Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
None of this makes thinking useless. Making sense of what happened, and changing what you concluded about yourself, does work that no breathing exercise touches.
The body work settles the alarm. The thinking work deals with the verdict you passed on yourself afterwards: that you are weak, that it was your fault, that you cannot be trusted with anything. Both are needed, and they help each other along, since it is much easier to think clearly once you are not braced.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'who reflect on the creation of the heavens and earth' (Quran 3:191). Reflection sits in the same verse as the bodily postures, not in competition with them.
ٱلَّذِينَ يَذۡكُرُونَ ٱللَّهَ قِيَٰمࣰ ا وَقُعُودࣰ ا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِهِمۡ وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِي خَلۡقِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقۡتَ هَٰذَا بَٰطِلࣰ ا سُبۡحَٰنَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ ٱلنَّارِ
who remember God standing, sitting, and lying down, who reflect on the creation of the heavens and earth: ‘Our Lord! You have not created all this without purpose- You are far above that!- so protect us from the torment of the Fire
Qur’an 3:191read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis found that how a person appraises a stressful situation, and which emotion they feel about it, predicts their cortisol and immune response. So interpretation has physical consequences, which is the case for keeping the thinking tools rather than dropping them. These were laboratory stressors measured across groups, so it supports the principle rather than any particular therapy.
Denson TF, Spanovic M, Miller N. (2009). Cognitive appraisals and emotions predict cortisol and immune responses: a meta-analysis of acute laboratory social stressors and emotion inductions.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Calming the body and revising the conclusions are two different jobs.
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
You do not have to read your child perfectly. Good enough, with repair after the ruptures, is what builds their steadiness.
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.
When the danger still feels like it is happening, that is not a mistake in your thinking. It is a sequence in your body that never got to finish.