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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
The sound is the point. A silent out breath does some of the work, and letting the voice into it adds a bit more, which is probably why sighing turns up in every culture without anyone teaching it. Three or four is enough. Do it in the car or the bathroom if you would rather not be heard, and let the out breath be twice as long as the breath in.
to put your hearts at rest (Quran 3:126). A heart put at rest is the aim here, and the out breath is one small mechanical way toward it.
آل عمران
وَمَا جَعَلَهُ ٱللَّهُ إِلَّا بُشۡرَىٰ لَكُمۡ وَلِتَطۡمَئِنَّ قُلُوبُكُم بِهِۦۗ وَمَا ٱلنَّصۡرُ إِلَّا مِنۡ عِندِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلۡعَزِيزِ ٱلۡحَكِيمِ
as a message of hope for you [believers] to put your hearts at rest- help comes only from God, the Mighty, the Wise
Qur’an 3:126read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised experiment found mindful breathing produced more stepping back from one's own thoughts than progressive muscle relaxation did, which suggests different settling practices work by different routes rather than all doing the same thing. The comparison was breathing against muscle relaxation, not sighing against silence. So it supports treating breath practices as their own thing, without proving what the sound adds.
Feldman G, Greeson J, Senville J. (2010). Differential effects of mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and loving-kindness meditation on decentering and negative reactions to repetitive thoughts.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
A long out breath gives you something to follow all the way to the end of it, and the sound makes it easy to tell when you have got there.
After movement, take a moment on five things: the quality of your mind, of the sensation in your body, of your breathing, of your mood, and of your energy.
Whenever you offer a standing practice, offer the seated version in the same breath, and mean it. Say plainly that people should look after their own bodies and change anything that does not suit them.
Think of your thoughts as traffic on a road. Practice thins the traffic. It does not close the road, and nobody has ever managed to close it.