising heart rate variability through slow breathing dampened the autonomic effects of an inflammatory challenge. It is worth knowing chiefly for the principle: voluntary breathing reaches systems that are usually well out of reach. It was small and exploratory with a very particular set up, so hold the detail lightly.
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.
Something your body already does reliably is much quicker to press into service than a new breathing pattern.
Keep a few purely physical moves in your kit: sip, hum, sit, look away. At the top of a flare, thinking your way out is the one thing that is not available.
Slowing the breath seems to widen the gap in which you can still see your options. It does not make the anger go away, it gives you a moment inside it.
Better to hum like a bee than to sting like one. Silly, and that is why it will still be there when you need it.