Sitting meditation asks for the hardest possible version of the task, sustained inward attention with nothing outside to grip. Attach attention to something ongoing instead, the feel of your feet, the water, the smell of soil, and the demand drops sharply while the training stays. You still notice you have drifted, and you still come back. That is the part that counts.

Choosing to go slower is itself the exercise, because it is a small piece of holding back that you can actually feel. Ten minutes is plenty. Outdoors adds something, though a corridor will do. If your head is going round and round, this tends to interrupt it more reliably than sitting down and trying to stop the thoughts head on.

Attention difficulties run in families, so the adult in the room is often working with much the same wiring at the end of a longer day. Practising together takes the spotlight off the child and quietly changes the thing they actually live inside, which is how you are with them. It also gives them a model that does not arrive as an instruction.

Being able to disappear into a scene is a real ability, even when it has mostly got you into trouble at school and in meetings. A recording that walks you through a place in detail puts that ability to work. The voice matters more than people expect: if a narrator irritates you the practice will not land, so try several and drop the ones that grate without treating it as another thing you failed at.

A written page holds you to it. The marks are still there afterwards, and there is no pretending you drifted for ten minutes. So learn it that way first, until the noticing is second nature. The tap is for taking it out into the world once the noticing no longer needs propping up.

A first go that actually works gives you a reason to come back, and plenty of people never do come back. But one sitting builds nothing on its own. Whatever changes comes from the small amount you do in between, on ordinary days, when nothing has happened yet.

Real provocation turns up when you are least ready for it. This gives you the feeling with nothing at stake: the indignation, the tightening, the urge to argue with a screen. Watch it come and watch it go, then stop while it is still comfortably manageable.

The picture is not killing the anger off. It is closer to getting a big animal under control and walking it home: still strong, still yours, going roughly where you point it. Plenty of people only ever do this once. If that turns out to be you, the thing worth keeping is the memory of the moment you had hold of it.

Pick something you are sure of, something you would defend at a family dinner, and ask what it would look like if it were only mostly true. Where does it fail. Who does it fail. Doing that once, honestly, on your own ground does more for your temper than a hundred rounds of taking apart somebody else's argument.

The far edges of the body carry less charge, so they are a gentle place to find your bearings. Include the back, which people tend to skip: attention to what is behind you, resting against the chair, usually feels like being held up rather than exposed. Stop wherever it gets loud. Reaching the top of the head was never the point.

Observing keeps a small distance, which is useful early on and can quietly become the whole practice. Inhabiting is the further step: filling the space, taking up residence there. Try it with one region only, somewhere easy like the hands, and give it longer than feels necessary.