Your body

The fast forceful practices are not for everyone. With high blood pressure, heart trouble or glaucoma, leave them out and use the slow ones, which carry no such warning.

Rapid breathing with effort behind it raises pressure inside the chest, the head and the eyes for as long as you keep it going. The gentler lift,…

Any breathing instruction that reaches you through a screen or a book comes from someone who cannot see you. Keep the final say over what your body does.

Recorded instructions have to be general. You are the one who knows that your chest tightens on holds, or that counting makes you anxious. Treat each…

A child cannot watch their own breathing, so give them something to watch instead. Bubbles through a wand show the out breath as it happens: too hard and it bursts, too weak and nothing comes.

Smelling a flower and then blowing it out gives each half of the breath a picture. The bubble wand is better still, because it answers back straight…

Heading towards the shape is the whole job. A perfect triangle is not what the pose is for, and nobody is marking it.

Perfectionism and going too hard tend to travel together, and between them they produce most of the injuries and most of the quitting. If you are…

Go slowly enough to learn something about yourself, rather than only a technique. What is worth keeping is knowing which breath does what in your body.

One round is rarely enough to tell. Try a breath for a minute or two, stop, and check what shifted: the chest, the shoulders, how loud your thoughts…

When someone is distressed, moving too fast to settle them can land as a message that their distress is not welcome here. Let them set the speed.

Offering a breath, a blanket, a change of subject: all of it can help, and all of it can arrive as a shutting down if it comes before the person has…

When you are helping someone settle, put the technique in their hands rather than your own. They tap themselves, they set the pressure, they stop when they want to.

Being touched by someone else, even kindly and with permission, asks a lot of a person whose body has been handled badly before. Self-administered…

After you have tried something to settle, check: how here do you feel now, compared with before? Do not assume it worked just because it usually does.

This takes ten seconds and does two jobs. It tells you whether that particular thing is worth reaching for again, and it slowly trains you to notice…

On a video call, two things still work well: touching your own face gently, and rocking. Both are yours to do, and both are visible enough to be done together.

Distance takes away most of what one person can offer another physically, so it helps to know what survives it. A hand resting on your cheek, fingers…

Whenever you offer a standing practice, offer the seated version in the same breath, and mean it. Say plainly that people should look after their own bodies and change anything that does not suit them.

Say it before you begin, not afterwards, so that nobody has to interrupt to ask. If you cannot see the people you are guiding, say that too, and say…

Offer any movement in three sizes: small, medium and full. Let people take the one that fits today, and let them change their mind halfway through.

For a twist that might be a simple reach, or a reach with the other hand placed behind, or loose swinging arms. The three sizes do quiet work. They…

When you offer someone a practice, ask them to tell you if it did nothing, and mean it. Say out loud that plenty of these do not land.

People agree that things helped for all sorts of reasons: not wanting to seem difficult, not wanting to disappoint you, having learned long ago that…

Let the breath go along with the movement rather than counting it out. If you are guiding someone, do not set the pace of their breathing for them.

Being told exactly when to breathe in and out is unpleasant for more people than you would expect, and for anyone whose breath was held tight through…

When somebody does not take up the movement you suggested, ask what got in the way before deciding they did not want to. Usually it is money, childcare, transport or time.

Cost, an awkward class time, nobody to watch the children, a room full of people you would have to make conversation with. None of that is…

If you are the therapist, you do not need to become the movement teacher as well. Sending somebody to a person trained for it is the better version of helping.

The evidence is for movement alongside therapy, not for therapy with a few stretches added by someone who picked them up from a video. Handing it…

Talk first, move second. Ending a hard conversation with something physical gives the body a route back down.

This works for a therapy group and it works for an evening at home. Say the difficult thing, then walk, stretch, wash up, anything that puts you back…

The way you sound reaches people more directly than what you say. There is a pathway that tunes the ear towards the human voice, and a warm, unhurried voice uses it.

Worth knowing whether you are the one speaking or the one listening. If you are settling a child or a friend, let your voice go slower and softer and…

Reaching for another person when you are wound up is not a distraction from coping. Contact can turn the alarm down at the source.

This is why a short call, a message to someone who knows you, or sitting in the same room as family is worth doing before you get as far as the…

When someone is frightened, your words may not reach them however sensible they are. Drop your voice, slow right down, and let the tone do the work.

In high alarm, hearing tips towards low rumbling sounds and away from the range the human voice sits in, so reassurance can genuinely fail to land.…

None of this needs explaining to work. A child who cannot say what happened can still be helped by breath, movement and sound.

That makes body based work useful right across the ages, and for anyone who finds talking hard, including people whose language is not the one the…

When someone cannot take in your reassurance while they are frightened, that is the receiver and not their willingness. Wait for the wave to pass and try again.

In high arousal, hearing shifts away from the band the human voice occupies, so kind words can genuinely arrive as noise. It is easy to read that as…

A child who does not feel safe cannot filter the room. The pencil scratch, the scraping chair, the fan and the rustle of a coat all arrive at the same volume as the teacher.

So the attention problem is real, and it is not the same thing as not caring or not trying. A quieter corner, a seat away from the noisy fan, a…

A child at the nursery door who charms you, then rages, then crumples is running through the whole repertoire in ninety seconds. Nothing has gone wrong yet.

The sequence is ordinary: try connection first, then protest, then collapse when neither works. What decides how the morning lands is what happens…

You do not have to read your child perfectly. Good enough, with repair after the ruptures, is what builds their steadiness.

Parents who read about how early experience shapes a child's stress system often hear it as a verdict on every time they snapped. That is not what it…

When you cannot settle yourself, borrow somebody else's steadiness. Sitting near a calm person, even without talking, is a real thing to try.

Choose by effect rather than by closeness. Some people you love leave you more wound up than you started, and some people you barely know are easy to…

When someone finally reaches somewhere safe, do not be surprised if they fall apart rather than bloom. Stay close through that part.

People who have lived on high alert often start grieving once the danger stops, and it can look like going backwards: more tears, more fear about the…