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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Hard experience tends to freeze a person into a description: the damaged one, the difficult one, the one who cannot cope. Asking the question daily loosens that quietly, because a description that has changed by Tuesday cannot be the whole truth about you. Answer briefly, and try not to argue with whatever comes.
you, soul at peace (Quran 89:27). The soul is addressed by the state it is in, which leaves room for you to be in a different state tomorrow.
الفجر
يَٰٓأَيَّتُهَا ٱلنَّفۡسُ ٱلۡمُطۡمَئِنَّةُ
‘[But] you, soul at peace
Qur’an 89:27read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised experiment comparing mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and loving kindness practice, mindful breathing produced the most decentering, meaning the ability to see thoughts as passing events rather than facts. Different settling practices appear to work by different routes. The study compared short inductions rather than long term change in how people see themselves.
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.
Watching yourself change from one day to the next makes a fixed story about who you are harder to believe.
If you have spent thirty years being told you are careless, lazy or too much, no attention technique will touch that. Kindness practice, aimed at yourself, is the part that does.
Trace a square in the air with your finger while you breathe: in for four along the first side, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
Cold water on your face, especially around the eyes and cheeks, slows things down fast. Splash it, or hold a cold flannel there for half a minute.