Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
The point is not that this posture is correct. It is that having one shape you return to gives you something to measure by, so you can tell that today your left shoulder is up, or your weight is all on one leg. Standing stacked like this also brings a mild alertness, since the body has to hold itself up, without the tightness of standing to attention. Twenty seconds before and after a practice is enough.
who spread out the earth for you and built the sky (Quran 2:22). Ground below and sky above is the whole of what this position asks you to feel.
البقرة
ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ فِرَٰشࣰ ا وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بِنَآءࣰ وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ فَأَخۡرَجَ بِهِۦ مِنَ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ رِزۡقࣰ ا لَّكُمۡۖ فَلَا تَجۡعَلُواْ لِلَّهِ أَندَادࣰ ا وَأَنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
who spread out the earth for you and built the sky; who sent water down from it and with that water produced things for your sustenance. Do not, knowing this, set up rivals to God
Qur’an 2:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A model of human threat responses describes the nervous system moving between different defensive modes depending on how close and how certain a danger seems. It is a useful reminder that alert and braced are not the same state. This is a theoretical account rather than a study of posture, so take it as a way of thinking about the difference rather than evidence for this stance.
Mobbs D, Hagan CC, Dalgleish T, Silston B, Prévost C. (2015). The ecology of human fear: survival optimization and the nervous system.. Frontiers in neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
You can only notice a change if you have something familiar to compare it against.
Once a day, run through five things in order: how your mind is, what your body feels, how the breathing is going, what the emotional weather is, and how much energy you have. Curious, not marking yourself.
To come down, move slowly and rhythmically: rock, sway, walk at half speed. To come up, move properly: jog on the spot, jump, dance fast, or carry something heavy.
Say it plainly whenever you teach anything: the way I am showing you this is not the way it has to be done. Change it until it works for you.