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Areas › Your body › Feeling from the inside
Giving the mind two short phrases to hold occupies it just enough that it stops arguing with the feeling. Meanwhile the long exhale does its own quiet work on the nervous system. Ten rounds is enough to notice a difference, and if the phrases sit wrong you can swap them for a short remembrance you already use.
whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God (Quran 13:28). Words repeated on the breath are one old form of that remembrance.
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.
A randomised trial in combat veterans with PTSD compared body scan meditation against slow breathing and against sitting quietly, a rare design that separates attention to the body from the breathing itself. The sample was modest and the group highly distressed. It supports pairing breath with attention as a reasonable thing to do, rather than showing that one element is the active one.
Wahbeh H, Goodrich E, Goy E, Oken BS. (2016). Mechanistic Pathways of Mindfulness Meditation in Combat Veterans With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A long out breath calms the body while the words give your mind something small to hold.
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.
There is more than one way to feel your body. The outward senses, the inward signals like hunger and tension, and the sense of where your limbs are in space are separate channels, and on a hard day one of them will be easier than the others.
The reading happens without you, but you can catch up to it. Naming what your body has already concluded, out loud or in your head, is most of the work.