Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
When you have gone numb rather than frantic, try a long low sound on the out breath. Voo, drawn out until the breath runs out, so your lips and chest buzz with it.
This is for the flat, far away state, not the racing one. The buzz gives you something unmistakable to feel when nothing else is registering, which is exactly the problem when you have shut down. Three or four rounds, resting between them. It sounds strange the first time and that is not a reason to skip it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
remember your Lord inwardly, in all humility and awe, without raising your voice (Quran 7:205). A low sound rather than a loud one has its own standing, and this one is meant to be felt more than heard.
وَٱذۡكُر رَّبَّكَ فِي نَفۡسِكَ تَضَرُّعࣰ ا وَخِيفَةࣰ وَدُونَ ٱلۡجَهۡرِ مِنَ ٱلۡقَوۡلِ بِٱلۡغُدُوِّ وَٱلۡأٓصَالِ وَلَا تَكُن مِّنَ ٱلۡغَٰفِلِينَ
[Prophet], remember your Lord inwardly, in all humility and awe, without raising your voice, in the mornings and in the evenings- do not be one of the heedless
Qur’an 7:205read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A theoretical model of human threat responses describes the nervous system shifting between different defensive modes depending on how close and how certain a danger feels. Shutdown is one of those modes rather than a failure of effort. That framing is why a rousing, sensory practice is the right sort of thing here, though the model itself does not test any particular exercise.
Mobbs D, Hagan CC, Dalgleish T, Silston B, Prévost C. (2015). The ecology of human fear: survival optimization and the nervous system.. Frontiers in neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A low sound vibrates the chest and throat, giving you a strong sensation to find your way back by.
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
If your attention has no filter, everything in the room arrives at once, and you are tired before the day's actual work begins. That is not laziness, it is a bill coming due.
Finish a check-in by asking what actually brought you here. Not the task in front of you, the thing underneath it that you want.
Tap the fleshy side of one hand with the other and say it plainly: even though I am feeling all this in my body right now, I can accept that this is how I am.