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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105 practices

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Anger numbs. If it is doing the work of a painkiller for you, it will be hard to put down while the pain underneath is still untreated.

Ask what tends to be there in the half hour before you flare: a bit of shame, feeling small, an old fear about being left. The anger often arrives to…

Twenty minutesCool the body firstCoreQur’an 94:1One line of research

An urge has a shape. It rises, it peaks, and if you do not feed it, it falls away. Most people have never once watched one the whole way through.

Try it on a small one. Notice it start, keep your hands still and your mouth closed, and count how long it takes to fade. Slow breathing gives you…

A minuteEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 3:173One line of research

After you lose it, the sentence you say to yourself matters. I have no self control leads somewhere much worse than I have not drilled that one yet.

Shame closes the subject. You stop looking at what happened, and what happened is precisely the material you need. Try a short unglamorous review…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 57:23One 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

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

Losing your grip has a sequence too, running the other way: the hold loosens, thinking thins out, and then you are simply angry. Finding where it loosened is more use than going over how it ended.

Work backwards from the flare. The slip is usually earlier and duller than the shouting: a skipped meal, a second replay of the conversation in the…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 10:24One line of research

Fighting your own anger tends to make it louder. The part of you that flares does better treated as something to work with than something to defeat.

In the moment that can be as small as thinking, there you are, instead of, not this again. Pushing it under works for a while and then it arrives…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 15:88One 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

The aim is not to become someone with no force in them. It is to get a harness on the force and point it at something worth doing.

Anger usually knows something true: this was unfair, this matters to me, this cannot carry on. Keep that part and drop the delivery. The energy can…

Twenty minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 12:86One line of research

Nobody arrives with restraint already fitted. If holding your tongue feels like unnatural work, that is what it is for everyone, and it says nothing about what you are underneath.

This matters because the story you tell about a flare decides what you do next. Broken means give up quietly. Unbuilt means pick one situation, the…

LongerEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 53:39One line of research

The old reaction does not get erased. You lay a new one over the top of it, and on a tired or unfamiliar day the old one can still come through.

So a flare after months of doing well is not everything undone. That is what relearning looks like, and it tends to turn up alongside broken sleep,…

LongerEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 3:191One line of research

Parents with one affected child often ask what they might do differently before the next one. Answer honestly: there are lists of suggestions in circulation, the evidence behind most of them is thin, and the question underneath is usually about blame.

Take the question seriously and take the guilt seriously alongside it. Give what is genuinely known, say plainly where recommendations run ahead of…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedCoreQur’an 2:286One line of research

One move to interrupt, one to settle. Open your hand, then take the slow breaths: the first buys you the gap and the second gives you something to do with it.

An interrupt on its own leaves you standing there, aware and still flooded. A settling practice on its own never gets going, because the moment goes…

A minuteMaking it stickCoreQur’an 94:7One line of research

The old angry route does not get deleted. What you are building is a rival route beside it, and at the start the new one is small.

Expect the old path to show up when you are tired, ill or caught off guard, because it is still there and it is well worn. That is not proof the work…

Five minutesMaking it stickCoreQur’an 11:115One line of research

When a child keeps failing at a task, try reducing what it demands of attention and memory before you increase the practice. Shorter steps, one instruction at a time, the working written down where they can see it.

Attention, holding things in mind and switching between steps all set a ceiling on how much of a lesson gets through. You cannot easily raise that…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 2:286One line of research

Pouring more in does not help while the lid is still on. A child who is exhausted, wound up or not yet settled will keep very little of the lesson, however good the lesson is.

Do the settling first, even when it costs ten minutes of the hour. Sleep, food, movement and a calm start look like the soft part of the day and they…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 20:114One line of research

The word one does several jobs at once: a digit, a number, a single object, a whole set. A child who has not sorted those out will put figures in the wrong columns and later read a third as a number instead of a part of something.

When digits land in the wrong place, check whether the child knows what is being counted before calling it carelessness. Say the unit out loud: one…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 24:61One line of research

A child who talks well, listens well and seems bright will have their reading failure read as laziness. The strengths are exactly what makes the blame stick.

Strong spoken language, decent attention and an easy manner give an impression of capability that nobody can square with work coming back unfinished.…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 49:11One line of research

Some people get all the way to university before anything is named, then meet eighty pages of reading a night and cannot do it. Nothing broke that night. The volume simply outgrew a way of coping that had held for years.

The history reads the same way every time afterwards: always needed longer, avoided reading aloud, dreaded timed tests, stomach trouble in exam…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 2:286One line of research

If a parent has been saying since the first year of school that something is wrong with their child's reading, start from the assumption that they are right. They have watched more of it than anyone else has.

The usual story is years of being told the child is fine, a little behind, will catch up, and then a diagnosis at nine or ten when the easiest years…

Twenty minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 80:3One line of research

Before drilling number facts, check whether the child has any feel for how much a number is. Which pile is bigger, is eight nearer to ten or to two, give me three of those.

A child with no sense of quantity can still learn to recite that seven and eight make fifteen, and it will be a string of sounds attached to nothing.…

Twenty minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 16:78One line of research