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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
When you are speeding, the things that help slow you down: a long out breath, cold water on the face, attention to your feet and hands, pushing against a wall. When you are already flattened, those same things sink you further, and what helps is gentle movement, rhythm, sound, another person. So the first step is not a technique at all, it is a quick read of which way you have gone.
and rivers and paths so that you may find your way (Quran 16:15). More than one path is provided, and the one you need today may not be the one you needed last week.
النحل
وَأَلۡقَىٰ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ رَوَٰسِيَ أَن تَمِيدَ بِكُمۡ وَأَنۡهَٰرࣰ ا وَسُبُلࣰ ا لَّعَلَّكُمۡ تَهۡتَدُونَ
He has made mountains stand firm on the earth, to prevent it shaking under you, and rivers and paths so that you may find your way
Qur’an 16:15read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A network meta-analysis of physical relaxation methods for stress in healthcare workers found that yoga, massage, progressive muscle relaxation and stretching all helped, with no one method clearly ahead. A separate account of allostatic load argues that what wears the body down is repeated activation without recovery, rather than any single stressful event. Together those support having several workable options and using them often, rather than searching for the one best technique.
Zhang M, Murphy B, Cabanilla A, Yidi C. (2021). Physical relaxation for occupational stress in healthcare workers: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.. Journal of occupational health doi
McEwen BS. (2006). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators: central role of the brain.. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
Calming and rousing pull in opposite directions, so the same tool helps one state and worsens the other.
If distress is tipping into rage, aggression or reckless behaviour, this needs a proper safety plan made with someone else, not a settling technique.
When you offer someone a practice, ask them to tell you if it did nothing, and mean it. Say out loud that plenty of these do not land.
Take the spine through all six of its movements: forward, back, bending to each side, turning to each side. Standing or sitting, it takes under five minutes.
Cross your arms over your chest, hook your thumbs together, and tap your shoulders slowly, left then right. You set the pressure and the speed.