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Areas › Your body › Posture and how you carry yourself
When someone has gone numb or absent, often from the waist down, weight bearing work in the legs gives the body something loud and unmistakable to feel. Hold a wall squat for as long as is comfortable and the legs will report back. Deep relaxation is the opposite prescription, right for someone wound up and unable to come down, and offered to someone already shutting down it can thicken the fog.
You cannot break it open, nor match the mountains in height (Quran 17:37). The correction offered is a physical one, your real weight set against a very solid earth, and that is close to what standing back into your legs feels like.
الإسراء
وَلَا تَمۡشِ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ مَرَحًاۖ إِنَّكَ لَن تَخۡرِقَ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ وَلَن تَبۡلُغَ ٱلۡجِبَالَ طُولࣰ ا
Do not strut arrogantly about the earth: you cannot break it open, nor match the mountains in height
Qur’an 17:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A Cochrane review found exercise programmes produced small to moderate reductions in fear of falling in older people, plausibly by improving balance, gait and confidence in one's own body. Different population, different problem, but it is decent evidence that working the legs changes how safe a person feels inside their own body. It says nothing about dissociation in particular.
Kendrick D, Kumar A, Carpenter H, Zijlstra GA, Skelton DA, Cook JR, Stevens Z, Belcher CM, Haworth D, Gawler SJ, Gage H, Masud T, Bowling A, Pearl M, Morris RW, Iliffe S, Delbaere K. (2014). Exercise for reducing fear of falling in older people living in the community.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Weight through the legs sends a strong signal from the part of the body that goes missing first.
If a person is already shut down and far away, deep relaxation is the wrong direction; get them upright and taking their own weight first.
You are not here for a longer hamstring. You are here for a nervous system that can change gear, work when work is needed and settle when it is not.
Find the place that is always tight, your jaw, your shoulders, the top of your back. Take it over deliberately. Squeeze it harder than it holds itself, then let it go.
Take a shape that asks something of you, warrior or mountain, eyes open, the middle of your body switched on. Then, without coming out of it, drop your attention inside and let the pose hold you instead.