The Harmony of the Outer and Inner Being in the Prophetic Movement

On swaying while remembering God: a reading in the light of Somatic Thinking

A note from the author: this paper is published together with the article «What Melts and What Grows: Surat al-Asr on the Outer Being and the Inner Being». The article asks what melts in a human being and what grows. This paper follows the same two sides into the body of the Prophet ﷺ, where the outer being and the inner being were in fullest harmony.

Why this paper, and what it is made of

I began with two studies, not one. The first establishes the thesis: a picture of the bodily movement of the Prophet ﷺ as the sound hadith and the early biographies preserve it, built on a careful criticism of the chains of transmission, and on a table that classifies each movement by its kind, its meaning and its grade. The second study carries the thesis to the hardest place it can be tested: the long dispute between the Sufis and the majority of scholars over swaying and shaking in the remembrance of God, the case of al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam, and the positions of the four schools of law.

To these two studies I added three strands that neither of them had touched. The classical Sufi distinction between self-induced ecstasy, true ecstasy and settled presence. The neurological account of why a body moves under the weight of emotion. And the spread of the same phenomenon across religious traditions. Then I read all of it in the light of Somatic Thinking, as the methodology that can, in this field, describe what happens in the body and not only pass judgement on it.

Somatic Thinking was first published as the chapter I wrote in Tünde Erdös's Coaching Presence (McGraw-Hill / Open University Press, 2021). Its Islamic articulation, where Baraka in Motion lives, is in my book «من التوازن إلى البركة», From Balance to Baraka. This paper draws on both.

One axis of Somatic Thinking carries the whole reading. A human being has an outer being, the material side: body, health, money, possessions, titles, and the relationships built on behaviour. And an inner being: what you hold true, and the self you build on it. Movement is where the two meet, and presence is complete when the outer being is in harmony with the inner being. The Prophet ﷺ is the most complete model of this harmony, and so, as the sound reports describe it, his bearing in movement was meaning made visible, never empty motion. The sections of this paper turn on that axis: the body as text, then an account of what happens inside it, then how the axis settles the question of swaying.

I start from the root of following him. Ibn Kathir called the verse below a great principle for taking the Messenger of God ﷺ as a model in his words, his deeds and his states, and his bearing in movement is one of his states. The verse joins that model to those who remember God much. Following and remembrance meet in it, and they are the two ends of this paper.

"You have had in the Messenger of God a beautiful example, for whoever hopes in God and the Last Day, and remembers God much." (Qur'an 33:21)

The Prophet's body as text

One sentence carries this paper:

The Prophet's bodily conduct is not an ornament around the text. It is part of the text.

Its working principle: movement follows meaning. Where the moment is one of majesty and the oneness of God, the movement is sparing, held, full of dignity. Where the moment is mercy toward someone weak, the prayer widens to carry a child. Where the moment is teaching, the body teaches visibly. In these reports the body neither sits still like a stone nor moves like someone performing. It is meaning, made visible.

The scenes the sound reports give us:

• His walk. "When he walked, he leaned forward with purpose, as though he were coming down a slope." A self-possessed gait with strength and intent in it, neither slack nor strutting. Recorded by al-Tirmidhi (no. 3637) and Ahmad; al-Tirmidhi graded it good and sound, and al-Albani graded it sound. (In hadith criticism, sound and good are the first and second grades of acceptance.)
• His turning. "When he turned, he turned with his whole body." He faced the person he spoke to with all of himself, not with the corner of his eye: a complete presence that rules out the posture of the proud. Recorded by al-Tirmidhi (no. 3638) from the description given by his cousin Ali; al-Tirmidhi called it good but unusual and noted that its chain is not continuous, while Ahmad Shakir graded its chain sound in the Musnad.
• Raising the hands level with the shoulders at the opening of the prayer, at bowing and at rising from it: a transition in worship with a disciplined body language of its own. Agreed upon, that is, recorded by both al-Bukhari and Muslim, the two most trusted collections: al-Bukhari (no. 735) and Muslim (no. 390).
• Carrying his granddaughter Umamah during the prayer. Mercy does not break the dignity of worship. Recorded by Muslim (no. 543), sound.
• Lengthening the prostration while his grandson al-Hasan or al-Husayn climbed on his back. The mercy owed to a child placed before haste. Recorded by al-Nasa'i (no. 1141) and al-Hakim; graded sound by the editors of the Darussalam edition, and supported by three routes from three Companions.
• Pointing with the index finger in the sitting of the prayer in which the testimony of faith is recited. The body translating the oneness of God in a single gesture. Recorded by Abu Dawud (no. 726) and al-Nasa'i; al-Albani graded it sound.

Then the reports turn to what no one commands in himself. Tears at the death of his infant son Ibrahim, when he said that the eye weeps and the heart grieves: recorded by al-Bukhari in his Sahih (no. 1303). Tears on hearing the Qur'an, when the Companion Ibn Mas'ud recited to him and his eyes streamed: recorded by al-Bukhari in his Sahih (no. 5050). A sound in his chest "like the sound of a boiling pot" from weeping while he prayed: recorded by Abu Dawud (no. 904), al-Nasa'i (no. 1214) and Ahmad; Ibn Hibban and al-Albani graded it sound. His face lighting up when he was pleased "until it was like a piece of the moon": recorded by al-Bukhari in his Sahih (no. 3556). Pacing back and forth at the sight of clouds, out of fear for his people, in the words "it was known in his face; he would come and go": recorded by Muslim (no. 899). Sweat pouring from his forehead when revelation came down on a bitterly cold day: agreed upon, al-Bukhari (no. 2) and Muslim (no. 2333). And in his final illness, being helped along between two men with his feet dragging on the ground: agreed upon, al-Bukhari (no. 5714) and Muslim (no. 418). This is historical truthfulness: a description of pain and weakness, and with it the firmness of his attachment to worship.

The first study stands on a criticism of the chains. It takes the sound and continuous reports as the foundation on which the descriptions are built, it reports what carries a slight weakness with its grade stated, and it mentions the softer reports from the books describing his character and appearance for colour, never as foundation. So it weakens the long description transmitted from Hind ibn Abi Hala: a weak chain, with two unknown narrators, though its meaning has supporting witnesses. And it rejects the report that the Companions "swayed as trees sway," because its chain runs through Amr ibn Shamir al-Ju'fi, whom the critics abandoned and judged a fabricator.

The one gap in the two studies is that they judge the movement and do not explain it. They say: this posture is lawful and that one is an innovation, and within its own field that judgement is right. But they cannot say why a body shakes under the surge of emotion. Is it a claim about the unseen, the realm beyond the senses that only revelation speaks of, or a physiological event? That missing layer is exactly where Somatic Thinking belongs.

What the independent research added

First: the classical Sufi distinction

One of the things I was most glad to find is that the Sufis themselves laid down the distinction the dispute needs, nine centuries ago. In al-Qushayri's Epistle and al-Ghazali's Revival there are three grades. I render them here in English, since no single English word carries each of them.

• Self-induced ecstasy. What it is: "Calling up ecstasy by a deliberate choice" (al-Qushayri): a state forced and drawn in on purpose. The judgement of the discerning Sufis themselves: Disputed, in al-Qushayri's report: some would not allow it because of the affectation in it, others allowed it to those who had stripped themselves of the world and sought the state; and al-Ghazali condemns it where its purpose is show and the display of states.
• True ecstasy. What it is: A true state that comes upon the heart "without choice" and overcomes its owner. The judgement of the discerning Sufis themselves: True and excused, a gift that is neither sought nor manufactured.
• Settled presence. What it is: A settled and stable state that becomes a station, not a passing condition. The judgement of the discerning Sufis themselves: This is the goal: stillness and presence, not movement.

What the majority of scholars reject is the deliberate, organised movement that is taken as a form of worship, that is, self-induced ecstasy, and al-Ghazali himself condemned it where its purpose is show and the display of states. Where a movement was excused, it was excused because it was true ecstasy, a compulsion outside choice. The two sides are closer than the dispute suggests. Al-Ghazali and the jurists meet on condemning the forced movement where its purpose is show, both sides excuse what is involuntary, and both call calm the goal.

Second: the neurological account, or why the body moves

The largest addition is the one both studies lack. I do not need the unseen to explain why a body sways. Some bodies sway under emotional load and others go still, and science has begun to describe the first.

• The vestibular system and the vagus nerve. Rhythmic movement, such as swaying and rocking, stimulates the vestibular system of the inner ear, which is wired to the centres of the brainstem that regulate heart and breath. Kompotis and colleagues (2019, in mice) showed that low-frequency rocking hastens sleep, and that the effect disappears entirely when the organs of balance are lost: a reflex rooted in the body, not a learned habit.
• Auditory and motor entrainment. When a person hears a regular pulse, circuits in the basal ganglia and the supplementary motor area fall into step with it (Grahn and Brett, 2007). A steady rhythm, like the repeated cadence of remembrance, all but summons the body into motion through subcortical networks that work without our awareness.
• Top-down and bottom-up. Movement has two neural routes. A voluntary route that begins in the prefrontal cortex: planned, intended movement, like performing a dance one has learned. And an involuntary route that begins in the brainstem, the amygdala and the vagus nerve: an emotional discharge that can run ahead of awareness, like trembling, weeping and a sudden sway. This is the very distinction between self-induced ecstasy and true ecstasy, in the language of the nervous system: self-induced ecstasy is a movement from above, intended; true ecstasy is a response from below, unforced.
• Neurogenic tremor as discharge. In Berceli's account, spontaneous trembling after intense arousal is an innate mechanism by which the nervous system restores its balance, and he built his tension-release exercises on it. It describes, in physiological terms, the trembling people report after intense arousal, and it gives the true trembling in the reports a bodily vocabulary. I do not offer it as an account of why the Prophet ﷺ wept.
• Collective synchrony. Moving in time with a group increases closeness and cooperation and softens the line between self and other (Wiltermuth and Heath, 2009), which Durkheim called collective effervescence. This explains the effect of group remembrance on people in sensory and social terms, without needing an outpouring from the unseen.
• The neuroscience of religious experience. The finding that bears most directly on this question comes from Newberg's brain imaging (SPECT), in very small samples: focused prayer and meditation raised the activity of the prefrontal cortex, that is, more conscious control, the state of disciplined humble attention and dignity, and speaking in tongues lowered it, conscious control switched off. That unrestrained state was not Sufi ecstasy, so I hold the comparison loosely: quiet, humble attention and unrestrained movement may be two different neural states rather than two degrees of one thing, which is close to the line the sacred law draws between intended dignity and uncontrolled movement.

The limits of science here
Everything above explains the mechanism, not the unseen reality. Newberg himself refuses to reduce the experience to a "God spot" in the brain, and holds that describing what happens neurologically neither proves nor disproves the divine meaning. Calm and blessing are from God alone. They are not reducible to brain activity. Science describes the body signal. Blessing is God's way of acting, above measurement.

Third: the spread of the phenomenon across traditions

Swaying in worship is not a sectarian innovation to be uprooted. It is a human tendency that is all but universal. In Judaism there is shuckling, the swaying during prayer and the reading of the Torah, which is grounded in "all my bones shall say" (Psalm 35) and in the image of the trembling candle flame in the Zohar. In some forms of charismatic Christian worship there is swaying and movement. The phenomenon is described in more than one tradition.

One reservation, and it is Somatic Thinking itself: I take the phenomenon, the body moving under load, and I return the metaphysics, its interpretation as a rising force or "kundalini." I keep the body and I refuse the ontology of forces. What happens is a set of bodily sensory signals, signals of the body under load, which I will call body signals from here on; not a force. And whatever effect follows is from the blessing of God, not a power the act generates.

Where the paper meets Somatic Thinking

Before the table, one clause fixes the axis the whole comparison hangs on: the inner being connected with the outer being and in harmony with it, which is what balance and presence mean in Somatic Thinking. From here, the Prophet's bearing in movement is nothing other than the outer being brought to the fullest harmony with the inner being. Every row in the table below is one face of that harmony: a meaning that dwells in the inner being, and a movement in the outer being that translates it truthfully.

Every concept in the paper has a place in the methodology. This table is the core of the work:

• "Movement follows meaning". The term in Somatic Thinking: The Human Interaction Cycle: sensation → perception → meaning → emotion → decision → action. The bridge: Movement is the action end of the cycle; in the Prophet's bearing, as the sound reports describe it, movement sits at its place in the cycle.
• Intention precedes movement. The term in Somatic Thinking: Intention, and the first principle of Baraka in Motion. The bridge: "A punch without intent is weak; with intention it fills with meaning"
• "When he turned, he turned with his whole body" (al-Tirmidhi 3638; a break in the chain by al-Tirmidhi's own note; Ahmad Shakir graded it sound). The term in Somatic Thinking: Presence as a state, not as concentration, and awareness of entanglement and synchrony. The bridge: Facing with the whole outer being, no fragmentation.
• Economy of movement and calm. The term in Somatic Thinking: Stillness and observation (the seventh pillar of Baraka in Motion). The bridge: Economy is presence, not coldness.
• The involuntary movements (tears, the sound in the chest, the pacing). The term in Somatic Thinking: Body signals (not forces). The bridge: The body's true signals under load.
• Calm and the effect on the heart. The term in Somatic Thinking: Blessing, as against forces. The bridge: "Every effect is from the blessing of God, not from vibrations or forces"
• Self-induced ecstasy (the forced movement). The term in Somatic Thinking: Exploity and Mr Control: leaving synchrony, manufacturing an edited version of reality. The bridge: Forcing a state is losing presence.
• True ecstasy (the involuntary state). The term in Somatic Thinking: A true body signal "from below" The bridge: True and excused, never manufactured.
• Settled presence (the settled state). The term in Somatic Thinking: Presence as the prevailing state of the inner being (Grandma Wise). The bridge: The goal both sides name.
• Remembrance in motion (calling on God by two of His names, the Strong and the Gentle). The term in Somatic Thinking: Remembrance in motion (the fifth pillar of Baraka in Motion). The bridge: Tying movement to meaning, governed by intention.

Three states of the temporal perspectives in Somatic Thinking help here. Exploity, leaning toward the future, and Mr Control, leaning toward the past, manufacture a "virtual reality" cut off from the moment, and that is the state of the forced performer. Grandma Wise, the state of the present, receives the sensation, perceives it, feels, then responds, and that is the embodiment of presence. The performed sway is a departure from presence. The true response that returns to calm is presence itself.

How Somatic Thinking settles the question

The solution is not that the Sufis "win" or the majority "wins." The solution is that the dispute stands on one ambiguous word, and once the word is replaced most of the dispute dissolves.

Where the ambiguity sits: both sides treat the sway as a claim about an absent reality. The Sufi calls it an outpouring or a state of ecstasy; the jurist hears in it a claim about the unseen smuggled into a worship whose forms come from revelation alone, and rejects it, rightly. Both are contending over something that cannot be measured or seen.

The move of Somatic Thinking, in four turns:

Reclassify what moves. The sway, at its root, is not a claim about the unseen. It is a body signal: the response of the nervous system to emotional load (vestibular and vagal regulation, and an in-between discharge). It is observable, widespread across traditions, and neutral before the law.

Reattribute the effect. Whatever calm or softening of the heart follows is a blessing from God, not a power the act generates. This withdraws the claim about the unseen that the jurists rightly reject.

The Prophet's standard as judge. Movement follows meaning, is governed by intention and presence, and ends in calm. By this measure self-induced ecstasy falls, the organised performance taken as a form of worship, and on condemning it where its purpose is show al-Ghazali and the jurists meet. And true ecstasy is excused, the compulsion that returns to stillness, and both sides excuse it.

Redraw the field. The door I open with Baraka in Motion is a disciplined alternative, not the remembrance circles. The movement of an ordinary day, washing for prayer, walking, the first coffee, work, becomes presence and worship by intention, and ends in stillness and observation. This steps past the problem of worship taking its forms from revelation, at its root, because you are not inventing a new form of worship. You are bringing the heart into a movement that is already permitted. And this is exactly what the Prophet's bearing outside the rites embodies.

The unifying criterion is the axis I began with: the outer being in harmony with the inner being. By this the sway is defined without ambiguity. Self-induced ecstasy is an outer being that moves with no inner being ahead of it, a visible performance cut loose, which is the very thing the jurists and al-Ghazali reject. True ecstasy is an outer being translating a true inner being and then returning to calm, and that is the excused one. The whole question comes down to one: does the outer being translate the inner being, or perform without one?

For the answer I go back to how the Qur'an describes those who stand in awe of their Lord when they hear His word: where the effect begins in the body, and where it ends.

﴿اللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابًا مُتَشَابِهًا مَثَانِيَ تَقْشَعِرُّ مِنْهُ جُلُودُ الَّذِينَ يَخْشَوْنَ رَبَّهُمْ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمْ وَقُلُوبُهُمْ إِلَىٰ ذِكْرِ اللَّهِ﴾

"God has sent down the best of discourse, a Book consistent within itself, its passages paired; the skins of those who stand in awe of their Lord shiver at it, then their skins and their hearts soften to the remembrance of God." (Qur'an 39:23)

Ibn Kathir, commenting on it, calls this the quality of the righteous when they hear the word of the Almighty, and describes its people as those who "keep to proper conduct when they hear it, as the Companions did when they heard the word of God recited by the Messenger of God ﷺ: their skins shivered, then softened with their hearts to the remembrance of God. They did not cry out, and they did not force on themselves what was not in them. They had a steadiness, a stillness, a courtesy and an awe that no one has matched." And he relates from Qatadah: "This is the description of the friends of God. God described them as people whose skins shiver, whose eyes weep and whose hearts find rest in the remembrance of God. He did not describe them as losing their minds or falling unconscious." I read in this verse the whole arc, a bodily response that is not chosen, then softening and stillness, and in that arc the very difference between excused true ecstasy and forced, self-induced ecstasy.

So the dispute is not, in truth, over whether the body moves in worship. The body of the Prophet ﷺ moved, as the reports carry it to us, with the fullest meaning. It is over the movement being performed before meaning has preceded it, and being taken as a fixed form of worship. On rejecting that, the jurists and the discerning Sufis meet. Somatic Thinking does no more than give the body back its right name, a signal and not a force, an effect from the blessing of God and not a power the act generates, and restore the Prophet's order: meaning first, then presence, then the body's true response, then calm.

I noticed that Somatic Thinking made this same move on itself. In my 2021 chapter I used a borrowed word for these signals, the word everyone used. Later I set it aside for "body signals" and "blessing," and refused the idea of forces outright. To keep the observed phenomenon, drop that name, and rename it precisely: that very move is what the question of swaying needs.

Four steps to presence in the Prophet's movement

The published chapter sets out four steps to presence guided by Somatic Thinking. They are the root I build on, and I anchor each of them in a soundly transmitted movement of the Prophet ﷺ:

• 1 · Freeing the mind. Freedom from the random glance and from the posture of the procession and of pride, with no affectation: "no two men would walk at his heels." Recorded by Ahmad (no. 6549), Abu Dawud (no. 3770) and Ibn Majah (no. 244); al-Albani graded its chain good.
• 2 · Clearing the intention. "Actions are by intentions." Agreed upon, al-Bukhari (no. 1) and Muslim (no. 1907). "I do not eat reclining." Recorded by al-Bukhari in his Sahih (no. 5398). And my own rule: nine tenths of a punch is intention.
• 3 · Becoming aware of entanglement and synchrony. Visible synchrony: "When he turned, he turned with his whole body." al-Tirmidhi (no. 3638), with a break in the chain by al-Tirmidhi's own note; Ahmad Shakir graded it sound. Carrying the child in prayer. His wife Aisha resting her cheek against the cheek of the Prophet ﷺ to watch the Abyssinians at play: al-Bukhari (no. 454); Muslim (no. 892) records the same scene.
• 4 · Activating sensory and somatosensory perception. The true involuntary signals: the tears, recorded by al-Bukhari in his Sahih (no. 1303); the sound in the chest, recorded by Abu Dawud (no. 904), al-Nasa'i (no. 1214) and Ahmad, graded sound by Ibn Hibban and al-Albani; the face lighting up, recorded by al-Bukhari in his Sahih (no. 3556); the pacing at the clouds, recorded by Muslim (no. 899); then their dissolving into calm and dignity.

Calm is not a fifth step. It is the state the four steps bear: presence as the prevailing state of the inner being. The published steps stay as they are, and each step has a sound Prophetic anchor.

This is my contemplative reading: the calm that closes the four steps is the rest the verse ties to the remembrance of God. Its seat is the heart, and the body bears witness to it without making it.

"Surely in the remembrance of God do hearts find rest." (Qur'an 13:28)

Sources and references

The foundations the paper rests on:

• The picture of the Prophet's bodily movement in the sound hadith and the early biographies (an unpublished preliminary study by the author), with its table of hadith and grades.
• The Prophet's bodily conduct and bearing in movement and the question of swaying in the remembrance of God (an unpublished preliminary study by the author).
• Samer Hassan, "Somatic Thinking: Framing the Findings With Deliberate Practice," in Tünde Erdös, Coaching Presence: Understanding the Power of the Non-Verbal Relationship (McGraw-Hill / Open University Press, 2021), Ch. 5. ISBN-13: 978-0-335-24965-7.
• «من التوازن إلى البركة», From Balance to Baraka (the Arabic and Islamic articulation, where Baraka in Motion lives).

Sufi and juristic sources:

• Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), the book on the etiquette of listening and ecstasy, vol. 2, pp. 295 to 304 (the edition with al-Iraqi's hadith annotations; pagination matches the printed text on al-Maktaba al-Shamila).
• Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri, al-Risala al-Qushayriyya (The Epistle), ed. Abd al-Halim Mahmud and Mahmud ibn al-Sharif, Cairo: Dar al-Ma'arif, vol. 1, pp. 161 to 163 (self-induced ecstasy, true ecstasy and settled presence).
• Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim, on al-Ahzab 33:21 ("a great principle for taking the Messenger of God ﷺ as a model in his words, his deeds and his states") and on al-Zumar 39:23 (both passages verified verbatim against the text of Ibn Kathir's commentary on quran.com, 2026-11-08).
• Al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam, Qawa'id al-Ahkam fi Masalih al-Anam, vol. 2, pp. 349 to 350, Mu'assasat al-Rayyan (on the condemnation of dancing and clapping; pages as cited in the author's second study).
• The positions of the four schools of law as set out in the second study (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali).

Scientific studies (the neurological and sensory layer):

• Rocking, the vestibular system and the hastening of sleep (a study in mice): Kompotis K. et al., "Rocking Promotes Sleep in Mice through Rhythmic Stimulation of the Vestibular System," Current Biology 29(3), 2019, 392 to 401. doi 10.1016/j.cub.2018.12.007.
• The basal ganglia and the supplementary motor area in rhythm perception: Grahn J. A. and Brett M., "Rhythm and Beat Perception in Motor Areas of the Brain," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19(5), 2007, 893 to 906. doi 10.1162/jocn.2007.19.5.893.
• Motor synchrony and cooperative behaviour: Wiltermuth S. S. and Heath C., "Synchrony and Cooperation," Psychological Science 20(1), 2009, 1 to 5. doi 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02253.x.
• Collective effervescence: Durkheim É., Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris: Alcan, 1912 (English: Fields K. E., trans., The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, New York: Free Press, 1995).
• Brain imaging in meditation and prayer (raised frontal activity): Newberg A. et al., "The Measurement of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow during the Complex Cognitive Task of Meditation," Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 106(2), 2001, 113 to 122. doi 10.1016/S0925-4927(01)00074-9. Newberg A. et al., "Cerebral Blood Flow during Meditative Prayer," Perceptual and Motor Skills 97(2), 2003, 625 to 630. doi 10.2466/pms.2003.97.2.625.
• Brain imaging in speaking in tongues (lowered frontal activity): Newberg A. et al., "The Measurement of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow during Glossolalia," Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 148(1), 2006, 67 to 71. doi 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2006.07.001. The samples in these three studies are very small.
• Against reducing the experience to "a spot in the brain": Newberg A., d'Aquili E. and Rause V., Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, New York: Ballantine, 2001.
• Neuroplasticity in meditation: Davidson R. J. et al., "Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation," Psychosomatic Medicine 65(4), 2003, 564 to 570. doi 10.1097/01.PSY.0000077505.67574.E3. Lutz A. et al., "Long-term Meditators Self-induce High-amplitude Gamma Synchrony during Mental Practice," PNAS 101(46), 2004, 16369 to 16373. doi 10.1073/pnas.0407401101.
• The voluntary and involuntary routes of movement under emotion: LeDoux J. E., "Emotion Circuits in the Brain," Annual Review of Neuroscience 23, 2000, 155 to 184. doi 10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.155. Porges S. W., "The Polyvagal Theory," International Journal of Psychophysiology 42(2), 2001, 123 to 146. Panksepp J., Affective Neuroscience, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Neurogenic tremor as discharge: Berceli D., Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), BookSurge, 2005. Berceli D. et al., "Effects of Self-induced Unclassified Therapeutic Tremors on Quality of Life among Non-professional Caregivers: A Pilot Study," Global Advances in Health and Medicine 3(5), 2014. doi 10.7453/gahmj.2014.032 (a small pilot study; the peer-reviewed evidence on TRE is limited).
• Witnesses across traditions: Jewish shuckling (Psalm 35, the Zohar), and charismatic worship.

A methodological limit: collective effervescence as a chemical account, the effectiveness of TRE as a stand-alone therapy, and the "God spot" are all contested in the science and are cited as hypotheses, not facts. Throughout, the science describes the mechanism, not the unseen.

The companion to this paper reads the same two sides of a human being, the outer being and the inner being, through a chapter of the Qur'an that is three verses long: «What Melts and What Grows: Surat al-Asr on the Outer Being and the Inner Being».