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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
If a feeling seems to be nowhere at all, look at the shape you are sitting in before deciding it is absent. Let the chest open a little, or let a held spine soften. Something often arrives that was not available a moment before. This is not a way of producing emotion to order, and it is worth going slowly, since what turns up can be more than you expected.
Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God (Quran 39:23). Skin and heart are described softening together, body and inner state moving as one thing.
الزمر
ٱللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحۡسَنَ ٱلۡحَدِيثِ كِتَٰبࣰ ا مُّتَشَٰبِهࣰ ا مَّثَانِيَ تَقۡشَعِرُّ مِنۡهُ جُلُودُ ٱلَّذِينَ يَخۡشَوۡنَ رَبَّهُمۡ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمۡ وَقُلُوبُهُمۡ إِلَىٰ ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۚ ذَٰلِكَ هُدَى ٱللَّهِ يَهۡدِي بِهِۦ مَن يَشَآءُۚ وَمَن يُضۡلِلِ ٱللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُۥ مِنۡ هَادٍ
God has sent down the most beautiful of all teachings: a Scripture that is consistent and draws comparisons; that causes the skins of those in awe of their Lord to shiver. Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God: such is God’s guidance. He guides with it whoever He will; no one can guide those God leaves to stray
Qur’an 39:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review of interoception and vagal tone found both are associated with how well people regulate emotion, which fits the idea that signals from the body take part in emotional life rather than simply following it. Most of the included studies were cross-sectional, so the direction of that relationship is not settled. Posture itself was not what these studies measured.
Pinna T, Edwards DJ. (2020). A Systematic Review of Associations Between Interoception, Vagal Tone, and Emotional Regulation: Potential Applications for Mental Health, Wellbeing, Psychological Flexibility, and Chronic Conditions.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
The body reports its own shape upwards all the time, and that report is part of what your feelings are made from.
If changing your posture brings up more than you can hold, come back upright, look round the room, and leave the rest for a time when you are not alone.
If sitting still with your eyes closed has never worked, do it moving. Walking, washing up, gardening: the exercise is the same, and there is something to hold on to.
Before you walk into a room with someone, ask what you are carrying in with you, and what you are likely to leave behind when you go.
Before you try anything, give your distress a number out of ten. Do the thing. Then give it a number again.