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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
28 practicesFour steps you can do in ten seconds in the middle of anything: stop, take one breath, look at what is actually happening, then carry on.
It fits inside an argument, a shopping queue, the second before you send a message you will regret. The value is not the breath itself, it is the…
Say it plainly whenever you teach anything: the way I am showing you this is not the way it has to be done. Change it until it works for you.
Anyone who has failed at the standard version of something several times will not try again unless they are told clearly that adapting it is allowed.…
Cold water on your face, especially around the eyes and cheeks, slows things down fast. Splash it, or hold a cold flannel there for half a minute.
This is one of the few things that works when you are too far gone to concentrate on anything. It asks for no skill and no privacy beyond a tap. Lean…
Cross your arms over your chest, hook your thumbs together, and tap your shoulders slowly, left then right. You set the pressure and the speed.
Twenty or thirty seconds is enough to feel something shift, and most people find the breath falls into step with the tapping on its own. Warmth in…
You do not need a diagnosis to be worth teaching this to. Something that takes seconds, costs nothing and travels with you is worth having before you need it.
Practise it on an ordinary day, sitting on the bus or waiting for the kettle, so your hands already know it when the day is not ordinary. That is…
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…
Trace a square in the air with your finger while you breathe: in for four along the first side, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
The counting brings the breath down to somewhere between four and six a minute, depending on how fast you count, which is the range most of the heart…
In the thick of it, keep your eyes open and give them something outside you to rest on. A fingertip, a doorframe, the line where the wall meets the ceiling.
Closing your eyes takes away the evidence that you are here and safe, and for some people it lets images in that they were holding off. Most…
Breathe in, then let it out as a sigh you can actually hear. Not a polite one.
The sound is the point. A silent out breath does some of the work, and letting the voice into it adds a bit more, which is probably why sighing turns…
Tap the fleshy side of one hand with the other and say it plainly: even though I am feeling all this in my body right now, I can accept that this is how I am.
You can strip away everything else and this part still stands up. Naming the state and accepting it in the same sentence blocks the second wave, the…
Before you try anything, give your distress a number out of ten. Do the thing. Then give it a number again.
Even a drop from eight to six is worth having, because you were the one who moved it. That is often the more important result: not the two points,…
When you have gone numb rather than frantic, try a long low sound on the out breath. Voo, drawn out until the breath runs out, so your lips and chest buzz with it.
This is for the flat, far away state, not the racing one. The buzz gives you something unmistakable to feel when nothing else is registering, which…
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…
Rest one hand on your forehead and the other on your chest. After a few minutes, move the forehead hand down to your belly. Eyes open or closed, whichever you prefer.
Again the instruction is only to notice what goes on between the two hands. That noticing is quietly the training: it is body awareness arriving…
Two senses rarely get named: the one that tells you where your limbs are, and the one that tells you which way is up. Pressing your feet into the floor or slowly turning your head feeds both.
When someone feels unreal, or far away from their own body, these are the channels that have gone quiet. They carry plain information with no feeling…
Keep one strong smell for when you have gone flat, lemon or peppermint, and one soft smell for when you are wound up, something like lavender. Smell asks nothing of you, which is its whole advantage.
Set this up in advance, because the moment you need it is the moment you will not feel like planning. A small bottle in a bag, a sprig in a pocket, a…
For coming down, something sweet taken slowly tends to help more than anything you chew: sipped through a straw, or let dissolve on the tongue. Nobody around you can tell you are doing it.
Slow sucking soothes in a way that goes right back to the first weeks of life, and it is quiet enough to use in a meeting, on a bus, in a waiting…
When you have gone flat and far away, chew something noisy or blow something: pretzels, raw carrot, bubbles, a slow puff at a candle flame. It lifts you without tipping you into panic.
Collapse does not respond to calming, since you are already too far down for that. What helps is work for the jaw and a long active out breath, both…
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…
If talking about feelings has always felt foreign or a bit embarrassing, treat this as a once a day checklist instead. Five boxes, no discussion, nothing to perform.
Plenty of people who go blank at how are you feeling can tell you straight away whether their shoulders are tight or their breathing is shallow.…
Before you walk into a room with someone, ask what you are carrying in with you, and what you are likely to leave behind when you go.
State travels ahead of words. A hard conversation an hour ago, a bad night, a piece of news you have not dealt with: any of it will be in the room…
Ask who you are today and what body you are living in today, and let the answer be different from yesterday's. You are more fluid than solid.
Hard experience tends to freeze a person into a description: the damaged one, the difficult one, the one who cannot cope. Asking the question daily…
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…
When you sit down to breathe, notice your pelvis. Tucked hard under or tipped hard forward both squeeze the breath; somewhere in the middle lets the diaphragm move.
Rock gently forward and back a few times and stop where the breath feels easiest, rather than aiming for a posture that looks correct. You will…
Before twisting, draw your belly gently in towards your spine. It looks after your lower back, and it is worth feeling for its own sake: you steady the middle before you turn towards anything.
The physical version is simple. A light drawing in of the abdomen, not a clench, held while you rotate and released as you come back. The felt…
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…
Learn one plain standing position and keep coming back to it: feet under hips, hips under shoulders, ears above shoulders, chin drawn back a little, arms hanging.
The point is not that this posture is correct. It is that having one shape you return to gives you something to measure by, so you can tell that…
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…