Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Relaxation exercises make some people feel worse, and there is a reason for it. The branch that gives you rest when you are safe is the branch that gives you shutdown when you are not.
If your alertness is the thing holding you out of collapse, removing it can drop you into the collapse. That is not a failure to relax properly. If lying still and breathing slowly leaves you feeling unreal, distant or panicky, stop, open your eyes, sit up, and pick something with more input in it instead.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'you, soul at peace' (Quran 89:27). Peace is a soul at rest and present, which is a different thing from a soul that has gone away.
يَٰٓأَيَّتُهَا ٱلنَّفۡسُ ٱلۡمُطۡمَئِنَّةُ
‘[But] you, soul at peace
Qur’an 89:27read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of meditation, yoga and mindfulness in students found moderate reductions in depression, anxiety and stress, with smaller effects when set against active control conditions. Helpful on average is not the same as helpful for everyone. Studies like these report averages and rarely describe who got worse, which is part of why the exceptions go unnoticed.
Breedvelt JJF, Amanvermez Y, Harrer M, Karyotaki E, Gilbody S, Bockting CLH, Cuijpers P, Ebert DD. (2019). The Effects of Meditation, Yoga, and Mindfulness on Depression, Anxiety, and Stress in Tertiary Education Students: A Meta-Analysis.. Frontiers in psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Rest and shutdown run on the same circuit, so calm only lands as calm when your body already reads the situation as safe.
When not to
If stillness practices reliably leave you unreal or panicky, work with a therapist who knows trauma rather than pushing on alone.
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
Digestion runs on the resting side of your nervous system, which is one reason long stress and gut trouble travel together so often.
A regular sitting practice is training rather than a treat. What you practise when things are calm is what your body can find when they are not.
If you mostly run hot and jumpy, start with slow paced breathing. If you mostly go blank and far away, work that reaches you through sound and voice tends to get further.