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Areas › Your body › Feeling from the inside
Closing your eyes takes away your ability to check the room, and for anyone whose body is used to watching, that costs more than it gives. Make it an explicit choice each time rather than an instruction. The same goes for where you sit and whether the door is in view.
It is not people's eyes that are blind, but their hearts within their breasts (Quran 22:46). The seeing that matters here is not done with the eyes, so leaving them open costs you nothing.
الحج
أَفَلَمۡ يَسِيرُواْ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ فَتَكُونَ لَهُمۡ قُلُوبࣱ يَعۡقِلُونَ بِهَآ أَوۡ ءَاذَانࣱ يَسۡمَعُونَ بِهَاۖ فَإِنَّهَا لَا تَعۡمَى ٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرُ وَلَٰكِن تَعۡمَى ٱلۡقُلُوبُ ٱلَّتِي فِي ٱلصُّدُورِ
Have these people [of Mecca] not travelled through the land with hearts to understand and ears to hear? It is not people’s eyes that are blind, but their hearts within their breasts
Qur’an 22:46read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A small controlled trial found that mindfulness training improved women's awareness of bodily arousal signals and reduced the self-critical attention that had been getting in the way of noticing them. The sample was small and the topic narrow. But the general shape holds: what blocks feeling the body is often the anxious watching layered over it.
Silverstein RG, Brown AC, Roth HD, Britton WB. (2011). Effects of mindfulness training on body awareness to sexual stimuli: implications for female sexual dysfunction.. Psychosomatic medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Being able to see that you are safe means less of you is spent on guarding.
Let the uncomfortable thing be uncomfortable, without arguing with it. People are often surprised by the relief that follows.
If you are going to bring attention to your body, start with where your body is rather than what it feels. Feet on the floor, back against the chair, the weight of your hands in your lap.
Sleeping until the middle of the afternoon, day after day, is usually not rest. It is closer to the body shutting down, and it tends to leave you flatter rather than restored.