Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
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 it happens to you, let it happen. If it happens to someone you are working with, say something plain and warm: that this is common, that they do not need a reason for it. Reaching for an interpretation too quickly teaches people to hold the release back next time, which is the opposite of what the practice is for.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'do not chide the one who asks for help' (Quran 93:10). Something in the person has come forward and shown itself, and that is not a moment for pushing it back.
وَأَمَّا ٱلسَّآئِلَ فَلَا تَنۡهَرۡ
and do not chide the one who asks for help
Qur’an 93:10read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a set of randomised experiments, brief affectionate touch during a conflict discussion buffered people's stress and protected the quality of the relationship compared with no touch. Steady contact while a feeling is running high seems to help rather than intrude. Those experiments were about couples arguing, not tears in a somatic session, so the parallel is a loose one.
Jakubiak BK, Feeney BC. (2019). Hand-in-Hand Combat: Affectionate Touch Promotes Relational Well-Being and Buffers Stress During Conflict.. Personality & social psychology bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Tension can leave a body without going through the story that put it there.
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
Closed eyes are optional. If closing them makes you anxious, or the inside of your head gets loud, open them and look around the room.
Ordinary harmless sensation competes with pain on its way up. Rubbing, squeezing or stroking near a sore place gives the nerves plenty of other traffic to carry.
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.