Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
The point of all this is not that your heart never pounds. It is that when a car pulls out in front of you, you are back to yourself in a minute instead of an hour.
People who take permanent calm to be the goal end up reading every jolt of adrenaline as proof they are still broken. That is a miserable way to live and it is not what any of this is for. Your alarm working is good news. Watch the recovery instead: how long it takes today, how long it took a month ago.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The Qur'an speaks of the One who would 'give you sleep for rest' (Quran 78:9). Recovery is written into the design rather than being something you have to earn.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of physical activity and stress reactivity found that regularly active and fitter people showed reduced physiological reactivity to a standardised psychosocial stressor, consistent with training changing how the body meets stress. Repeated practice does seem to alter the response. Those studies were about fitness rather than about recovery time specifically, so the emphasis on the return trip goes a little beyond them.
Mücke M, Ludyga S, Colledge F, Gerber M. (2018). Influence of Regular Physical Activity and Fitness on Stress Reactivity as Measured with the Trier Social Stress Test Protocol: A Systematic Review.. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Alarm systems are meant to fire. What practice changes is how fast the all clear comes through afterwards.
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
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.
Body based practices sit alongside medication rather than replacing it. If you take something, you can do both.
When someone finally reaches somewhere safe, do not be surprised if they fall apart rather than bloom. Stay close through that part.