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Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
This is why everybody rubs a banged elbow without being taught to. The useful part is that you can do it deliberately: firm strokes along the limb, a warm hand pressed flat, a bit of pressure above and below the sore spot rather than on it. It does not cure anything and it takes the edge off, and it is yours to use whenever, which matters when pain has been running the show.
Of the drink that comes from bees the Qur'an says 'there is healing for people' (Quran 16:69). Relief arriving through a plain physical means is treated as unremarkable.
النحل
ثُمَّ كُلِي مِن كُلِّ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ فَٱسۡلُكِي سُبُلَ رَبِّكِ ذُلُلࣰ اۚ يَخۡرُجُ مِنۢ بُطُونِهَا شَرَابࣱ مُّخۡتَلِفٌ أَلۡوَٰنُهُۥ فِيهِ شِفَآءࣱ لِّلنَّاسِۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَةࣰ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Then feed on all kinds of fruit and follow the ways made easy for you by your Lord.’ From their bellies comes a drink of different colours in which there is healing for people. There truly is a sign in this for those who think
Qur’an 16:69read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review written to support an American Pain Society and American College of Physicians guideline found good evidence for massage in long standing low back pain, alongside exercise and behavioural approaches. Touch earning a place in a pain guideline is not a small thing. Those trials were of massage delivered by therapists over weeks rather than a hand rubbed on a sore knee.
Chou R, Huffman LH, American Pain Society, American College of Physicians. (2007). Nonpharmacologic therapies for acute and chronic low back pain: a review of the evidence for an American Pain Society/American College of Physicians clinical practice guideline.. Annals of internal medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The pathway carrying pain has only so much room, and gentle touch fills some of it.
The best ending is often that therapy stops and the practices carry on. People finish their sessions and keep the yoga, the bodywork, the acupressure, the sitting quietly.
Most people are already doing something for themselves outside your room: herbs, a chiropractor, breathing videos, a weekly massage. Ask, plainly and without a raised eyebrow.
Tap the fleshy outside edge of your hand and say something like: even though I feel this, I accept myself completely. Three times, in whatever words are actually true for you.