Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Rest your attention in the middle of your chest, let your breath slow as though it were moving in and out through there, and bring to mind something you feel warmly about.
A hand on your chest can help you find the place. The feeling does not have to be big: gratitude for something small, or the ordinary fondness you have for someone. Keep breathing slowly and hold the feeling there rather than thinking about it. Five minutes is plenty.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace' (Quran 13:28). The chest is where the Qur'an keeps locating this, and so does the practice.
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised controlled trial found a single session of slow breathing biofeedback reduced performance anxiety and altered heart rate variability in musicians, which shows one brief exposure can do something measurable. That trial used a device giving feedback rather than the version you do from memory. Doing it unaided is a reasonable extension rather than the thing that was tested.
Wells R, Outhred T, Heathers JA, Quintana DS, Kemp AH. (2012). Matter over mind: a randomised-controlled trial of single-session biofeedback training on performance anxiety and heart rate variability in musicians.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Slow breathing sets the rhythm, and the warm feeling changes it from merely slow to smooth.
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
You can tell you are back when there is choice in it again: you can pick which thought to keep hold of, and how to answer what you feel.
Sound sensitivity is not a fault in your hearing. Under threat the ear opens out towards high and low sounds, the range that carries warning, and that is the range which makes ordinary life feel loud.
If you went blank or floppy while something terrible was happening, that was your body conserving you. It is the oldest survival setting you have, not a failure of nerve.