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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33 practices

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Put four dots on a page, one at a time, and by the fourth you will see a square. Now try to point at the square. Your mind supplied it in under a second and never asked you first.

Keep the paper. It is a small undeniable demonstration that you make patterns as much as you find them. The next time you are certain what somebody…

A minuteEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 31:34One line of research

Light behaves like a particle in one experiment and like a wave in another, and physicists live with both. That is a good picture for two accounts of one event, and a picture is all it is.

Reaching for a big idea from physics can settle the room while proving nothing at all. Use it the way you would use a photograph: helpful for seeing,…

A minuteEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 3:190One line of research

Not knowing what to make of something does not have to be an emergency. See if you can find it interesting instead, even for a moment.

Most of us treat confusion as a gap to be closed fast, and anger is one of the quickest ways to close it: decide they meant it, decide what it says…

A minuteEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 31:34One line of research

Under most anger sits a refusal: this should not be happening. Letting the fact stand as a fact, without agreeing that it is fine, takes a surprising amount of heat out of it.

Accepting is not approving, and it does not mean dropping your case. It means giving up the argument with the part that is already settled: the train…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 2:155

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

Practising under provocation

Feelings and focus

Shame and stigma

Making it stick

Treatment and medication

What worry does

Cool the body first

Being seen and judged

Breathing

Remembering to do it

Growing empathy

Feeling from the inside

When you use something to cope

What you are actually defending

Fondness and admiration

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Obsessions and compulsions

Answering bids

Tolerate distress

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Staying regulated in conflict

Self-compassion

Knowing your partner

Use your strengths

Breaking the worry loop

Gratitude

Shared spiritual life

Facing it a step at a time

Anger, alcohol and the body

Question the thought

Emotions as signals

Posture and how you carry yourself

Shame

When you go numb

Notice the pattern and flex

Living with uncertainty

Your worth is not conditional

When anger turns to harm

Get it out of your head

Safety and grounding

Care for yourself in loss

Your window of tolerance

Listening and understanding

Rebuilding trust

One line of research

Change the question you ask yourself. Not how badly do I want to stay calm, but what have I actually practised for the moment it starts.

Wanting is not a plan. Decide in advance the words you will use, the room you will step into, the person you will ring afterwards. Rehearsed things…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 25:62One line of research

Every one of us is trying to tame ourselves, which no other animal is attempting. Finding it hard is the ordinary result, not a sign that something is wrong with you in particular.

This is meant to take the shame out, not the responsibility. Harm still needs repairing and apologies still need making. But if some part of you…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 3:190One line of research

Queueing, splitting a bill fairly, sharing a road with strangers: all of this is recent. We have had a few thousand years of practice at it, against a much longer history of living another way.

It helps to plan for the mismatch instead of being caught out by it every time. If crowds, traffic and open plan offices reliably wear you thin,…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 57:20One line of research

There is an old set of pictures: a boy loses an ox, catches sight of it, chases it, tames it, and finally rides it home. Asking which picture you are in this week is kinder and more useful than asking whether you are doing well.

Searching, glimpsing, wrestling and riding each have their own next step, and none of them is a grade. Someone still looking for the ox needs to…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 18:46One line of research

Some reactions really do just happen, like a wind up toy pointed forwards, banging into whatever is in the way. That is a description of the problem rather than an excuse for it.

Automatic does not mean permanent. Notice which situations you keep colliding with: the same shop, the same hour of the evening, the same person's…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 3:185One line of research

Not all anger is a reaction to something. Sometimes a person goes looking, standing exactly where someone is likely to snap, and it is worth being honest with yourself if that is you.

The signs are small: replying to a comment you could have scrolled past, holding your ground where nothing is at stake, choosing the route where the…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 22:46One line of research

Angry memories come back in extraordinary detail: the tilt of the head, the exact words, the door. That vividness is what a threatened body does with a memory, not proof that the event deserves the room it is taking.

It explains why replaying feels so compelling and does so much quiet damage. Every rehearsal lays the same track down again. Catching the replay as…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 18:45One line of research

The useful part of this kind of practice is not the calm. It is noticing that the angry commentary running in your head is commentary, and that you are not obliged to follow it.

You are not arguing with the content or proving it wrong. You take half a step back: there goes that thought again, and here I am hearing it.…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 29:64One line of research

Practising the perfect reply in your head feels like letting off steam. It works more like rehearsal, and what you rehearse gets easier to perform.

Each run through lays the same track again: the same heat, the same script, a little more automatic. When you catch yourself at it, name it as…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 41:46One line of research

If you are still polishing the reply weeks afterwards, the argument is not still running. The injury is, and that needs a different kind of care.

There is some relief in seeing it that way. You are not petty for still thinking about it, you are carrying something that has not healed while the…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 12:86One line of research

Behind calm that looks superhuman there are usually decades of dull practice. The practice is the part worth copying, not the headline.

Setting your worst moment against somebody else's lifetime of training only produces despair. Ask instead what that person did on an ordinary…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 53:39One line of research

A raised voice at home gets heard as disrespect long before anyone checks. Sometimes the person simply cannot hear how loud they are over their headphones.

Disrespect starts more fights than any other reading, and it arrives feeling like an observation rather than a guess. Try asking what a stranger…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 15:88One line of research

Hold up a cup and ask what it is. A cup, a container, a weapon, a paperweight, an odd object to a creature with no hands. The answer depends on who is asking.

Starting with a mundane object matters, because it is easy to concede there. Then carry it across: what someone said this morning is a fact, what it…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 87:17One line of research

Some drawings can be seen two ways, an old woman or a young one, and neither reading is the correct one. Feeling the switch happen in your own eyes teaches something no explanation manages.

Keep one of those images somewhere you will come across it. When you are certain about somebody's motive, look at it and let it flip. The point is…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 64:15One line of research

Light bounces off a face, lands at the back of your eye, and becomes a signal your brain assembles into a person. What you see is a reconstruction, a very good one, and never quite the thing itself.

That is not a trick, it is how seeing works, and it applies to everything you are sure you saw. It is worth a moment of vertigo, because the…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 6:32One line of research

Old traditions worked this out a long time ago: someone who cannot be certain they are right cannot be righteously cruel. Doubt is not weakness here, it is what keeps the hand down.

Notice the order of the argument. Not calm down and then reconsider, but hold the certainty loosely and the heat has nowhere to stand. For a test,…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 28:88One line of research