Practices

Try this with someone you trust. They say a word, you say the first word back, fast, ten or so in a row. Black, white, mum, dad, sky. Then notice that nothing strange came out of you.

Underneath a lot of social fear sits the belief that speaking without preparing will let something humiliating escape. A minute of quick word…

Next rung: remark on something in the room. The plant, the noise outside, the length of the queue. Nothing about the person yet, just something out loud about where you both are.

It is the lowest stakes opening there is, because the subject is neutral and the other person can pick it up or leave it. Most of the time a small…

When you are ready, make it personal and small. Something you noticed about the person in front of you, said lightly, is the rung most people dread and most need.

Personal remarks are the feared category, because they cannot be passed off as neutral. Do it first with someone safe, a therapist, an easy relative,…

Rehearsing your lines makes things worse rather than better. It hands you a fresh way to fail, delivering the line wrong, on top of the conversation you were already dreading.

A script is a safety behaviour. It quietly confirms that unrehearsed speech is dangerous, and it gives you a second job to do while talking:…

When something good comes out of a conversation you started, say plainly that you started it. Chance may have put the person there. You were the one who spoke.

One young woman asked a contact, in passing, whether a gallery owner needed any help. The question turned into an application and then an internship,…

If getting to the appointment frightened you, then you have already done the first hard thing. Walking in and talking to a stranger about yourself is the ladder, not the preparation for it.

Nobody watching later can see it. What they see is someone sitting there talking, and they miss the week of dread and the near cancellation. Say it…

Breath work goes straight into the body, and for some people that is the problem. If your panic has ever been about not getting enough air, putting your attention on your breathing can set it off rather than settle it.

Asthma, a history of choking or smothering, panic that arrives through the chest: any of these makes the breath a loaded place to put your attention.…

The famous count is not automatically your count. One teacher finds that adding a pause after the inhale wakes her up, while the plain long exhale has her asleep within three breaths.

Protocols get passed around because they worked for someone, often someone with a large audience. That is not the same as fitting you. Keep the shape…

When you are flat rather than wound up, try this. Rub your palms together until they feel awake, let them rest, then breathe in as your arms lift and out as they lower, two or three times.

Sluggish, heavy, far away: those states rarely respond to more calming. A bit of friction in the hands, some movement through the arms and a fuller…

For when you are stuck in shutdown there is a faster practice: short sharp exhales driven from the belly, letting each in breath happen by itself, about twenty of them.

It is meant to rouse, so expect to feel more awake and a little buzzy afterwards rather than calm. Twenty is plenty. Sit down before you start so…

The fast forceful practices are not for everyone. With high blood pressure, heart trouble or glaucoma, leave them out and use the slow ones, which carry no such warning.

Rapid breathing with effort behind it raises pressure inside the chest, the head and the eyes for as long as you keep it going. The gentler lift,…

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…

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…

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.…

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 reminder system is not a crutch you should be aiming to throw away. It is closer to a pair of glasses. You wear them because they work, and nobody expects your eyes to improve because you wore them for a year.

This matters most for how you talk to yourself while using one. 'I shouldn't need an alarm for this' is the sentence that gets tools abandoned,…