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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2485 practices

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Any breathing instruction that reaches you through a screen or a book comes from someone who cannot see you. Keep the final say over what your body does.

Recorded instructions have to be general. You are the one who knows that your chest tightens on holds, or that counting makes you anxious. Treat each…

A minuteBreathingBody basedQur’an 26:13One line of research

Breath is the quickest way you have of turning your own nervous system up or down. Nothing else you can simply decide to do works on that timescale.

Your heart rate already rises slightly as you breathe in and falls as you breathe out, on every breath. So changing how you breathe changes something…

A minuteBreathingBody basedQur’an 48:4One line of research

The rapid belly driven breath with pauses added is the strongest thing in this set. Not for high blood pressure, glaucoma, pregnancy or your period, and stop at once with pain or dizziness.

It has its uses for the flat, heavy state that comes over people after lunch or during a long low patch, because it pushes upwards rather than down.…

A minuteBreathingBody basedQur’an 38:72One line of research

End a practice with a question rather than a conclusion. What do you notice works better than telling someone what should have happened.

If you announce that an exercise is calming, most people will agree with you whether or not it was. Asking leaves room for the honest answer,…

A minuteBreathingBody basedQur’an 50:16One line of research

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

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Structure and routine

What worry does

Making it stick

Treatment and medication

Emotions as signals

Being seen and judged

Feeling from the inside

When you use something to cope

Tolerate distress

Facing it a step at a time

Breaking the worry loop

Remembering to do it

What you are actually defending

Shame

Obsessions and compulsions

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When anger turns to harm

Posture and how you carry yourself

Self-compassion

Anger, alcohol and the body

Living with uncertainty

Letting it out safely

Put a hand just below your ribs and let it move. Most of us breathe up in the chest, and the settling effect comes from lower down, where the diaphragm can actually shift.

You can check this lying down with a book on your stomach. If the book rises, the breath is going where you want it. If only your shoulders move, it…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 15:29One line of research

Breathe in for about five and out for about ten, and do not hold at the top. Go straight from the in breath into the out breath, five to ten times over.

That pause after the inhale feels natural to add, and it can raise your heart rate rather than lowering it, which undoes what you came for. If ten…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 94:1One line of research

Fighting, running and freezing are the ones everybody can name. There is a fourth: going along with things, smoothing them over, making yourself easy to be around so that nothing bad happens.

It gets read as being agreeable, or as a personality, and it is often neither. If you grew up being criticised, or spent years around someone…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 15:97One line of research

You are not trying to talk yourself into feeling calm. You are trying to move your body from one setting into another, and the breath is the handle you can reach.

Once the alarm system is running, stress hormones are already in the blood and telling yourself to relax does very little about them. Changing the…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 48:4One line of research

A child cannot watch their own breathing, so give them something to watch instead. Bubbles through a wand show the out breath as it happens: too hard and it bursts, too weak and nothing comes.

Smelling a flower and then blowing it out gives each half of the breath a picture. The bubble wand is better still, because it answers back straight…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 81:18One line of research

Hot yoga asks you to keep drinking all the way through the class. If forgetting to eat and drink is one of your regular problems, choose a different room.

This is not about the style being bad. It is about matching what you choose to the things you genuinely find hard. Dehydration creeps up quietly and…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 94:5One line of research

There is no breath that calms everyone. The one that settles your friend may leave you worse, and that is information about your body rather than a failure in you.

Labels like calming or energising are a rough guide at best. What actually happens depends on how you usually breathe, what your body has been…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 50:16One line of research

Start with a count of four in and four out, then drop the count. Once the rhythm is there your body will choose its own length: six and six, eight and eight, whatever settles you.

The count is scaffolding. Holding onto it too long turns the practice into something you can pass or fail, which is the opposite of the point.…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 81:18One line of research

Four in, hold four, four out, hold four. The holds are the strong part of this one, and they stay optional every single time.

Some people find the pauses deeply settling. Others meet the edge of what they can tolerate there, especially at the bottom of the exhale. Both are…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 65:7One line of research

If you keep only one thing, make the out breath longer than the in breath. Four in and eight out is enough, and nothing clever is needed on top of it.

This is the closest thing to a dependable settling lever. It suits the end of the day, a queue you are stuck in, the ten minutes before sleep. Some…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 94:1One line of research

If big breathing feels like too much, make it smaller instead. Breathe so smoothly that the in breath rolls into the out breath with no sound and no edges.

This asks almost nothing of you, and that is the point. Nothing to count, nothing to hold, no depth to reach for. For anyone whose panic runs through…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 20:26One line of research

Rather than pulling in a big breath, breathe gently and slightly less than you want to, then wait. The deep breath that arrives by itself does more than the one you force.

Keep the breathing light and unhurried, and after a while a mild hunger for air builds. Let it build a little. At some point the body takes a fuller…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 94:5One line of research

Holding your breath for a moment makes the next one deeper, which sounds backwards until you know why. The urge to breathe is driven by carbon dioxide, not by a shortage of air.

Sensors in the brainstem watch the level of carbon dioxide in your blood, and a pause, especially after breathing out, lets it rise a little. The…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 15:29One line of research

The same breathing serves different jobs at different times. Early on it may be there to help you sleep and stay contained. Later it may be there to help you feel more, not less.

This is worth knowing so you do not judge yourself for finding a practice useful now that was useless six months ago, or the other way round. In the…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 4:103One line of research

Let the in breath come however it comes, then breathe out through pursed lips as though through a straw for a count of eight, finishing with two more counts through the nose. Three ordinary breaths, then go again.

Three rounds is the usual dose. Notice what is deliberately left uncounted: the inhale. Counting the in breath when someone is already panicking…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 16:53One line of research

The three ordinary breaths between rounds are not a gap in the practice. They are where you find out what the practice did.

Come back to normal breathing and check the body, the thoughts, the mood, the energy. Do not analyse it, just register it. Going round after round…

Five minutesBreathingBody basedQur’an 39:23One line of research