Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Safety comes in through three doors: your body, the place you are in, and the people around you. If one is shut, try another.
This matters most when you are on your own and the person you would ring is not there. You can still change the room, open a window, go outside, put something warm on, or walk. Using the other doors is not second best. It is the same system reached from a different side.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'who spread out the earth for you and built the sky' (Quran 2:22). The world outside your door was set up for a body like yours, and going into it counts as care.
ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ فِرَٰشࣰ ا وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بِنَآءࣰ وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ فَأَخۡرَجَ بِهِۦ مِنَ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ رِزۡقࣰ ا لَّكُمۡۖ فَلَا تَجۡعَلُواْ لِلَّهِ أَندَادࣰ ا وَأَنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
who spread out the earth for you and built the sky; who sent water down from it and with that water produced things for your sustenance. Do not, knowing this, set up rivals to God
Qur’an 2:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace found exposure associated with lower salivary cortisol, heart rate and diastolic blood pressure, among a broad list of health outcomes. Most of that is association rather than experiment, so the size of the effect for one person stepping outside is unclear. It is still direct evidence that surroundings reach the same physiology breathing exercises aim at.
Twohig-Bennett C, Jones A. (2018). The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes.. Environmental research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Your body scans all three streams for signs of safety, so any one of them can move the needle.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The point of all this is not that your heart never pounds. It is that when a car pulls out in front of you, you are back to yourself in a minute instead of an hour.
Some routes ask you to do something: breathing, moving, stretching. Others ask you to receive: music, warm water, somebody else's voice. Keep one of each, because which one you can manage depends on the day.
This is given in small doses with pauses built in, and the pace is meant to bend around you. Ask for less if you need less.