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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42 practices

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When you reach a goal, stop and let yourself register it before moving on to the next one. Otherwise you collect achievements and never feel any of them.

The pause can be tiny. Say out loud what you did, tell someone, sit with it for a minute, thank God for it. Racing straight on to the next target…

A minuteMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:24One line of research

Use a timer you can see rather than a warning you have to remember. A dial that shrinks, or a light that goes from green to red, does the work that five more minutes never quite does.

Time is not something everyone feels passing. Turning it into something you can look at moves the job from guessing to seeing, which is much easier.…

A minuteMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:47One line of research

One minute of moving between tasks. Star jumps, a lap of the corridor, anything that gets the blood going before you sit down to the next thing.

Classrooms that do this report smoother changeovers and better recall of whatever was just taught. The same trick works at a desk: end one job, move…

A minuteMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 32:9One line of research

A silent room is not restful for everybody. If every cough and creaking knee pulls at you, ask for music or bring headphones with something plain in them.

Too little going on can be as unsettling as too much. A low steady sound covers the sudden little noises that keep snagging your attention. Some…

A minuteMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 32:9One line of research

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

Food, caffeine and fuel

Grounding and settling

Practising under provocation

Treatment and medication

What ADHD actually is

Screens and attention

Cool the body first

What you are actually defending

Structure and routine

Repair after rupture

Being seen and judged

Making it stick

Breathing

Rebuilding trust

Shared spiritual life

Treatment and medication

Affection and touch

Fondness and admiration

What worry does

Emotions as signals

Listening and understanding

Remembering to do it

Rituals of connection

Breaking the worry loop

Shame and stigma

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Feeling from the inside

Gratitude

Tolerate distress

When you use something to cope

Use your strengths

Self-compassion

Anger, alcohol and the body

Facing it a step at a time

Question the thought

Posture and how you carry yourself

Notice the pattern and flex

Name what you feel

When anger turns to harm

Your worth is not conditional

Working with anger

Calm the body

Care for yourself in loss

Ride the urge

Rest and pacing

Patience and trust

Obsessions and compulsions

Validate yourself and others

Your window of tolerance

Help someone grieving

Get it out of your head

Living with uncertainty

Panic and the body

Shame

Reading, numbers and learning differences

When you go numb

Notice one thing your body is telling you right now. Thirsty, needing the loo, shoulders up somewhere near your ears. That noticing is a skill and it does come back with use.

Long stretches of stress teach you to override the body's signals until you stop hearing them at all. Then hunger, tiredness and the early edge of…

A minuteMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 32:9One line of research

Five minutes of moving about sharpens concentration enough to notice. You do not need a session, you need a lap of the building.

Before a task you have been avoiding, get the blood going for five minutes. Stairs, a brisk walk to the end of the road, star jumps in the kitchen if…

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

It does not have to be one block. Ten minutes here and ten there add up to the same total, and they are far easier to get.

An hour set aside is an hour that one interruption can swallow. Bits scattered through the day survive better and they break up the sitting, which is…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:47One line of research

Give yourself an hour rather than a fortnight. A short window creates the pressure that gets a thing started, where a long one quietly fills up with everything else.

Two weeks of notice usually means the work happens in the last few hours anyway, with all the dread in between. So set a smaller box on purpose:…

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

When a child starts martial arts and their maths marks go up, the maths did not improve. Their attention did, and timed maths tests measure attention as much as arithmetic.

It is worth being clear about this, because the wrong reading sends people looking for a movement class that teaches numbers. What actually changed…

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

End a session with a few minutes of sitting still. The styles that close with quiet seem to help most with the pause before reacting.

That pause is the couple of seconds in which you get to decide whether something is a good idea. It is trainable, and stillness right after exertion…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 25:63One line of research

Teaching a child to fight works better when it comes with a plain rule: you defend, you never start it. The rule is doing as much work as the training.

A child whose brakes are slow benefits from having the decision made in advance, out loud, many times over. Then it is not something to work out in…

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

Do not stop dead. Give the end of anything energetic a few minutes of winding down, so the change of gear is a routine rather than a demand.

Stopping is a transition, and transitions are where things fall apart for a lot of people. A short unwinding phase, the same one every time, takes…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:239One line of research

A scheduled break does not break concentration. It is the unplanned wandering off that does that, and a known break tends to replace it.

Teachers usually expect movement breaks to shatter the lesson and find the opposite: children come back more easily because the break is part of the…

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

A promising study can be very small. Thirteen teenagers, teachers doing the rating, and a fortnight of follow up is a good start and not a settled answer.

The clever part of that design is the follow up, because it asks whether anything survives after the classes stop, which is where a lot of attention…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 34:11One line of research

The lift from a morning run does not last all day. It fades by the afternoon, which is information about when to move rather than a sign it failed.

People often notice they are sharp through the morning and gone by three. If your hardest hours are later, put some movement in before them: a walk…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 30:54One line of research

Move just before the difficult task, not after it as a reward. Five minutes of skipping, stairs or running on the spot, then sit down to the thing.

The window straight after moving is when focus is at its best, so that is the bit worth spending on whatever you have been dreading. For a child,…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 19:25One line of research

Almost nobody needs convincing that exercise helps. The gap is between knowing it and doing it, so spend your effort there.

More facts will not close that gap. What closes it is arranging things so the session happens with fewer decisions in the way: kit by the door, a…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:39One line of research

Chasing the big hit is a trap. Aim for the quieter satisfaction you can have most weeks, because that is the one that lasts.

If you are built to seek out intensity, exercise can turn into another place to chase it: further, faster, more extreme, until you are injured or…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 31:19One line of research

Start the movement slow enough that it is almost boring. Speed it up once it has gone smooth, and only then add the thinking part.

Throwing a beanbag back and forth, bouncing a ball, drumming on the table: pick something plain and let it become automatic before you make it…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 34:11One line of research

When somebody does not take up the movement you suggested, ask what got in the way before deciding they did not want to. Usually it is money, childcare, transport or time.

Cost, an awkward class time, nobody to watch the children, a room full of people you would have to make conversation with. None of that is…

Five minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 67:15One line of research