Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
If your body is braced to run and there is nowhere to run to, try running in extreme slow motion. One knee lifting over several seconds, then the other.
The urge to bolt does not disappear when you sit on it, it just stays in the muscles as shaking, tightness or ache. Doing the movement so slowly that it barely looks like movement lets it finish without the surge that comes with real speed. Do it standing or sitting, a few minutes at most, and stop if it starts to feel like too much rather than like relief.
Qur’an and Sunnah
It is He who has made the earth manageable for you (Quran 67:15). The verse goes on to speak of travelling its regions, and the smallest version of that is one slow step.
هُوَ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ ذَلُولࣰ ا فَٱمۡشُواْ فِي مَنَاكِبِهَا وَكُلُواْ مِن رِّزۡقِهِۦۖ وَإِلَيۡهِ ٱلنُّشُورُ
It is He who has made the earth manageable for you––travel its regions; eat His provision- and to Him you will be resurrected
Qur’an 67:15read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised experiment, people who had just been through an acute stressor shifted away from goal-directed action toward habit-driven responding. Being flooded narrows what kind of behaviour is actually available to you. That is a fair reason to keep the thing you reach for in that state simple and physical rather than clever.
Schwabe L, Wolf OT. (2010). Socially evaluated cold pressor stress after instrumental learning favors habits over goal-directed action.. Psychoneuroendocrinology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Letting the interrupted movement complete slowly lets the energy behind it drain off without setting off the alarm again.
When not to
If shaking or strong emotion builds rather than settles as you go, stop and do this with someone alongside you another time.
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
In the thick of it, keep your eyes open and give them something outside you to rest on. A fingertip, a doorframe, the line where the wall meets the ceiling.
Five minutes chosen for the state you are actually in beats twenty minutes of open sitting. Pick the one labelled stressed, or cannot sleep, or about to walk into work.
Once a movement is familiar, drop the pattern. Let it curve and wander towards wherever your body seems to want it, rather than doing it correctly.