Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Left, right, left, right. Walking, swimming, drumming and rowing all give the body the same steady side to side rhythm that the seated techniques are copying.
If tapping your own shoulders feels odd, or you would rather not do anything that looks like a technique, go for a walk instead and let the rhythm do it. Twenty minutes on foot with your hands free is not a lesser version. Outdoors adds something of its own, and if you can walk somewhere green rather than along a main road, take that.
Qur’an and Sunnah
It was He who spread out the earth for you and traced routes in it (Quran 20:53). The routes are already there, and walking one of them is an old way of settling a mind.
ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ مَهۡدࣰ ا وَسَلَكَ لَكُمۡ فِيهَا سُبُلࣰ ا وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ فَأَخۡرَجۡنَا بِهِۦٓ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا مِّن نَّبَاتࣲ شَتَّىٰ
It was He who spread out the earth for you and traced routes in it. He sent down water from the sky. With that water We bring forth every kind of plant
Qur’an 20:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A narrative review of the physiology of being outdoors reports consistent short-term drops in stress markers after time in nature, though the studies behind it are mostly small. It measures being outdoors rather than the rhythm of walking itself. So a green walk has two plausible things going for it, one of them better evidenced than the other.
Haluza D, Schönbauer R, Cervinka R. (2014). Green perspectives for public health: a narrative review on the physiological effects of experiencing outdoor nature.. International journal of environmental research and public health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Ordinary rhythmic movement gives the nervous system the same regular input, without anyone having to teach you it.
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
Trace a square in the air with your finger while you breathe: in for four along the first side, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
Before twisting, draw your belly gently in towards your spine. It looks after your lower back, and it is worth feeling for its own sake: you steady the middle before you turn towards anything.
Rolling or throwing a ball back and forth with someone is more useful than it looks when one of you has gone blank. It gives the body a job and the two of you a rhythm at the same time.