Areas › Your body
Your body
You cannot think your way out of a body that is braced. This area starts there: the breath, the ground under you, moving, eating, resting, and the small physical things that change how the rest of the day lands.
What works for this
Working from the body first
A body that has not slept, eaten or moved has less left over for holding itself steady. Changing the state you are in is often faster than changing the thoughts you are having, and it is more reliable when you are already worn out.
One move, today
A long slow out breath, longer than the in breath, three times. The out breath is the part that does the work.
What matches
7 practicesHealth advice usually assumes a kitchen, a fridge and money for the week. If you are working with less than that, the answer is not to try harder at the advice. It is to shrink the plan until it fits what you actually have.
A plan you cannot keep does more than fail. It quietly adds to the pile of evidence that nothing you do makes any difference, and that pile is heavy…
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…
For a child having a hard time, one adult who plainly thinks well of them makes more difference than almost anything else. A coach or a teacher can be that person.
Studies of children growing up through poverty, hunger and worse keep landing on the same finding: those who did well usually had somebody who…
What frightens a body is usually not how hard a thing is, it is having no way out. So put movement as an offer. If it feels alright, you might try lifting your arms.
The wording is doing quiet work here. Lift your arms, and see what happens if you lift your arms, are the same physical event, but only one of them…
Whatever a person walks in carrying belongs in the practice. The ache in the hip, the irritation, tears that arrive for no reason, the part that thinks all of this is nonsense.
Complex trauma teaches people to leave pieces of themselves at the door, and a yoga mat is an easy place to carry on doing exactly that, particularly…
Sometimes eyes water during body work with no sad thought attached to it. Nothing has gone wrong, and there is nothing that needs explaining.
If it happens to you, let it happen. If it happens to someone you are working with, say something plain and warm: that this is common, that they do…
If pain is the thing you live with, start the session with the stroking sequence rather than the conversation. Arms, forehead, crown, cheeks, slowly.
It does two jobs in one go: gentle wide contact takes some edge off the pain, and it brings a person out of guarded alertness into being able to…