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

1709 practices

Narrow these down

Whatever gets you outside and quiet for a stretch of time counts. Fishing, sitting in a hide, weeding, waiting in the car park with the window down.

Nobody has to call it mindfulness for it to work like mindfulness. Hours of low demand attention outdoors, with nothing much required of you, is the…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:24One line of research

Martial arts happen to bundle four useful things at once: hard physical work, a fixed structure, feedback in the moment, and a teacher who stays. That is why they suit restless minds so well.

Any one of those on its own helps a little. Together they cover the arousal, the shapelessness of time, the need for a reward that arrives today…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 34:11One line of research

Long goals need markers you can reach this month. Belts work because you get a visible, earned step every so often instead of one distant summit.

Build the same thing into anything you are trying to keep up: a distance, a number of sessions, a move you could not do in January. Make it something…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:40One line of research

For a child having a hard time, one adult who plainly thinks well of them makes more difference than almost anything else. A coach or a teacher can be that person.

Studies of children growing up through poverty, hunger and worse keep landing on the same finding: those who did well usually had somebody who…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:26One line of research

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

Feelings and focus

Structure and routine

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Practising under provocation

Treatment and medication

The cost of avoiding

Being seen and judged

When you use something to cope

Remembering to do it

Facing it a step at a time

Feeling from the inside

Breaking the worry loop

What you are actually defending

Emotions as signals

Obsessions and compulsions

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Tolerate distress

Posture and how you carry yourself

Self-compassion

Shame

Anger, alcohol and the body

Use your strengths

When anger turns to harm

Question the thought

Living with uncertainty

Panic and the body

When you go numb

Rest and pacing

A practice kept up for years stops being something you do and becomes part of who you are. That is when it no longer needs willpower.

People who started something physical as children and carried on often point to it as where their steadiness came from. The early years are the…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 30:54One line of research

Keep a movement practice going long enough and your body starts doing it without you. People who have practised for decades describe the form running itself while their mind is elsewhere.

In the early months it takes all your concentration, which is why it feels expensive. Later it stops asking for that, and you get the calm without…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 106:2One line of research

A few sessions give you an effect that fades. A few months of it starts to change your baseline. Plan for the longer version if you can.

One class leaves you calmer for an afternoon, which is real and also temporary. Fifteen weeks of the same practice is where people start reporting…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:47One line of research

With a small child who is struggling with both movement and speech, start with the body. Balance and steadiness come before a child can take in much language or learning.

A child who is using most of what they have simply to stay upright in a chair has little left for the words on the page. Sorting out the physical…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 40:64One line of research

An hour a day of moving enough to warm you and shorten your breath. Keep a record of it, on a watch or on a scrap of paper, because meeting a number you can see turns out to be quietly satisfying.

It does not have to arrive in one block and it does not have to look like exercise. Walking to the shop, taking the stairs, standing at the desk for…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:40One line of research

When someone says they feel nothing, find out where the nothing reaches. All the time, or only towards good things, or only here, in this conversation, when criticism is in the air?

The three answers point in quite different directions. Numb everywhere, day and night, is worth taking to a doctor. Numb to good things while the bad…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 50:37One line of research

If a medicine has taken the edge off everything, including the good things, that is worth raising with whoever prescribed it. Taking the sharpness out of pain is one thing. Feeling nothing at all is not a way to live.

It matters practically as well as personally. Anything you are trying to change, in a relationship or in yourself, needs some feeling to work with,…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 6:122One line of research

Going still and needing nothing is usually something a person worked out young, somewhere it was the sensible answer.

If reaching out met dismissal, or worse, then not reaching out is not a flaw of character. A child who stops asking, stops showing what they feel and…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 57:16One line of research

When the words for feelings are not there, ask for a number instead. How much did the handwashing take over this week, one to ten, is a question someone can answer on a bad day.

A number asks far less of a person than a description, which matters when putting feelings into language is hard for them, and you still end up with…

A minuteObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

Agree a short phrase to use at home. Saying I am having OCD worries tells a parent what is going on without handing them the worry to solve.

Once a parent hears the details they will nearly always try to help by answering, and answering is the thing that feeds it. A label gives them…

A minuteObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 23:97One line of research

The thing your obsession keeps circling is usually something you care about a great deal. Contamination worry sits on top of wanting people safe, and harm worry sits on top of never wanting to hurt anyone.

This is worth saying out loud, because most people carry these themes as proof that something is rotten in them. Read the other way round, the theme…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 2:225One line of research

What the thought is about matters far less than what happens next. Germs, illness, something too silly to say aloud: the machinery running underneath is the same in each case.

Chasing the content puts you in a game that cannot be won, because the moment one worry is settled the next turns up wearing different clothes. The…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 114:4One line of research

Notice how when one worry is finally settled, another takes its place. That pattern is the thing you are actually dealing with, more than whichever worry is currently in the chair.

Most people work this out for themselves long before anyone names it. Naming it still helps, because it gives you something to watch that is bigger…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 17:36One line of research

Some worries are perfectly reasonable, and settling them still will not settle you. Someone living where the storms come can build the kit, check the kit, and find the worry has quietly moved on to something else.

This one is worth testing on yourself, because it removes the argument that you would be fine if only the fear were irrational. The probability was…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 23:98One line of research

Plenty of people quietly believe that thinking about something bad makes it more likely to happen. It has a name, it is a known part of this condition, and having the belief does not make you dangerous.

Hearing that it is a documented feature tends to do more than any argument about probability, because arguing about odds is a game the doubt plays…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 114:5One line of research

It can help to give the parts of your brain jobs. The front of your head is the manager, the memory system is the librarian, and the alarm is a security guard who is good at his work and far too keen on it.

The point is not accuracy, it is having language you can reach for quickly. Saying the guard is overreacting again gets you further than trying to…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 70:19One line of research