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
24 practicesFour in, hold four, four out, hold four. The holds are the strong part of this one, and they stay optional every single time.
Some people find the pauses deeply settling. Others meet the edge of what they can tolerate there, especially at the bottom of the exhale. Both are…
When you find yourself reaching for something sweet again, try asking what the reaching is doing for you instead of telling yourself off. Comfort, a small rebellion, a way to stay awake: the answer usually points somewhere useful.
Talk about being good or bad closes the conversation down. Curiosity keeps it open, and it tends to surface the actual job the food is doing, which…
If you are going to bring attention to your body, start with where your body is rather than what it feels. Feet on the floor, back against the chair, the weight of your hands in your lap.
Attention to the inside, the chest, the stomach, the throat, sits close to the emotional wiring and can open more than you meant to open. Position in…
One question does a lot of work: is what my body is doing right now a fair match for what is actually in front of me? Ask it plainly, and let the answer be either yes or no.
The point is not to talk yourself out of the feeling. The signal is information and it deserves a hearing. But you can hold it up against the room…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Breathing that has gone almost invisible happens in both kinds of stillness, so it will not tell you which one you are looking at. Muscle tone will.
Look at the jaw, the hands, the shoulders, the way the body is being held in the chair. Tight and set is one thing. Slack and heavy is another. You…
Try locking your ankle and holding everything rigid while you balance. You will fall over. The wobble was doing the work.
People who are frightened of losing control often try to hold themselves regulated: clamped, monitoring, allowing no drift. It is exhausting and it…
Hum a note you like for a few breaths, and try covering your ears with your palms so the sound fills your head.
The vibration carries through your throat and your inner ear, and humming lengthens the out breath for you without any counting. Choose your own note…
Breathe in, then push the air out gently against a closed throat, or against lightly pinched nostrils, for a couple of seconds.
The change of pressure in your chest is what does the work, and two or three rounds are enough to notice something. Keep it gentle. Straining is…
When someone is frightened, your words may not reach them however sensible they are. Drop your voice, slow right down, and let the tone do the work.
In high alarm, hearing tips towards low rumbling sounds and away from the range the human voice sits in, so reassurance can genuinely fail to land.…
When someone cannot take in your reassurance while they are frightened, that is the receiver and not their willingness. Wait for the wave to pass and try again.
In high arousal, hearing shifts away from the band the human voice occupies, so kind words can genuinely arrive as noise. It is easy to read that as…
Three minutes of slow breathing between one person and the next is not a break. It is part of the work.
Whoever you sit with next is reading your state before they hear a word of what you say, so arriving settled is a professional act rather than a…
A stress response is built to finish. The rush comes up, you do something with it, and then it drains away and you are back to yourself.
The trouble is that the doing something rarely happens, because you cannot run or shout in the middle of a meeting. The aim is not to stop the surge.…
Not all stillness is the same. One kind is braced and wide awake. The other has gone soft and far away.
In the braced kind there is high alertness and a lot of held tension: jaw set, hands tight, everything ready. In the collapsed kind the tone drops…
Thinking about a feeling tends to slow it down. Feeling it in your body tends to speed it up. Between those two you have a throttle.
When someone is flooded, moving to words, naming and a little distance brings it down. When someone is flat and describing their week from behind…
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…