Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
They are easy to see once you know to look, and they are just as useful in reverse. If you are with someone difficult and your own voice has gone flat and your face has stopped moving, you have gone offline too, and not much good comes from there. A slower breath out, a look through the window, feet on the floor: get yourself back before you try to reach them.
'It is God who endowed you with hearing, sight, and hearts' (Quran 23:78). Reading another person warmly is what those were given for.
المؤمنون
وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أَنشَأَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرَ وَٱلۡأَفۡـِٔدَةَۚ قَلِيلࣰ ا مَّا تَشۡكُرُونَ
It is God who endowed you with hearing, sight, and hearts- how seldom you are grateful
Qur’an 23:78read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A validation study of an interoception measure took the unusual route of grounding it in everyday behaviour rather than laboratory tasks, and found that noticing and responding to internal body sensations contributes to wellbeing and relates to anxiety. Everyday noticing is a legitimate thing to measure and to practise. The study validated a questionnaire, so it cannot tell you what any particular sign in another person's face means.
Dunn W, Brown C, Breitmeyer A, Salwei A. (2022). Construct Validity of the Sensory Profile Interoception Scale: Measuring Sensory Processing in Everyday Life.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Connection travels in both directions, so your own state is part of the room whether you meant it to be or not.
Rest your attention in the middle of your chest, let your breath slow as though it were moving in and out through there, and bring to mind something you feel warmly about.
A healthy heart rate is not a metronome. The small variations between beats are a sign your body can still adjust to what is in front of it.
You can tell you are settled by small signs: your breath sits low in your belly, feelings arrive in waves rather than floods, and you can think and feel at the same time.