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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
The physical version is simple. A light drawing in of the abdomen, not a clench, held while you rotate and released as you come back. The felt version is the part people remember, that turning towards something difficult goes better when there is something firm at your centre first. Notice which of the two you needed today.
He has made mountains stand firm on the earth, to prevent it shaking under you (Quran 16:15). Something is set firm first so that what rests on it can move without fear.
النحل
وَأَلۡقَىٰ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ رَوَٰسِيَ أَن تَمِيدَ بِكُمۡ وَأَنۡهَٰرࣰ ا وَسُبُلࣰ ا لَّعَلَّكُمۡ تَهۡتَدُونَ
He has made mountains stand firm on the earth, to prevent it shaking under you, and rivers and paths so that you may find your way
Qur’an 16:15read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An influential account of exposure therapy holds that facing what frightens you works by building new learning, and that props used to feel safe can quietly undercut it. Support is not the same as a prop: the aim here is to be steady enough to actually turn, not to avoid turning. It is a theoretical review, and it says nothing about abdominal support in movement practice.
Craske MG, Treanor M, Conway CC, Zbozinek T, Vervliet B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
A supported middle means a turn does not have to be braced against.
Two senses rarely get named: the one that tells you where your limbs are, and the one that tells you which way is up. Pressing your feet into the floor or slowly turning your head feeds both.
Your settling kit should cost nothing. Tea you already buy, a photo already on your phone, an old jumper, a smooth stone, a puzzle that takes your whole attention.
Left, right, left, right. Walking, swimming, drumming and rowing all give the body the same steady side to side rhythm that the seated techniques are copying.