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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Reaching for your water at dinner is a chance to practise. Stop your hand for a second, notice that you want it, then go ahead and drink.

No cushion is involved, no mantra, nothing to schedule. The point is to rehearse the shape of the thing many times a day at almost no cost: impulse,…

A minuteMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 33:41One line of research

You are practising the pause, not giving anything up. Once you have paused, go ahead and drink the water.

This gets misheard quickly and turns into one more rule about denying yourself, which most people rebel against inside a week. The target is the…

A minuteMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 17:19One line of research

Sometimes you can feel the whole exchange lined up before it starts: your line, then theirs, then the door. Leaving your line out is enough to stop the sequence that once.

Nothing impressive is required. You sit there, you say nothing, you let the moment go past unfilled and you find out that it can. Some scripts do…

A minuteMaking it stickCoreQur’an 31:17One line of research

Treat it like brushing your teeth rather than like meditating. Nobody is good at brushing their teeth, and nobody skips it because last night's went badly.

The hygiene framing takes the achievement out of it, and achievement is where perfectionists quit. Put it next to something already automatic: after…

A minuteMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 16:96One line of research

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

Your brain is expensive to run and it spends where it is used. What you stop practising gets quietly defunded.

This is the honest reason to keep a skill going after it has started working. The month you feel calm is exactly the month the practice looks…

Five minutesMaking it stickCoreQur’an 35:29One line of research

Rehearsing a calmer response is not thinking about change, it is the change. Each repetition makes that route slightly quicker to reach for.

Which is why tiny reps are worth doing at all. A single rehearsal on an ordinary Tuesday does not feel like anything, and that is fine, because the…

Five minutesMaking it stickCoreQur’an 99:7One line of research

There is an old story about two wolves fighting inside a person, and the winner turns out to be whichever one gets fed. It is only a story, but the arithmetic in it is right.

Feeding here means whatever you actually rehearse: the conversation you replay at two in the morning, the reply you draft and delete, the grudge you…

Five minutesMaking it stickCoreQur’an 2:148One line of research

Sit still, choose a position, and hold it. Within seconds your body will be asking to move the chin or scratch the neck, and each of those small urges is a free repetition of letting an impulse pass.

You do not need anyone to provoke you for this. Notice the urge, breathe once, let it sit there without obeying it, and carry on. Two or three…

Five minutesMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 2:45One line of research

A cold shower hands you a clean, timed urge to work with. You plan a minute, and four seconds in every part of you wants out: notice it, breathe, let the wave pass, then notice it come back.

The useful discovery is not toughness. It is that urges arrive in waves rather than climbing forever, so waiting one out turns out to be a real…

Five minutesMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 19:65One line of research

Meditation does more as upkeep than as a fire extinguisher. Doing it on the calm days is what lowers the level your threat system sits at.

If you only reach for it when you are already furious, it will seem useless and you will drop it, which is what usually happens. Practise it when…

Five minutesMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 3:200One line of research

Notice how much of the tightness in you is the verdict you are passing. As the judging comes down, the body tends to come down with it.

This is something you can test rather than something to believe. Catch yourself narrating: he always does this, she has no respect, typical. Then…

Five minutesMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 16:127One line of research

Knowing something calmly and feeling it are two separate achievements, and the second takes longer. If you can say the reasonable thing but it does not touch how you feel, you are partway, not failing.

The gap does not close by arguing with yourself harder. It closes by living it: doing the practice in real situations, in your body, while the…

Twenty minutesMaking it stickCoreQur’an 87:8One line of research

Pick the news channel you cannot stand and watch ten minutes of it on purpose. The only job is to notice what rises in you and let it go by.

Real provocation turns up when you are least ready for it. This gives you the feeling with nothing at stake: the indignation, the tightening, the…

Twenty minutesMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 41:35One line of research

It does get better, but not by waiting for time to pass. The improvement comes from the walking, and the walking is small and unremarkable.

Every rep you did today changes almost nothing you can feel, which is the honest and irritating truth of it. Progress here shows up over months and…

LongerMaking it stickMindfulnessQur’an 92:7One line of research

Skills bring the flare ups down in number and in heat. What they leave standing is the layer underneath: what you believe you are owed, and how you think people ought to behave.

That layer is slower work, closer to rebuilding a view of life than to learning a technique. What counts as fair, what can reasonably be expected of…

LongerMaking it stickCoreQur’an 13:11One line of research

The work you are doing on anger does not stay in the anger box. Learning to hold an unanswered question, or to sit with what you cannot change, turns up in worry and in low patches too.

That is quietly encouraging on the days the anger part feels slow. It also means being careful about crediting every improvement to the anger work,…

LongerMaking it stickCoreQur’an 92:7One line of research

Tune to what your spouse is feeling under their words today, and name it gently.

It sounds like that scared you. Responsiveness is meeting the feeling, not just the fact.

A minuteKnowing your partnerEmotionally focusedQur’an 3:159Seen more than once

Say the real thing under the protest today: I need to know you are there for me.

Not a demand, a reach. The plainest words of the heart are the ones that land.

A minuteKnowing your partnerEmotionally focusedQur’an 33:70Seen more than once

Be the first to lower your guard today, even a little, and say something true and soft.

Someone has to move first. Let it be you, with one honest, undefended sentence.

A minuteKnowing your partnerEmotionally focusedQur’an 20:44One line of research

Find the longing under your complaint, and voice the longing instead.

Under you are never home is I miss you, I want more of you. Say the wish, not the jab.

A minuteKnowing your partnerEmotionally focusedQur’an 25:74One line of research