Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
It works over a video call as well: ask them to fetch a ball from another room and bounce it while you talk. Say what you are doing and why, so it does not arrive as a distraction from what they were saying. Predictable turn-taking is the active part, so keep it slow and steady rather than making a game of catching people out.
I am near. I respond to those who call Me (Quran 2:186). Being answered when you reach out is the pattern underneath this, in miniature and with a ball.
البقرة
وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌۖ أُجِيبُ دَعۡوَةَ ٱلدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِۖ فَلۡيَسۡتَجِيبُواْ لِي وَلۡيُؤۡمِنُواْ بِي لَعَلَّهُمۡ يَرۡشُدُونَ
[Prophet], if My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I respond to those who call Me, so let them respond to Me, and believe in Me, so that they may be guided
Qur’an 2:186read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 47 trials found mindfulness meditation programmes produced small but consistent improvements in anxiety, depression and pain, and no evidence that meditation beat other active approaches such as exercise. Sitting practice has no monopoly here. That is quiet support for reaching for something physical and shared when stillness is not what the moment needs.
Goyal M, Singh S, Sibinga EM, Gould NF, Rowland-Seymour A, Sharma R, Berger Z, Sleicher D, Maron DD, Shihab HM, Ranasinghe PD, Linn S, Saha S, Bass EB, Haythornthwaite JA. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. JAMA internal medicine doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
Taking turns with another person and moving your body at the same time reaches the shut down state from two directions.
Attention problems often travel with anxiety or low mood, and those two eat working memory as well. Settling that layer can make everything else look quite different.
When you are helping someone settle, put the technique in their hands rather than your own. They tap themselves, they set the pressure, they stop when they want to.
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.