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.

What matches

12 practices

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A regular sitting practice is training rather than a treat. What you practise when things are calm is what your body can find when they are not.

The state people describe in mindfulness and the state of feeling safe in your own body overlap almost completely. That is a good reason to keep the…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 33:41One line of research

Yoga, slow breathing with feedback, neurofeedback and listening programmes are all aiming at the same target. Pick the one you can actually get to and keep doing.

Because they share a mechanism, they are largely swappable. Cost, travel, waiting lists and whether you enjoy it are legitimate grounds for choosing…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:152One line of research

If you mostly run hot and jumpy, start with slow paced breathing. If you mostly go blank and far away, work that reaches you through sound and voice tends to get further.

The idea is to pick the tool that pulls against your usual tilt. Breathing practice puts the brake back on a system that has lost it. Sound and voice…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 23:78One line of research

If you understand your history perfectly and nothing has changed, you are not failing at this. Insight alone is pushing water uphill against the current of information coming from your body.

Articulate people get stuck here often, because talking is the thing they are best at. What tends to be missing is an actual experience of being safe…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 13:28

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

When you use something to cope

Shame

Remembering to do it

When everything feels flat

Exercise, food and other supports

Anger, alcohol and the body

Being seen and judged

Practising under provocation

Shame and stigma

Use your strengths

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Equanimity and perspective

Emotions as signals

Choosing your response

Breathing

Structure and routine

Making it stick

Facing it a step at a time

Obsessions and compulsions

When anger turns to harm

Breaking the worry loop

Feeling from the inside

Letting it out safely

What you are actually defending

Rest and pacing

Safety and grounding

Posture and how you carry yourself

Shared spiritual life

The cost of avoiding

Treatment and medication

Living with uncertainty

Care for yourself in loss

Question the thought

One line of research

None of this makes thinking useless. Making sense of what happened, and changing what you concluded about yourself, does work that no breathing exercise touches.

The body work settles the alarm. The thinking work deals with the verdict you passed on yourself afterwards: that you are weak, that it was your…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 3:191One line of research

Being still is not the problem. The circuit that shuts you down under threat is the same one that lets you sleep deeply, digest, rest and curl up with someone you love.

So the aim is not to stay switched on. It is to be still and safe at the same time, which is a capacity you can rebuild rather than a symptom to…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 25:47One line of research

Deep rest needs a dose like anything else. If a long daily relaxation is leaving you flatter each week rather than steadier, make it shorter.

Someone can start a forty day programme of long guided rest with the best intentions and find that by the second week they are sinking instead of…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 25:47One line of research

If you are the person who steadies every room, ask yourself when a room last steadied you.

Some people are very good at this because they were handed the job at six years old, in a house where somebody had to keep everyone level. It becomes…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 28:73One line of research

Real rest, closeness and unhurried prayer all ask for the same thing: being still while feeling safe. That is harder than it sounds if stillness has ever been dangerous.

It is why some people cope beautifully in a crisis and find a quiet evening unbearable, and why intimacy and slow worship are often the last things…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 78:10One line of research

If you cannot feel your own state yet, a device that shows it on a screen can stand in until you can.

Ear clips and phone apps that display your heart rhythm turn something invisible into a light changing colour, and for people who have spent years…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:260One line of research

If a practice feels like homework you are failing at, turn it into a game. Some feedback tools do this for you, bringing colour and birdsong to a grey screen as your heart rhythm settles.

Trying hard to relax is a trap. The effort keeps you keyed up, and then you have one more thing to be bad at. Play sidesteps that entirely. It is the…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 16:78One line of research

You do not need other people to reach a settled state. Breath, a slow walk somewhere green, a cat asleep on your lap: all of them get you there.

The name social engagement system makes it sound as though company is the only door, which is bleak if you are isolated, and worse if people are the…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:22One line of research