Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
The idea is to pick the tool that pulls against your usual tilt. Breathing practice puts the brake back on a system that has lost it. Sound and voice based work goes at the social side that shutdown switches off. Most people know which way they tip if they think about the last month rather than about today.
'It is God who endowed you with hearing, sight, and hearts' (Quran 23:78). Hearing is named as a gift alongside sight and heart, which makes it a way in and not only a sense.
المؤمنون
وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أَنشَأَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرَ وَٱلۡأَفۡـِٔدَةَۚ قَلِيلࣰ ا مَّا تَشۡكُرُونَ
It is God who endowed you with hearing, sight, and hearts- how seldom you are grateful
Qur’an 23:78read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of twenty four studies with four hundred and eighty four participants found heart rate variability biofeedback produced a large reduction in self-reported stress and anxiety, though the trials were small. A controlled pilot with thirty eight people found breathing based biofeedback raised heart rate variability and reduced PTSD symptoms more than progressive muscle relaxation. Both point the same way for the hyperaroused side. Evidence for the sound based side is much thinner and comes mostly from a different population.
Goessl VC, Curtiss JE, Hofmann SG. (2017). The effect of heart rate variability biofeedback training on stress and anxiety: a meta-analysis.. Psychological medicine doi
Zucker TL, Samuelson KW, Muench F, Greenberg MA, Gevirtz RN. (2009). The effects of respiratory sinus arrhythmia biofeedback on heart rate variability and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: a pilot study.. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Each approach acts on a different part of the system, so it helps to aim at the part that is struggling.
If you cannot tell which way you tip, or you swing between both, work it out with a therapist rather than guessing.
Yoga, slow breathing with feedback, neurofeedback and listening programmes are all aiming at the same target. Pick the one you can actually get to and keep doing.
If nobody helped you learn to settle when you were small, you can still learn it now. Slower and more deliberately, but genuinely.
Breath reaches the settling machinery faster than reasoning does, because it works on a part of the brainstem that does not wait for your opinion.