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 practicesThe pull towards bread, pasta and biscuits when you are low is not simply greed. Carbohydrate makes it easier for the brain to get hold of the raw material it needs for serotonin, so it gives a real if short lived lift.
Calling it self medication instead of a failure of character changes what you do next. You stop trying to out-discipline the craving and start asking…
Irritable bowel symptoms turn up more often in people with ADHD, and they tend to track stress. If your stomach is at its worst in the weeks when everything else is at its worst, that is information rather than coincidence.
Two things help more often than they get suggested. Cutting caffeine frequently settles symptoms on its own, since it speeds the gut up and raises…
Moving first does not only help you concentrate. It takes some of the heat out of being stuck, which is often the thing that ends the task.
For a lot of people the problem is not the maths, it is what happens inside them when the maths does not come immediately. That surge of frustration…
Hours of nothing, then panic, then three hours locked onto the wrong task, then dread, then a promise that tomorrow will be different. If that is your day, it is a known pattern and not a character flaw.
People post this shape as a joke and clinicians recognise it as an accurate description. Seeing it written down is often the moment something…
If a child is climbing the walls, green space helps most, a walk down a busy street helps a bit, and staying in the room helps least. Any of the three beats none.
The research on this puts them in that order rather than saying only a forest will do. A park, a scruffy playing field, the bit of grass behind the…
Slow movement practices seem to help mood, sleep and the general hum of stress. Bringing that background level down often does more for your concentration than trying to concentrate harder.
Running on a constant stress signal wears down exactly the part of you that plans, waits and holds a thought. So lowering the load is not a soft…
Wanting sugar, salt and something sharp at the end of a punishing week is physiology talking, not a defect in your character.
Long stretches of high stress come with real bodily consequences, and a shifted appetite is one of the visible ones. Fighting the craving head on…