Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Sound that repeats slowly, waves, rain, steady recitation, brings you down. Fast, loud, unpredictable music, or whistling, brings you up.
Have both ready before you need them, one playlist for each direction. Whistling is worth knowing about because it does two jobs at once, lifting you while lengthening the out breath. Think in terms of tempo and volume rather than genre: a song you love at high tempo will not calm you, however comforting the words are.
Qur’an and Sunnah
celebrate the praise of your Lord, before the rising and setting of the sun (Quran 20:130). The rhythm is given so that you may find contentment, which is the same logic as a slow repeating sound.
فَٱصۡبِرۡ عَلَىٰ مَا يَقُولُونَ وَسَبِّحۡ بِحَمۡدِ رَبِّكَ قَبۡلَ طُلُوعِ ٱلشَّمۡسِ وَقَبۡلَ غُرُوبِهَاۖ وَمِنۡ ءَانَآيِٕ ٱلَّيۡلِ فَسَبِّحۡ وَأَطۡرَافَ ٱلنَّهَارِ لَعَلَّكَ تَرۡضَىٰ
so [Prophet] be patient with what they say- celebrate the praise of your Lord, before the rising and setting of the sun, celebrate His praise during the night, and at the beginning and end of the day, so that you may find contentment
Qur’an 20:130read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a controlled laboratory study, listening to relaxing music before a stressor sped up recovery of the autonomic nervous system, though what happened to cortisol was less clear cut. In a randomised trial, patients resting with music on the first day after heart surgery showed a lower stress response than those resting without it. Both point the same way for calming music. Neither tested using fast music deliberately to lift someone out of a flat state, so that half rests on reasoning rather than trials.
Thoma MV, La Marca R, Brönnimann R, Finkel L, Ehlert U, Nater UM. (2013). The effect of music on the human stress response.. PloS one doi
Nilsson U. (2009). The effect of music intervention in stress response to cardiac surgery in a randomized clinical trial.. Heart & lung : the journal of critical care doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The body tends to fall in with a rhythm it can hear, so a slow steady one pulls your own pace down with 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
Picture something that could hold what you cannot deal with today. A box, a safe, a chest with a lid. You choose the size, what it is made of and where it is kept.
Brain imaging does show that practice changes something. Be careful with anyone who tells you a great deal more than that.
Once a day, run through five things in order: how your mind is, what your body feels, how the breathing is going, what the emotional weather is, and how much energy you have. Curious, not marking yourself.