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Areas › Your body › Feeling from the inside
The tell is how you feel on waking: real rest gives something back, while shutdown leaves the day already gone and you no better for it. Nudging the rhythm back works better in small steps than in one heroic early morning. Go gently for another reason too. When someone who has been braced for a long time finally lets go all at once, whatever the bracing was holding down can come up with it, so more rest is not always more settled straight away.
when their very souls closed in around them (Quran 9:118). The verse describes that shut down state honestly, and what comes next in it is mercy rather than reproach.
التوبة
وَعَلَى ٱلثَّلَٰثَةِ ٱلَّذِينَ خُلِّفُواْ حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا ضَاقَتۡ عَلَيۡهِمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضُ بِمَا رَحُبَتۡ وَضَاقَتۡ عَلَيۡهِمۡ أَنفُسُهُمۡ وَظَنُّوٓاْ أَن لَّا مَلۡجَأَ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ إِلَّآ إِلَيۡهِ ثُمَّ تَابَ عَلَيۡهِمۡ لِيَتُوبُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلتَّوَّابُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ
And to the three men who stayed behind: when the earth, for all its spaciousness, closed in around them, when their very souls closed in around them, when they realized that the only refuge from God was with Him, He turned to them in mercy in order for them to return [to Him]. God is the Ever Relenting, the Most Merciful
Qur’an 9:118read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review of the ways body awareness can be deliberately trained maps different methods, from breathing practices to attention training, onto the level of the system each one reaches. It is a mapping of mechanisms rather than a comparison of results, and it says nothing about sleep directly. The useful point is that going deeper is not automatically better: which route you take and how far you go with it is a choice worth making carefully.
Weng HY, Feldman JL, Leggio L, Napadow V, Park J, Price CJ. (2021). Interventions and Manipulations of Interoception.. Trends in neurosciences doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Long shutdown sleep looks like recovery from the outside while doing none of recovery's work, and dropping your guard suddenly can let held down material surface.
If your sleep has flipped around the clock, or you cannot get out of bed most days, this needs a doctor or therapist rather than a self-help fix.
Let the uncomfortable thing be uncomfortable, without arguing with it. People are often surprised by the relief that follows.
An alarm system can be wrong in two directions. It can scream in a safe room, and it can stay silent somewhere it should not.
Thirst, hunger, the ache of having sat too long: these are not nagging, they are instructions. When self-care keeps failing, it is often because the instruction never arrived.