Deep pressure calms the nervous system
Firm, sustained pressure through the hands and body (squeezing, squishing, pressing into resistive material) feeds proprioceptive input that nudges the body toward the calming, parasympathetic side — a bottom-up way to down-regulate that doesn't need words or willpower.
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Background
Proprioception is the body’s sense of where its parts are and how hard they are working. Feeding it strong, steady input — pressing the hands hard into resistive putty or kinetic sand, squeezing, deep-pressure touch — tends to shift the nervous system toward its calming branch. It is a bottom-up regulator: it acts through the body rather than through thoughts, so it can help when an over-aroused or escalating state is past the point where reasoning lands.
This is why redirecting a spiking arousal state into a hands-in tactile task can interrupt the escalation and channel the energy into something settling, and why the same materials that occupational therapists hand to children work just as well for adults — the regulatory need does not expire with age. Note this is the opposite role to sensory input that overwhelms: here the input is sought and dosed deliberately to bring the system down, not an unwanted stimulus that pushes it up. The evidence is partial and inconsistent (sensory-integration trials show some individualised-goal benefit but mixed results for behaviour and regulation), so treat it as a low-cost tool that helps many people rather than a guaranteed fix.