Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Irritability, a hot face, itchiness, a mild earache or feeling slightly off balance are common while doing this. People often say it feels like getting off a long flight.
Knowing that in advance matters, because unexplained body sensations are easy to read as harm when your alarm system is already sensitive. Say what you notice rather than pushing on quietly. Most of it settles, and it is usually a reason to slow the pace rather than to stop altogether.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'but just to put my heart at rest' (Quran 2:260). Asking for reassurance about what is happening in you is a reasonable request rather than a weakness.
وَإِذۡ قَالَ إِبۡرَٰهِـۧمُ رَبِّ أَرِنِي كَيۡفَ تُحۡيِ ٱلۡمَوۡتَىٰۖ قَالَ أَوَلَمۡ تُؤۡمِنۖ قَالَ بَلَىٰ وَلَٰكِن لِّيَطۡمَئِنَّ قَلۡبِيۖ قَالَ فَخُذۡ أَرۡبَعَةࣰ مِّنَ ٱلطَّيۡرِ فَصُرۡهُنَّ إِلَيۡكَ ثُمَّ ٱجۡعَلۡ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ جَبَلࣲ مِّنۡهُنَّ جُزۡءࣰ ا ثُمَّ ٱدۡعُهُنَّ يَأۡتِينَكَ سَعۡيࣰ اۚ وَٱعۡلَمۡ أَنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمࣱ
And when Abraham said, ‘My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead,’ He said, ‘Do you not believe, then?’ ‘Yes,’ said Abraham, ‘but just to put my heart at rest.’ So God said, ‘Take four birds and train them to come back to you. Then place them on separate hilltops, call them back, and they will come flying to you: know that God is all powerful and wise.’
Qur’an 2:260read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
An experimental crossover study showed that raising vagal tone, whether by deep slow breathing or by stimulation, changed gut motility and pain sensitivity as well as how people felt. Interventions aimed at this system produce real bodily effects, not only mental ones, so physical sensations during them are unsurprising. That study did not test this programme or catalogue what it does.
Frøkjaer JB, Bergmann S, Brock C, Madzak A, Farmer AD, Ellrich J, Drewes AM. (2016). Modulation of vagal tone enhances gastroduodenal motility and reduces somatic pain sensitivity.. Neurogastroenterology and motility doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The work reaches muscles and nerves around the face and ear, so sensations in those places are the system responding rather than something going wrong.
When not to
Anything severe or lasting, ear pain especially, needs a doctor rather than a wait and see.
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
Breathing that has gone almost invisible happens in both kinds of stillness, so it will not tell you which one you are looking at. Muscle tone will.
Your stress system needs an all clear as much as it needs an alarm. What often breaks after trauma is the signal that says it is over.
An immune system that stays switched on with nothing to fight can begin turning on healthy tissue. It is doing its job with the wrong target.