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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Choose by effect rather than by closeness. Some people you love leave you more wound up than you started, and some people you barely know are easy to be near. If you are the calm one, you do not have to say anything clever. Slow speech, an unhurried face and simply staying put is most of it.
'In it there will be [the gift of] tranquillity from your Lord' (Quran 2:248). Calm arrived to a frightened people from outside themselves, which is worth remembering when you cannot manufacture it alone.
البقرة
وَقَالَ لَهُمۡ نَبِيُّهُمۡ إِنَّ ءَايَةَ مُلۡكِهِۦٓ أَن يَأۡتِيَكُمُ ٱلتَّابُوتُ فِيهِ سَكِينَةࣱ مِّن رَّبِّكُمۡ وَبَقِيَّةࣱ مِّمَّا تَرَكَ ءَالُ مُوسَىٰ وَءَالُ هَٰرُونَ تَحۡمِلُهُ ٱلۡمَلَٰٓئِكَةُۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَةࣰ لَّكُمۡ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤۡمِنِينَ
Their prophet said to them, ‘The sign of his authority will be that the Ark [of the Covenant] will come to you. In it there will be [the gift of] tranquillity from your Lord and relics of the followers of Moses and Aaron, carried by the angels. There is a sign in this for you if you believe.’
Qur’an 2:248read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The physiology behind this rests on heart rate variability as a marker of self-regulation. A methodological review confirms it does index the parasympathetic side of heart control, and that this relates to self-regulation, while stressing how easily the measure is confounded by breathing, posture and study design. The further idea that another person's presence lifts yours is plausible and widely assumed rather than settled.
Laborde S, Mosley E, Thayer JF. (2017). Heart Rate Variability and Cardiac Vagal Tone in Psychophysiological Research - Recommendations for Experiment Planning, Data Analysis, and Data Reporting.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
People take safety cues from each other, so being near someone unhurried gives your body something to match.
Breath does not always calm. For some people it opens the door to feeling, for others it puts a little distance in. Find out which it does for you today.
Your stress system needs an all clear as much as it needs an alarm. What often breaks after trauma is the signal that says it is over.
Unfinished defence tends to park somewhere specific: a jaw that will not unclench, arms that never got to push, legs that never ran.