Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
Slide one hand behind your head at the base of the skull and rest the other on your forehead. Let your hands take the weight for a minute.
The bony ridge at the back is where a lot of eye and neck strain gathers, and it rarely gets touched. Do not press or twist anything: just support, and let your head be heavy. Being held, even by your own hands, tends to land oddly hard for people who did not get much holding early on. Stop when you want a deeper breath.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Did He not find you an orphan and shelter you' (Quran 93:6). Sheltering someone who had nobody to hold them is described as God's own response, so making a shelter of your hands is not a small or silly thing.
أَلَمۡ يَجِدۡكَ يَتِيمࣰ ا فَـَٔاوَىٰ
Did He not find you an orphan and shelter you
Qur’an 93:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A Cochrane review of manipulation and mobilisation for neck pain found short term relief when manual therapy was combined with exercise, and little sign of lasting benefit from manipulation on its own. Hands on the neck can ease things now without fixing anything permanently, which is roughly what this is for. A separate Cochrane review of early skin to skin contact found benefits for feeding and for how physiologically stable newborns were, which is evidence that being held steadies a body, though those were babies held by their mothers rather than adults holding themselves.
Gross A, Langevin P, Burnie SJ, Bédard-Brochu MS, Empey B, Dugas E, Faber-Dobrescu M, Andres C, Graham N, Goldsmith CH, Brønfort G, Hoving JL, LeBlanc F. (2015). Manipulation and mobilisation for neck pain contrasted against an inactive control or another active treatment.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Moore ER, Anderson GC, Bergman N, Dowswell T. (2012). Early skin-to-skin contact for mothers and their healthy newborn infants.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Taking the weight off the muscles that hold your head up gives them permission to stop working.
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
End by pressing your palms together and staying there a moment. Each hand is giving and being given to at the same time.
Tap the fleshy outside edge of your hand and say something like: even though I feel this, I accept myself completely. Three times, in whatever words are actually true for you.
The first time you slow a rising panic with your own breathing, something changes that no amount of reassurance could have changed. You have evidence now.