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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
It is a strangely mixed list, and the mix is the point. If practices that look nothing alike arrive at similar places, then the argument about which is best matters less than whether one of them fits your life, your body and what you can stand. Somebody who hums in the car every day is ahead of somebody with an excellent programme abandoned by Thursday.
'Believers, remember God often' (Quran 33:41). The weight falls on often, which is a claim about frequency rather than about method.
الأحزاب
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱذۡكُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ ذِكۡرࣰ ا كَثِيرࣰ ا
Believers, remember God often
Qur’an 33:41read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised controlled trial with 126 participants compared physical activity, mindfulness meditation and heart rate variability biofeedback for stress, and all three reduced stress, anxiety, depression and sleep problems to a comparable degree, with no clear winner. Different routes, similar destination. Those were three specific methods rather than everything on this list, so it supports the principle rather than each item.
van der Zwan JE, de Vente W, Huizink AC, Bögels SM, de Bruin EI. (2015). Physical activity, mindfulness meditation, or heart rate variability biofeedback for stress reduction: a randomized controlled trial.. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The practice you repeat is the one that changes anything, so fit and enjoyment do more of the work than technique does.
The shutdown side of this system runs everything below your diaphragm. That is why going flat so often arrives with stomach trouble, bladder trouble and no appetite.
Deep rest needs a dose like anything else. If a long daily relaxation is leaving you flatter each week rather than steadier, make it shorter.
Before picking a calming technique, work out which way you are off. Revved up and shut down need opposite things.