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
139 practicesOnce a movement is familiar, drop the pattern. Let it curve and wander towards wherever your body seems to want it, rather than doing it correctly.
Following instructions well is a skill many people learned early, sometimes because it was not safe to do anything else. A practice made entirely of…
Instead of breathing deeply in general, pick the place that feels tight, the front of the ribs, the chest, one shoulder, and send the breath there.
You are not really moving air into your shoulder, but putting your attention there while you breathe does two things: you start to feel that area in…
After movement, take a moment on five things: the quality of your mind, of the sensation in your body, of your breathing, of your mood, and of your energy.
Doing this after moving rather than before gives you something to notice, since the body has just changed. Over time it builds a vocabulary. People…
End a check-in with a question rather than a summary: what do I need in order to be properly here today?
Noticing your state can leave you stuck in reporting on yourself. The need question turns it into something you can act on, and the answer is often…
Left, right, left, right. Walking, swimming, drumming and rowing all give the body the same steady side to side rhythm that the seated techniques are copying.
If tapping your own shoulders feels odd, or you would rather not do anything that looks like a technique, go for a walk instead and let the rhythm do…
Notice one thing your body is telling you right now. Thirsty, needing the loo, shoulders up somewhere near your ears. That noticing is a skill and it does come back with use.
Long stretches of stress teach you to override the body's signals until you stop hearing them at all. Then hunger, tiredness and the early edge of…
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…
How often you move matters more than how hard. Pick something you would still do on a mediocre Tuesday.
Big efforts on good days followed by nothing for a fortnight tend to average out at very little. Three easy sessions a week that you actually keep…
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…
Once a shape feels safe, it becomes somewhere to explore from. The question stops being am I doing this right and turns into how does my body want to move now.
Stay in an easy position long enough for it to go slightly dull. Dull is the sign that the ground under you is steady. From there, small experiments:…
Picture a cat getting up from a nap. One side lengthens and reaches while the other side curls in, then they swap over. Do that. Add breath and sound if you want them.
After a minute of copying the animal, drop the instructions and let your body carry on however it likes. That is the reason for starting here:…
Take a shape that asks something of you, warrior or mountain, eyes open, the middle of your body switched on. Then, without coming out of it, drop your attention inside and let the pose hold you instead.
Two things get practised in one position. First the doing: strong legs, clear gaze, a body that is ready. Then the yielding: still there, still…
Play belongs here. Being a lion, a tree, a hissing snake, the way children do it with no embarrassment at all.
A lot of people meet trauma work as something solemn, and solemn is easy to sit through without ever softening. Silliness is harder to fake. If a…
Open your mouth and put on a big obvious fake yawn. More often than not a real one follows, and the soft palate lets go with it.
Yawns are catching, so if you are sitting with someone else one of you starting will usually set off the other. Let it be a proper one: jaw wide,…
When the person in front of you starts yawning during body work, it is usually not boredom. Bodies yawn as they let go of what they were holding.
Say so out loud, because most people apologise for it and then clamp down on the very thing that was starting to shift. A simple 'that is a good…
Let the corners of your mouth lift about as much as they would if you had just remembered something mildly pleasant. Not a smile anybody would notice.
This comes from dialectical behaviour therapy, where it is used as a way of softening without pretending. You are not being asked to feel happy, and…
Work one side of your face or body first, then stop and compare. The difference between the treated side and the untreated one is often surprisingly clear.
This is a useful trick if you tend to finish a practice thinking nothing happened. Rather than asking whether you feel better, which is a vague…
End by pressing your palms together and staying there a moment. Each hand is giving and being given to at the same time.
It is a small thing that lands hard for people who only know how to be the one who helps. Notice the warmth and the pressure and notice that you…
Finish by letting your eyes travel slowly from one side to the other a few times, open or closed, then bring them back to the middle and notice how you are.
The idea borrowed from EMDR is that this helps the calmer state settle in rather than evaporate at the door. Whether it does that is not established,…
You are not trying to get calm here. You are trying to find out what is actually going on in you, and whatever turns up is the useful part.
If a practice becomes something you can pass or fail, it will quietly join the list of things you are bad at. So drop the target. Ask what you notice…
Most of us hold a whole day around the eyes without knowing it. Scrunch them shut, open them wide, then rest your fingertips lightly over them for a few breaths.
After that, try the small points: the spot between your eyebrows, your temples, the soft dip under each eye where the cheekbone begins. Press only as…
Find the soft place just under and behind your jaw, near your ears, and rest your fingers there. Then open and close your mouth slowly, slide the jaw forwards and back, and draw your chin gently towards your throat.
Jaws get held all day, often by the same hunched screen posture that pushes the head forward. Go slowly enough that nothing clicks or hurts. You may…
If you carry everything in your neck, that is not a separate problem from feeling on edge. The nerve that settles you passes right between the muscles that are gripping.
The ones you can feel most easily run from behind each ear down towards the collarbone, with more just behind them along the side. Rest a warm hand…
Put your right hand flat on your left upper chest, gather the skin gently and draw it downwards, then tilt your head and lift your left ear away from it. Hold there and wait.
You are making a long slow stretch up the front of the neck, not pressing on anything. Wait rather than count: somewhere in the next minute a deeper…
Do not put a clock on any of this. Stay with each position until your body asks for a deeper breath or produces a yawn, then move on.
Timing by the clock turns the practice into another task to be completed. Waiting for a signal teaches you what your own signs of release actually…
After the throat, go straight to the chest. Most people feel the two loosen together, and noticing that link teaches you something about your own wiring.
Sigh the throat open, then put both hands on your breastbone and let the breath drop lower. If you have ever had a lump in your throat and a…
Rest both hands on your chest, feel it lift and fall, and let the breath go low enough that your belly moves too. If someone you love turns up in your mind while you do it, let them stay.
Gratitude works here as well, as long as it is specific and true: one thing from today rather than a list you are supposed to produce. Pets count,…
Hands on your belly, breathe so that it moves, and listen. A gurgle down there is a real sign that you have stopped bracing.
Digestion is one of the first things to shut down when you feel under threat and one of the first to come back when you do not. That is why the noise…
You rarely need the whole tour. Pick the one place the tension actually lives for this person today, and work there.
A real session has no room for a long sequence and no need of one. Watch where the holding shows itself: a jaw that never rests, shoulders up near…
Keep offering these small practices and people start asking for them. When someone requests one by name, something has changed about who is running their regulation.
Responses also speed up with repetition, so what needed ten minutes in the first month can take two later on. Name that shift out loud when it…
There is a real difference between a practice you add to your treatment and one you use in place of it. Massage, breathing, acupressure and the rest belong in the first group.
Nobody minds you tapping, stretching or seeing an acupuncturist. What matters is that none of it quietly takes the place of the medication, the…
Most people are already doing something for themselves outside your room: herbs, a chiropractor, breathing videos, a weekly massage. Ask, plainly and without a raised eyebrow.
If you treat it as fringe behaviour, you will simply stop being told about it, and then you are working half blind. You want to know what is…
One of the quiet gains from body practice is that you can feel more without having to do something about it straight away. The feeling arrives, you watch it, it passes.
That watching part is worth practising on small things: an itch you do not scratch, cold hands, mild boredom. Building room in ordinary moments means…
Words for feelings tend to arrive after the body has been noticed, not before. Find the sensation first, then see what it wants to be called.
Try it in that order: tight across the chest, hot in the face, heavy behind the eyes. Then a name, if one comes, and no forcing if it does not.…
Not all of this is a matter of how you say you feel. Breathing, exercise and hands on work shift things that can be measured from outside: heart rhythm, stress hormones, muscle tone.
That matters if you are the kind of person who suspects their own good moods, or if you have to make a case to a colleague who wants numbers. It also…
Tapping pairs light contact on acupressure points with saying the trouble out loud. The claims made for it run ahead of the evidence, and it is cheap, quick and safe enough to try.
The idea underneath is that you hold the distressing thing in mind while your body receives a steady, harmless signal at the same time. Whether the…
The usual round runs inside eyebrow, outside eye, under eye, under nose, middle of chin, collarbone, under arm, with the top of the head if you want it. About five soft taps at each, naming the thing briefly as you go.
Nothing here should hurt. Fingertips, light, more of a tap than a knock. The practical value of a route like this is that your attention keeps moving…
If tapping feels too jumpy, use the same face points differently. Feel for a tender spot inside the eyebrow, under the eye, or just below the cheekbone towards the nose, then make slow small circles there.
Vary it: lighter, then a little deeper, circling one way and then the other, and see which direction the tissue seems to prefer. Slow steady contact…
There comes a moment when the tissue under your fingers gives a little and allows more depth. Wait for that instead of pressing your way to it.
It sounds fanciful until you have felt it once, and then it is obvious. Rest your hand, keep the pressure steady, and let the softening decide the…