Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
That watching part is worth practising on small things: an itch you do not scratch, cold hands, mild boredom. Building room in ordinary moments means there is some room left when something bigger lands. It also explains why people often report less anxiety and less pain without ever having worked on anxiety or pain directly.
'urge one another to steadfastness and compassion' (Quran 90:17). Steadfastness is named as something practised together and passed on, not a private toughness you either have or lack.
البلد
ثُمَّ كَانَ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَوَاصَوۡاْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَتَوَاصَوۡاْ بِٱلۡمَرۡحَمَةِ
and to be one of those who believe and urge one another to steadfastness and compassion
Qur’an 90:17read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A Cochrane overview of pain relief in labour looked across the systematic reviews and found massage and touch among the approaches with some supporting evidence, while noting the trials were mostly small. Labour is about as strong a test of staying present with sensation as there is. The overview measured pain and satisfaction rather than anything like a widened window of tolerance.
Jones L, Othman M, Dowswell T, Alfirevic Z, Gates S, Newburn M, Jordan S, Lavender T, Neilson JP. (2012). Pain management for women in labour: an overview of systematic reviews.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
When a sensation no longer demands an instant reaction, most of what made it frightening drains out of it.
Deep change tends to follow self acceptance rather than the other way round. Waiting until you have fixed the thing before you are allowed to be kind to yourself usually keeps the thing exactly where it is.
Slide one hand behind your head at the base of the skull and rest the other on your forehead. Let your hands take the weight for a minute.
Aching shoulders and a bad back are not separate from finding it hard to concentrate. Pain takes up room in your head, and there is less left for anything else.