Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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625 practices

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What you are doing when you sit on the bank has a name. Researchers call it metacognitive distancing, and it has been studied for decades.

Knowing the name matters more than it should. Plenty of people, and especially people who were sent to get help rather than choosing it, quietly file…

A minuteThe moment before you snapMindfulnessQur’an 8:29One line of research

If a river on a summer afternoon does nothing for you, use something plainer. Counting the traffic from a porch, or standing outside a shop counting how many people walk past, does the same job.

Metaphors are personal and there is no prize for liking the poetic one. Some people take to it straight away when it is a road and a stopwatch…

A minuteThe moment before you snapMindfulnessQur’an 25:63One line of research

If the language of mindfulness puts you off, drop the language. Call it noticing what your mind is doing, and use it anyway.

Some people hear anything that sounds spiritual and close the door, and then a useful skill goes unused over a word. There is nothing here you have…

A minuteThe moment before you snapMindfulnessQur’an 17:53One line of research

Sometimes you dislike a person or a room before you can say why. The fast part of you stores feelings, not explanations, so the reaction arrives whole and wordless.

If you cannot account for your reaction, you are not being evasive, and neither is anyone else who cannot account for theirs. Asking "why are you…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 23:97One line of research

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Structure and routine

The moment before you snap

What worry does

Grounding and settling

Bringing the future closer

When everything feels flat

Equanimity and perspective

Breathing

Treatment and medication

Choosing your response

Remembering to do it

Reading, numbers and learning differences

When you use something to cope

Shame and stigma

Posture and how you carry yourself

Practising under provocation

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Being seen and judged

Obsessions and compulsions

The fear underneath anger

Shame

Rest and pacing

Help someone grieving

Gratitude

Fondness and admiration

Feeling from the inside

Ask and say no well

What you are actually defending

Living with uncertainty

Validate yourself and others

When you go numb

Safety and grounding

There is a stretch after anger fires when a person is feeling rather than thinking. In it, only information that matches the emotion gets through, so reasoning at yourself or at anyone else is wasted breath.

What does land in that stretch is physical and relational: a slower breath, a change of room, a hand on your own chest, a kind tone that asks for…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 12:24One line of research

Learn a new practice in that order: the picture of what it is, then the plain steps, then actually doing it. Knowing what is coming settles most of the resistance before it starts.

Say to yourself, or to the person you are teaching, that in a minute the talking stops and the doing begins. It sounds trivial and it removes the low…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapMindfulnessQur’an 16:98One line of research

Afterwards, ask what that was like rather than whether it worked. Every answer is usable, including the ones that sound like complaints.

People come back with all sorts: restful, stressful because my head is so fast, mostly sounds and aches rather than thoughts, strangely reassuring.…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapMindfulnessQur’an 13:11One line of research

Say the difficult sentence out loud, on your feet, in something like the real conditions. Thinking it through in your head is a different skill from getting it out of your mouth when your pulse is up.

Acting it out feels awkward and that awkwardness is part of why it works: the version of you who has to speak is the aroused one, so that is the…

Twenty minutesThe moment before you snapCBTQur’an 41:35One line of research

Before telling someone what you have noticed about them, ask whether they want it. Do you mind if I offer something back to you? Then describe only what you saw, plainly.

Close attention is not neutral for a person who grew up being watched for a reason. Asking first turns being observed into something they agreed to,…

A minuteTolerate distressBody basedQur’an 52:48One line of research

A calming skill handed over at the wrong moment reads as your anger is not welcome here. For someone taught as a child that their anger was unacceptable, that is the old prohibition arriving again in kinder clothes.

Let the anger be seen first. Say that it makes sense, that there is a reason for it, and only then offer anything that settles the body. The order…

Five minutesTolerate distressDBT skillsQur’an 2:45One line of research

Whoever is going to do the feeling picks what to work with. The tightness in the chest, the closing throat, the anger, the grief, whichever one they are ready for today.

Choosing keeps the person in charge of the dose, and being in charge is a fair part of what makes this different from whatever happened to them. If…

Five minutesTolerate distressBody basedQur’an 2:286One line of research

Say it out loud before you start: you decide how much of this you feel, and when. Stopping for a bit is part of the plan, not a failure of it.

Being in charge of the dial is most of what separates useful contact with a hard feeling from being flooded by it again. If you are helping someone,…

Five minutesTolerate distressBody basedQur’an 2:286One line of research

Sometimes eyes water during body work with no sad thought attached to it. Nothing has gone wrong, and there is nothing that needs explaining.

If it happens to you, let it happen. If it happens to someone you are working with, say something plain and warm: that this is common, that they do…

A minuteTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 93:10One line of research

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…

Five minutesTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 12:93One line of research

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…

Five minutesTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 48:29One line of research

If pain is the thing you live with, start the session with the stroking sequence rather than the conversation. Arms, forehead, crown, cheeks, slowly.

It does two jobs in one go: gentle wide contact takes some edge off the pain, and it brings a person out of guarded alertness into being able to…

Five minutesTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 12:93One line of research

Sleeping tablets, sedatives, antihistamines and alcohol all pull on the same brake. Whoever is prescribing needs the whole list, including the things that do not feel like medicine.

People rarely mention a nightly drink or a sleep aid bought off the shelf, because neither feels like part of the treatment. Together they can add up…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286One line of research

If you have been given a drug from one category for a problem in another, it is fair to ask which part of it is doing the work. Often the useful effect is a side effect that has been borrowed.

The common example is an antipsychotic given in a small dose for sleep, where the drowsiness comes from its antihistamine action rather than from…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 21:7One line of research

Saying that you do not know, and then showing where you would look, beats an answer improvised on the spot. It also teaches the person asking how to check things for themselves.

Name the limit, name the source you would go to, and offer to come back with what you find. Systematic reviews and an ordinary scholarly search will…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:43One line of research

These medicines work on a timescale of four to six weeks, not days. Say the number out loud at the start, because someone expecting relief this week will have decided by Friday that it failed.

Something does happen on the first day, but it is only the first step of a change that takes weeks to finish. The useful version of this is a date:…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:114One line of research