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 practicesYou do not have to close your eyes. If keeping them open, soft and lowered, is what lets you stay in the room, that is the better version for you.
Closing your eyes takes away your ability to check the room, and for anyone whose body is used to watching, that costs more than it gives. Make it an…
The body answers in sensations, in pictures, in a mood that turns up without explanation. If no words come when you check in, nothing has gone wrong.
People often decide they are bad at this because they went looking for a sentence and found a tight jaw instead. The tight jaw is the answer. Take…
If a few quiet minutes with your body turn up an ache or a tightness you had not noticed before, the practice has not made things worse. It has shown you something that was already there.
This catches a lot of people out. They sit down hoping to feel calmer, meet a knot in the stomach instead, and decide the whole thing is not for…
Practise with the noise on, at least some of the time. The quiet room is not where you are going to need the skill.
A calm that only exists in a silent house is not much use in an open plan office or a kitchen at teatime. Once you can settle in the quiet, do a…
Once a day, go from head to feet and notice what is there. A good deal of what you find will be plain need: thirsty, hungry, needing the loo, needing to stand up.
When you get absorbed in something these signals go unheard for hours, and then you wonder why you feel dreadful by four o'clock. The scan is dull,…
Brain imaging does show that practice changes something. Be careful with anyone who tells you a great deal more than that.
It genuinely helps to know that sitting and breathing is not nothing, particularly if you have been told your whole life to just try harder. It also…
In muscle relaxation you are usually told to let go slowly. If slow leaves you fidgeting, let go all at once. The version you will keep doing is the better version.
The standard sequence is to tense a muscle group, hold it, then release gradually, and for some people that long release is unbearable to sit…