Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Your accelerator is not the problem. You need it for work, for lifting things, for standing up for somebody. What tends to be missing is the fine control that lets you come down a little and then a little more, instead of either flooring it or shutting the engine off. Slow breathing out is the most ordinary way to practise the small version, ten breaths at a time, most days.
God 'made the sun and the moon to a precise measure' (Quran 6:96). Measure, rather than more or less, is the idea worth borrowing here.
الأنعام
فَالِقُ ٱلۡإِصۡبَاحِ وَجَعَلَ ٱلَّيۡلَ سَكَنࣰ ا وَٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ حُسۡبَانࣰ اۚ ذَٰلِكَ تَقۡدِيرُ ٱلۡعَزِيزِ ٱلۡعَلِيمِ
He makes the dawn break; He makes the night for rest; and He made the sun and the moon to a precise measure. That is the design of the Almighty, the All Knowing
Qur’an 6:96read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta analysis of randomised trials of heart rate variability biofeedback, which is slow paced breathing done with feedback, found improvements across a wide range of emotional, physical and performance outcomes, with effects varying by the problem being treated. What is trained there is the capacity to slow down, not relaxation as a mood. The effects were not uniform, so this is a reasonable practice rather than a guaranteed one.
Lehrer P, Kaur K, Sharma A, Shah K, Huseby R, Bhavsar J, Sgobba P, Zhang Y. (2020). Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback Improves Emotional and Physical Health and Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta Analysis.. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Braking gently is a skill, and like other skills it improves with short regular practice rather than with effort in a crisis.
The tools that slow things down mostly use your head: naming what is happening, standing back a little, putting the distress at arm's length for now.
Going limp is an old survival bet, not a failure of nerve. Some animals are alive only because they stopped moving.
Being the baby who never cried is not the same as being secure. It can mean you learned very early that nobody was coming.