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Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
Vary it: lighter, then a little deeper, circling one way and then the other, and see which direction the tissue seems to prefer. Slow steady contact settles most people more than percussion does, and it is the better first choice if you are easily wound up. A minute at one tender point is plenty. Sore is fine, sharp is not.
The Messenger is described as one who 'is deeply concerned for you and full of kindness and mercy' (Quran 9:128). That quality of concern is what the pressure of your fingers should be carrying.
التوبة
لَقَدۡ جَآءَكُمۡ رَسُولࣱ مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ عَزِيزٌ عَلَيۡهِ مَا عَنِتُّمۡ حَرِيصٌ عَلَيۡكُم بِٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ رَءُوفࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
A Messenger has come to you from among yourselves. Your suffering distresses him: he is deeply concerned for you and full of kindness and mercy towards the believers
Qur’an 9:128read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A Cochrane review of manipulation and mobilisation for neck pain found short term relief when manual therapy was combined with exercise, and little evidence of lasting benefit from manipulation alone. Hands on work is better understood as something that helps now than as something that changes the structure. That review covers necks rather than faces.
Gross A, Langevin P, Burnie SJ, Bédard-Brochu MS, Empey B, Dugas E, Faber-Dobrescu M, Andres C, Graham N, Goldsmith CH, Brønfort G, Hoving JL, LeBlanc F. (2015). Manipulation and mobilisation for neck pain contrasted against an inactive control or another active treatment.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Slow sustained contact is the kind of touch the body reads as care rather than as an alert.
Avoid pressing on broken skin, infections, recent injuries or anywhere numb, and stop if pain sharpens rather than eases.
Put your right hand flat on your left upper chest, gather the skin gently and draw it downwards, then tilt your head and lift your left ear away from it. Hold there and wait.
Pain is rarely one thing. There is the raw sensation, the memory of every other time, how you feel about it now, whether you think you can cope, and what you conclude about yourself.
Instead of a diet, take one craving and stay with it: the food, the moment, the pull. Tap or breathe through it until the pull itself loosens.