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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425 practices

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Being outside gives your attention something to rest on rather than something to hold. That is why an hour outdoors leaves you clearer than an hour lying on the sofa.

Indoors, most of what you look at wants something from you. Outdoors, leaves moving, water, birds, the light changing, all of it holds you without…

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

You do not need greenery for outside to help. Snow, grey sky, bare trees, a car park at dusk. Getting out still does something.

This matters if you live somewhere that is brown and frozen for half the year, or in a city with more concrete than park. Wrap up, go out for fifteen…

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

No particular kind of movement wins. Balance work, martial arts, tai chi, swimming, all of it helps about as much, and what predicts the benefit is moving regularly at all.

This is good news, because it means you can stop researching and start doing. Pick whatever you have access to and will still be doing in a month. If…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:70One line of research

Learn a long sequence in small pieces and join them up afterwards. Nobody should be holding twelve steps in their head at once.

Take the first two moves until they are boring, then add the third. It feels slower and it is not, because the version learned this way stops falling…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:15One line of research

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

The fear underneath anger

Grounding and settling

Facing it a step at a time

Shame and stigma

When you use something to cope

When everything feels flat

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Choosing your response

Growing empathy

When anger turns to harm

What worry does

Making it stick

Practising under provocation

Anger, alcohol and the body

Being seen and judged

Structure and routine

Equanimity and perspective

Posture and how you carry yourself

Use your strengths

Obsessions and compulsions

Feeling from the inside

Letting it out safely

Treatment and medication

Living with uncertainty

What you are actually defending

Rest and pacing

Question the thought

Doing the identical sequence every time is not boring for everyone. For some people the sameness is precisely what settles them.

Tai chi runs the same series again and again, and there is nothing to decide once you know it. It is a bit like having a programme on that you have…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:153One line of research

Slow movement practices seem to help mood, sleep and the general hum of stress. Bringing that background level down often does more for your concentration than trying to concentrate harder.

Running on a constant stress signal wears down exactly the part of you that plans, waits and holds a thought. So lowering the load is not a soft…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:15One line of research

Tai chi, qigong, karate, whatever is running near you at a time you can make. Choose on availability, cost and what you actually like, because those decide whether you keep going.

The ingredients are much the same across these: steady movement, a structure somebody else designed, and a session that happens whether or not you…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 67:15One line of research

A hard walk or a run works a little like a small dose of something. Alertness up, mood up, for a while afterwards.

This is a useful way to think about it because it puts movement in the category of things that do something to you, rather than things you ought to…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:60One line of research

Movement gives you back some willingness, not just some focus. The problem is often not that you cannot concentrate but that you cannot make yourself care enough to start.

Those are two different difficulties and the second one is usually the more disabling in adult life. After moving, the same task tends to feel…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 9:105One line of research

Bolt the movement onto something you would want to do anyway. A game with a friend, a walk to somewhere with good coffee at the end, a route past the river.

People keep up a weekly game with a mate for forty years and never once call it exercise. The friendship is what they turn up for and the moving…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 62:10One line of research

The best exercise is whichever one you go back to. Something you enjoy, outdoors if you can, with other people if that helps, and above all something you will do again on Thursday.

There is always a more efficient programme on paper. It does not matter if you stop after a fortnight. Judge any plan by whether you would still be…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:153One line of research

Classes and clubs work mostly because somebody notices when you are not there. It is the being expected, more than the workout, that gets you out of the door.

A running club, a swimming group, a friend at the gate at seven. On the evening when you feel like nothing, an arrangement with another person…

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

Moving your body and being with people you like are the two most reliable things for feeling well. Doing both at once is not a trick, it is just efficient.

Each of them changes how you feel through the body, and neither depends on you having a good week. A walk with a friend gets you both. If you can…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 22:46One line of research

Clumsy is not a description you can work with. Balance, core strength, shifting your weight, big movements, small ones, catching a ball, keeping a beat: those you can look at one at a time.

Break it down and you usually find a child is fine in four of those and struggling in two. That turns a vague sense that they are awkward into…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:16One line of research

Not every family can get occupational therapy. Almost anyone can get outside with a skipping rope, a long rope turned by two people, or a board.

Skipping and boarding ask for much of what a therapist would be working on anyway: both sides of the body keeping time with each other, judging the…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 71:20One line of research

Children need to move before school, during it and after it. Keeping a child in at break until the work is finished takes the movement away from the very child whose finishing depended on it.

Break time is not the whole of it either. A few minutes on their feet between lessons, a walk before the day starts, something physical when they…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 62:10One line of research

Moving your body is not a pleasant extra alongside the proper treatment for low mood. It has been tested as a treatment in its own right and it holds up.

This matters most when you are already doing other things and still struggling. Walking, cycling, swimming, anything that lifts your heart rate for a…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 9:105One line of research

If a movement class sounds like it comes with somebody else's beliefs attached, ask what actually happens in the room before ruling it out. Much of it can be done as plain movement.

Stretching, holding a shape, breathing steadily, none of that belongs to anyone. Teachers vary, and plenty will leave out the chanting or the framing…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 25:63One line of research

You do not have to walk into a room full of strangers for this to work. The moving and the attention are the active parts, and both travel happily to your living room.

Group classes suit some people and cost others far more than they give. A video at home, a quiet corner, the same fifteen minutes, all of it counts.…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 53:40One line of research

How often you move matters more than how hard. Pick something you would still do on a mediocre Tuesday.

Big efforts on good days followed by nothing for a fortnight tend to average out at very little. Three easy sessions a week that you actually keep…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 31:19One line of research