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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1457 practices

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There comes a moment when the tissue under your fingers gives a little and allows more depth. Wait for that instead of pressing your way to it.

It sounds fanciful until you have felt it once, and then it is obvious. Rest your hand, keep the pressure steady, and let the softening decide the…

Five minutesTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 4:19One line of research

Aching shoulders and a bad back are not separate from finding it hard to concentrate. Pain takes up room in your head, and there is less left for anything else.

People who are restless tend to hold more tension and pick up more injuries, and then the pain makes the focus worse, and round it goes. So it is…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkMedical and treatmentQur’an 26:80One line of research

Reviews do not support acupuncture as a treatment for attention difficulties. Some studies of acupuncture alongside counselling have done better than dummy needling alongside counselling, which is a more modest claim than it first sounds.

The likeliest reading is that a warm, unhurried practitioner who examines you carefully is doing much of the work. Needles are very fine and harm is…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkMedical and treatmentQur’an 9:128One line of research

There is a route the calming nerve takes through you: eyes, then jaw and mouth, then throat and neck, then shoulders and chest, then belly. You can visit each stop in turn and simply notice what is there.

Give every area a moment before you move on. Soften around the eyes, let the jaw hang, sigh the throat loose, feel the chest lift, then rest a hand…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkBody based

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

Grounding and settling

Answering bids

Treatment and medication

Practising under provocation

What ADHD actually is

Screens and attention

Repair after rupture

Cool the body first

What you are actually defending

Structure and routine

Being seen and judged

Breathing

Making it stick

Rebuilding trust

Shared spiritual life

Treatment and medication

What worry does

Affection and touch

Fondness and admiration

Emotions as signals

Remembering to do it

Rituals of connection

Listening and understanding

Breaking the worry loop

Feeling from the inside

Shame and stigma

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When you use something to cope

Anger, alcohol and the body

Facing it a step at a time

Question the thought

Meaning after harm

Posture and how you carry yourself

Safety and grounding

When anger turns to harm

Working with anger

Notice the pattern and flex

Your worth is not conditional

Obsessions and compulsions

Care for yourself in loss

Work with your brain

Validate yourself and others

Help someone grieving

Get it out of your head

Find meaning

Your window of tolerance

When you go numb

Living with uncertainty

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Panic and the body

Shame

Qur’an 5:6

One line of research

Talking is not the only door in. Exercise, massage, acupressure, yoga, tai chi and the rest go at the body first and let the mind follow, which is the opposite direction from most therapy.

That is why they sit well beside talking work rather than competing with it. If words keep circling the same ground, changing what your body is doing…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 21:90One line of research

The best ending is often that therapy stops and the practices carry on. People finish their sessions and keep the yoga, the bodywork, the acupressure, the sitting quietly.

It is worth building towards that from early on rather than at the end. If everything that settles you happens in one room with one person, then…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 48:29One line of research

Body based approaches have been linked with better physical and mental health, easier relationships, and in some settings lower use of painkillers and psychiatric medication.

That last one tends to interest the people holding the budget, so it is worth knowing if you are trying to get this kind of work taken seriously…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 16:69One line of research

People who are sure they could never lie still for an hour tend to be asleep within ten minutes of getting on the table. Being unable to fidget seems to do it.

Worth saying in advance to anyone who is putting off booking. It is the same effect as a car journey knocking out a child who has not stopped moving…

LongerTouch and bodyworkMedical and treatmentQur’an 8:11One line of research

Nothing you take can act on something that is not there to be acted on. It is a plain limit, and it explains a good deal of the disappointment people carry about treatment.

A medicine travels everywhere in the body and only does something where there is something for it to work through. So the question is not whether a…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 41:44One line of research

Sleeping tablets, sedatives, antihistamines and alcohol all pull on the same brake. Whoever is prescribing needs the whole list, including the things that do not feel like medicine.

People rarely mention a nightly drink or a sleep aid bought off the shelf, because neither feels like part of the treatment. Together they can add up…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286One line of research

If you do not know how much of something you are taking, you cannot tell whether it is helping you. That is the honest problem with most calming products bought off the shelf, quite apart from whether the ingredient works.

Testing of these products keeps turning up contents that do not match the label, sometimes including things the label never mentions. So a good week…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:36One line of research

With anything you use to take the edge off, note what you took and when, and how you felt a few hours later. Small changes in amount can turn the same substance from calming into the opposite.

Cannabis is the clearest example. Strength and make up vary enormously between products, a small amount often settles people, and a larger amount…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

If you have been given a drug from one category for a problem in another, it is fair to ask which part of it is doing the work. Often the useful effect is a side effect that has been borrowed.

The common example is an antipsychotic given in a small dose for sleep, where the drowsiness comes from its antihistamine action rather than from…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 21:7One line of research

A small dose that has not changed in years is not automatically something to fix. Stopping carries risks of its own, and they have to be weighed rather than assumed away.

Coming off can bring withdrawal, a rebound of the original anxiety, and worse if it is done abruptly. Set against the risks of staying on, which are…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 39:53One line of research

Plenty of people carry a tablet for years and almost never take it. What it is mostly doing is reassurance, and that is worth knowing about it.

Being able to reach for it is what makes the shop or the motorway bearable, which is a real help and a quiet cost at the same time. The cost is that…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:186One line of research

Saying that you do not know, and then showing where you would look, beats an answer improvised on the spot. It also teaches the person asking how to check things for themselves.

Name the limit, name the source you would go to, and offer to come back with what you find. Systematic reviews and an ordinary scholarly search will…

A minuteTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:43One line of research

Ask what symptom you are aiming at rather than what the diagnosis is called. Nothing anyone takes recognises a category; it acts on whatever is happening in the body.

In practice that means naming the target out loud before anything is started or changed: the surges that come from nowhere, the sleeplessness, the…

Five minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 39:9One line of research

Anxiety comes in two rough families. Fear is the sudden bodily kind that arrives in a rush, and worry is the slow kind that circles and will not settle.

The distinction earns its place because the two behave differently. Fear peaks and passes and shows up in the heart and the breath, while worry sits…

Five minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:114One line of research

Physical dependence on a sedative can build while you are taking it exactly as prescribed. Nothing has gone wrong with you and nobody has misused anything.

Regulators strengthened the warnings across this whole class of medicines to say so plainly, including that withdrawal can be drawn out. Knowing it…

Five minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 24:61One line of research

The number worth watching is not the dose but the direction. A dose that keeps creeping upward says something that a steady one does not.

You are often the person who sees this, because you hear about it in passing across months while the prescriber sees someone twice a year. Note it…

Five minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 42:38One line of research