Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
If talking about feelings has always felt foreign or a bit embarrassing, treat this as a once a day checklist instead. Five boxes, no discussion, nothing to perform.
Plenty of people who go blank at how are you feeling can tell you straight away whether their shoulders are tight or their breathing is shallow. Starting from the body builds the vocabulary quietly, and the emotional words tend to turn up later on their own. Doing it at the same point each day, after a prayer or before bed, saves you deciding each time.
Qur’an and Sunnah
remember your Lord inwardly, in all humility and awe, without raising your voice (Quran 7:205). Inward and unspoken is offered here as a proper way to do this, not a lesser one.
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
In a controlled brain imaging study, people higher in everyday mindfulness showed more prefrontal and less amygdala activity while putting a name to an emotion, which fits the idea that labelling a feeling helps damp it down. The study measured a trait rather than teaching the skill, so it cannot tell you how much practice would change things. It does give some grounding to the plain act of naming.
Creswell JD, Way BM, Eisenberger NI, Lieberman MD. (2007). Neural correlates of dispositional mindfulness during affect labeling.. Psychosomatic medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Putting a plain name to what is going on takes some of the heat out of it, even when nobody else hears the name.
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
When you sit down to breathe, notice your pelvis. Tucked hard under or tipped hard forward both squeeze the breath; somewhere in the middle lets the diaphragm move.
Learn one plain standing position and keep coming back to it: feet under hips, hips under shoulders, ears above shoulders, chin drawn back a little, arms hanging.
After movement, take a moment on five things: the quality of your mind, of the sensation in your body, of your breathing, of your mood, and of your energy.