By Hayley Louisa Mark · sources checked against Dr Mark Gillman’s published work · updated June 2026
Why a settled body quiets an anxious mind — a neuroscientist and older voices, each quote explained in plain words, and never oversold.
There is a quiet agreement, across very different people, about what helps a frightened body and a tired, over-running mind. A working neuroscientist and a few older voices — a psychologist, a teacher of rest, a student of how we carry ourselves — keep noticing the same things. Here are a handful of their observations, in their own exact words, each followed by a plain note on what it means, and what it does not. We quote them faithfully, and we are careful not to oversell them.
The first voice below is modern, cited neuroscience. The voices after it are older — careful observations from a century or more ago, offered as seasoned wisdom, not as proof. None of this is medical advice. If your symptoms are severe, new, or worsening, that is for a doctor; and if you are in crisis, call or text 988 (US) or find a local line at findahelpline.com.
On this page: the new science · the older science of rest · a thread through many traditions
The new science: pleasure, relief, and well-being
Dr Mark Alfred Gillman is a neuroscientist whose work concerns the body’s own endorphin chemistry — the system behind pain, stress, pleasure and well-being. (His work and credentials; his scientific legacy.) These passages are quoted from his book, and the notes beneath them stay strictly to what the science actually says.
Is a settled body the same as feeling good?
“Well-being seems to be a more sustained, less intense and therefore a more enigmatic response. Here, fewer of the hedonistic areas are needed to maintain a sense of well-being, which may explain the observation that it is relatively difficult to abolish hedonistic planes of ‘liking’ for pleasant feelings.”
— Dr Mark Gillman, How the Brain Controls All Pleasures (2018), ch. 3 – Hedonistic hotspots
In plain words. Well-being is not the same as a high. It is quieter, steadier, and it lasts — and Gillman’s point is that the brain seems to need far less to hold a baseline sense of being all right than it needs to manufacture a peak of pleasure. For anyone worn down by anxiety or grief, that is worth hearing. What we take from it — our reading, not his finding — is that the aim may be less to feel wonderful than to return to a low, steady okayness, a state that can prove more durable than it feels on a hard day.
Why do a frightened feeling and a braced body arrive together?
“Its main function is maintaining homeostasis i.e keeping a tight control of the internal environment of the body despite changes in the external and internal milieu. It is important for mediating output from the limbic system, and as such, is partially involved in basic emotions such as fear, rage, and anger.”
— Dr Mark Gillman, How the Brain Controls All Pleasures (2018), ch. 2 – The hypothalamus
In plain words. A small region deep in the brain works around the clock to keep your body’s internal conditions steady — and the very same region is also partly involved in your most basic emotions, including fear and anger. So the body’s physical balance and those same basic emotions are handled, in part, by the same small brain region. When you feel braced and alarmed, that is not weakness or a failure of faith; it is old biology doing its job. Knowing that can take some of the shame out of a frightened body.
Why does relief feel like pleasure?
“A practical illustration might occur when one miraculously escapes from a severe life-threatening situation. On returning to one’s normal usually neutral environment the natural feeling of relief may be experienced as pleasure.”
— Dr Mark Gillman, How the Brain Controls All Pleasures (2018), ch. 4 – The amygdala and its role in pleasure
In plain words. When real danger passes, simply returning to ordinary, uneventful life can arrive as a wave of pleasure — relief itself registers as something good. It is a quiet reminder that ‘nothing wrong right now’ is not nothing. To a nervous system that has been braced for a threat, plain ordinariness is a kind of gift, and learning to notice it is part of coming back to rest.
“We examined the pain-pleasure continuum in terms of two endorphin systems in balance, one producing pain and the other pleasure.”
— Dr Mark Gillman, How the Brain Controls All Pleasures (2018), ch. 3 – A connection that reaches deeper than a mere thought association
In plain words. This is Gillman’s own central finding: pain and pleasure are not simple opposites but two systems held in a balance — in his model one produces pain and the other relieves it (and, under certain conditions, tips over into pleasure), each built from the body’s own chemistry. You needn’t follow the neuroscience to take the human point — your inner weather is a balance, not a fixed verdict, and a balance can shift.
“While we still have a long way to go before we will be able to offer a satisfactory scientific answer to the question of what causes pleasure and/or well-being, we have made remarkable, even exciting progress in unravelling the puzzle.”
— Dr Mark Gillman, How the Brain Controls All Pleasures (2018), ch. 3 – Psychology and its relationship to neuroscience
In plain words. It matters that a serious scientist says this so plainly: we have learned a great deal, and we still do not have the whole answer to what makes a person well. That honesty is exactly why nothing on this page is oversold. The science can describe some of the machinery of calm; it cannot hand you peace. Hold it lightly, and let it serve you rather than rule you.
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The older science of rest
Long before brain imaging, careful observers of mind and body wrote down what they saw. They are not citing studies; they are describing what rest and worry actually do. Read them as seasoned wisdom rather than proof — but notice how little has changed.
Can you think your way calm?
“How can we expect repose of mind when we have not even repose of muscle?”
— Annie Payson Call, Power Through Repose (1891), ch. X ‘Nature’s Teaching’, Project Gutenberg #4337
In plain words. Annie Payson Call, writing in 1891, put the whole mind–body link into a single question: a clenched body and a calm mind do not easily share a room. You cannot always think your way to peace — but you can often unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders, and let the body lead the mind toward quiet. Not a cure; a door.
Why does worrying make everything harder?
“Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power.”
— William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology; and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1899), Talks to Students, I. The Gospel of Relaxation, Project Gutenberg #16287
In plain words. Writing as a psychologist over a century ago, James names something you have probably felt: worry does not only feel bad, it narrows you — it shuts down the easy flow of thought and drains the very capability you are anxious about needing. The remedy for a worried mind is rarely more effort; it is usually less.
“On the other hand, how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your respiration calm and complete, and your muscles all relaxed?”
— William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology; and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1899), Talks to Students, I. The Gospel of Relaxation, Project Gutenberg #16287
In plain words. ‘They’ here are the anxious, agitated feelings. James’s question is really an observation: a settled body is not very hospitable to a racing mind. When the breath is slow and complete and the muscles are loose, agitation has a harder time getting a foothold — a gentle thing to try, not a guarantee.
Does slow breathing actually help?
“The most quieting, relaxing, and strengthening of all exercises for the nerves comes in deep and rhythmic breathing.”
— Annie Payson Call, Nerves and Common Sense (1909), ch. II “How Women can keep from being Nervous”, Project Gutenberg #4339
In plain words. A simple, old piece of wisdom: slow, even breathing is among the kindest things you can do for a frayed nervous system. It costs nothing and is available in the middle of any sleepless night. We would add only this — it soothes; it does not treat illness — and if your body is sending strong alarms, that is for a doctor, not a breath.
What if trying to relax only makes it worse?
“It is essential at the outset of re-education to bring about the relaxation of the unduly rigid parts of the muscular mechanisms in order to secure the correct use of the inadequately employed and wrongly co-ordinated parts.”
— F. Matthias Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance (1910), Part II, Project Gutenberg #77075
In plain words. F. M. Alexander spent his life studying how we hold ourselves, and his starting point was always to release the over-tightened parts first. The lesson for a braced, weary body: you do not undo tension by trying harder. You begin by letting the rigid places soften, and let ease spread out from there.
How do you stop gripping what you cannot control?
“When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good.”
— William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology; and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1899), Talks to Students, I. The Gospel of Relaxation, Project Gutenberg #16287
In plain words. Once you have done what you can do, James says, let go of the result — ‘unclamp.’ Much of our tiredness is simply the grip we keep on outcomes we cannot control. Setting that grip down, on purpose, is itself a kind of rest — the kind that makes tomorrow’s work possible.
“It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the surest drags upon steady progress.”
— William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology; and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1899), Talks to Students, I. The Gospel of Relaxation, Project Gutenberg #16287
In plain words. The myth is that tension makes us effective. James — like any honest observer — saw the opposite: the easy, unhurried worker outlasts and outworks the clenched one. If you have been white-knuckling your way through a hard season, take this as permission to loosen your grip. Force rarely lasts; the gentle, unhurried hand is the one still working when evening comes.
A thread through many houses of prayer
You will find this same counsel in very different houses of prayer. The Christian contemplative, the Jewish soul keeping Sabbath, the Sufi, the Stoic, the Buddhist sitting still — each, in their own language, learns to quiet the body and loosen the grip of the striving self. The breath slows; the shoulders drop; the clenched will unclamps. It is one of the oldest and most widely repeated discoveries our kind has made.
We are careful here. We are not saying these traditions are the same, or that it makes no difference what you believe; they differ, deeply and honestly, and pretending otherwise would be its own small dishonesty. What we are noticing is more modest, and more interesting — that a settled body and a surrendered heart are a common human inheritance, arrived at again and again by people who never met.
And out of that, quietly, comes tolerance. If the peace you are reaching for has been found, in some form, by so many who are not your own, that is no threat to your faith; it is a reason for humility, and for kindness. You can be wholly at home in your own tradition and still honour the stranger at prayer in theirs. Contempt was never part of the stillness. The person who has truly grown quiet inside almost always grows gentler toward everyone outside — that may be the surest sign it is real.
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