Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
Keep offering these small practices and people start asking for them. When someone requests one by name, something has changed about who is running their regulation.
Responses also speed up with repetition, so what needed ten minutes in the first month can take two later on. Name that shift out loud when it happens, because naming it hands the practice over. Someone who can ask for the thing that settles them has something to use on the days between appointments.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'on their faces they bear the marks of their prostrations' (Quran 48:29). A body carries the shape of what it does again and again, which is what makes repetition worth the patience.
مُّحَمَّدࣱ رَّسُولُ ٱللَّهِۚ وَٱلَّذِينَ مَعَهُۥٓ أَشِدَّآءُ عَلَى ٱلۡكُفَّارِ رُحَمَآءُ بَيۡنَهُمۡۖ تَرَىٰهُمۡ رُكَّعࣰ ا سُجَّدࣰ ا يَبۡتَغُونَ فَضۡلࣰ ا مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرِضۡوَٰنࣰ اۖ سِيمَاهُمۡ فِي وُجُوهِهِم مِّنۡ أَثَرِ ٱلسُّجُودِۚ ذَٰلِكَ مَثَلُهُمۡ فِي ٱلتَّوۡرَىٰةِۚ وَمَثَلُهُمۡ فِي ٱلۡإِنجِيلِ كَزَرۡعٍ أَخۡرَجَ شَطۡـَٔهُۥ فَـَٔازَرَهُۥ فَٱسۡتَغۡلَظَ فَٱسۡتَوَىٰ عَلَىٰ سُوقِهِۦ يُعۡجِبُ ٱلزُّرَّاعَ لِيَغِيظَ بِهِمُ ٱلۡكُفَّارَۗ وَعَدَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَعَمِلُواْ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ مِنۡهُم مَّغۡفِرَةࣰ وَأَجۡرًا عَظِيمَۢا
Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Those who follow him are harsh towards the disbelievers and compassionate towards each other. You see them kneeling and prostrating, seeking God’s bounty and His good pleasure: on their faces they bear the marks of their prostrations. This is how they are pictured in the Torah and the Gospel: like a seed that puts forth its shoot, becomes strong, grows thick, and rises on its stem to the delight of its sowers. So God infuriates the disbelievers through them; God promises forgiveness and a great reward to those who believe and do righteous deeds
Qur’an 48:29read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A controlled study of massage for stable preterm babies reported better outcomes both soon after and later on. The design was quasi experimental rather than properly randomised, so the finding is suggestive at best. What is relevant here is the direction of it: repeated bodily contact over time, not one impressive session.
Abdallah B, Badr LK, Hawwari M. (2013). The efficacy of massage on short and long term outcomes in preterm infants.. Infant behavior & development doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A response practised many times comes more readily, and asking for it means they now own 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
Sometimes eyes water during body work with no sad thought attached to it. Nothing has gone wrong, and there is nothing that needs explaining.
If you carry everything in your neck, that is not a separate problem from feeling on edge. The nerve that settles you passes right between the muscles that are gripping.
What you started with often changes as you go. The headache becomes sadness, the irritation becomes fear. Follow the new thing rather than dragging the old one along.