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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
A weighted blanket, rocking, drumming your hands on your thighs, singing or chanting something you know by heart, running on the spot for twenty seconds, dancing badly in the kitchen. Rhythm is the safest way up because it is predictable, and predictable is what a shut down body can accept. Start smaller than you think you need to and add from there.
whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God (Quran 13:28). Words said aloud in a steady rhythm are one of the oldest forms of this, and the body takes something from the rhythm as well.
الرعد
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised controlled trial, patients resting in bed on the first day after heart surgery showed a lower stress response when they had music than when they rested without it. That is one clinical population and one kind of sound. It does support the wider idea that rhythm and music act on the body's stress systems rather than only on mood.
Nilsson U. (2009). The effect of music intervention in stress response to cardiac surgery in a randomized clinical trial.. Heart & lung : the journal of critical care doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
A collapsed state needs a little more activation, not less, and rhythm supplies it without startling you.
The same check-in can take two minutes or fifteen. Match the length to the day you are actually having, not to the version you were taught.
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.
If your child is learning to settle, learn it alongside them rather than supervising. Parents who practise report less stress of their own and less flying off the handle.