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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13 practices

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Trace a slow circle with your finger, on your knee or in the air, once a day. One a day is the whole prescription, which is why it survives contact with real life.

A small movement done daily becomes a handle. After a few weeks the gesture starts to bring a little of the settled state with it, and you can use it…

A minuteCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 33:41One line of research

Rest your fingertips against one another and let your attention go to the place where they meet. It is a small piece of contact that is always available to you.

Anger sharpens the line between you and everything outside your skin, and everything on the far side of that line starts looking like a threat or an…

A minuteCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 48:4One line of research

The out breath is the part that quiets things down. Cells in the brain's alarm centres behave differently across the two phases of a breath, and breathing out is the calming side of that cycle.

This is why nearly every breathing technique that works has a long exhale somewhere inside it. You do not need the anatomy to use it, but knowing why…

A minuteCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 6:96One line of research

You already own this one. Let out a sigh of relief right now, on purpose, and notice that your body knew exactly what to do.

Most people wait for the sigh to arrive by itself at the end of a hard hour. It does not have to be the last thing that happens. Doing one…

A minuteCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 40:61One line of research

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

Remembering to do it

Breaking the worry loop

When you use something to cope

What you are actually defending

Making it stick

Cool the body first

The moment before you snap

Growing empathy

Feelings and focus

Facing it a step at a time

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Choosing your response

Self-compassion

Use your strengths

When everything feels flat

Anger, alcohol and the body

Tolerate distress

Being seen and judged

Emotions as signals

Shame

Obsessions and compulsions

When anger turns to harm

Touch and bodywork

Practising under provocation

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Question the thought

Rest and pacing

Feeling from the inside

Anger arrives with a rush of energy that feels strong and clear, and that is a large part of why it keeps coming back. The bill turns up hours later, long after the payment.

Worth saying plainly, because people assume they lose their temper against their own interests. In the moment it works: bigger, faster, less…

Five minutesCool the body firstCoreQur’an 13:28One line of research

Your body will mobilise whether you like it or not. What happens next is trainable, and that part is genuinely yours.

After a lot of talk about how fast the alarm system is, the other half deserves saying plainly. People do learn to sit through a surge without acting…

Five minutesCool the body firstCoreQur’an 20:130One line of research

If breathing exercises have felt insulting to you in the past, it may be that they arrived too early. They tend to land once you can already feel the anger coming.

There is an order that helps. First learn to catch the surge, then to see that there is a choice inside it, then to be a little less thin skinned,…

Five minutesCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 6:96One line of research

Look along a shelf of anger books and the advice converges: bring the body down first. Mostly what differs is the packaging, so take whichever version you will actually use.

Slow breathing, a walk, cold water, wudu, muscle release, one long breath before you answer. Arguing about which is best is usually a way of doing…

Five minutesCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 28:73One line of research

If someone already has a practice in their life, hang the new skill on that rather than handing them something foreign.

Someone who does yoga already knows what a hand gesture is for and will not find it odd. Someone who prays already has fixed times in the day and a…

Five minutesCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 20:14One line of research

People arrive at anger work braced for a lecture and an instruction to breathe deeply. Handing them something they did not see coming buys you their attention.

This matters most with people who did not choose to be there. If the session matches what they expected, they can sit through the whole thing without…

Five minutesCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 30:23One line of research

Slowing the breath seems to widen the gap in which you can still see your options. It does not make the anger go away, it gives you a moment inside it.

That is the honest size of the claim. You will not think your way out of a flare by breathing, but you may notice that there is more than one thing…

Five minutesCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 31:19One line of research

Anger numbs. If it is doing the work of a painkiller for you, it will be hard to put down while the pain underneath is still untreated.

Ask what tends to be there in the half hour before you flare: a bit of shame, feeling small, an old fear about being left. The anger often arrives to…

Twenty minutesCool the body firstCoreQur’an 94:1One line of research

Automatic is not the enemy. An out of date automatic is. The aim is to practise the calmer response until it runs on its own, the way the old one already does.

At the start it feels artificial, and it should. You are choosing deliberately what the other response does for free. Give it enough repetitions and…

LongerCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 33:42One line of research