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.

What matches

21 practices

Narrow these down

Move earlier in the day if you can. Whatever it gives you is then available for the hours that follow, and the day has fewer chances to swallow it.

Evenings fill up with everything that got postponed, and the session is usually first to go. Morning does not have to mean dawn: before work, after…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 78:11One line of research

Put music on. A faster tempo pulls your pace up without you deciding to, and the same effort feels lighter when there is something to listen to.

Make a short list you genuinely like and save it for moving, so it does not turn into background. Podcasts and audiobooks do a similar job if music…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:16One line of research

Arrange to meet someone. A neighbour at the gate at eight, a friend expecting you, even an app counting a streak. Turning up for someone else is easier than turning up for yourself.

Benefits that arrive in six months are weak motivators. Something that pays out today works better: a person waiting, a number that goes up, a…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:77One line of research

Being outside gives your attention something to rest on rather than something to hold. That is why an hour outdoors leaves you clearer than an hour lying on the sofa.

Indoors, most of what you look at wants something from you. Outdoors, leaves moving, water, birds, the light changing, all of it holds you without…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 40:64One line of research

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

The moment before you snap

Tolerate distress

The fear underneath anger

Breathing

When everything feels flat

When you use something to cope

When anger turns to harm

Facing it a step at a time

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Shame and stigma

Knowing your partner

Being seen and judged

Remembering to do it

Use your strengths

Practising under provocation

Emotions as signals

Rituals of connection

Structure and routine

Growing empathy

Anger, alcohol and the body

Posture and how you carry yourself

Obsessions and compulsions

Making it stick

Feeling from the inside

Equanimity and perspective

Cool the body first

Choosing your response

Care for yourself in loss

Living with uncertainty

What you are actually defending

Treatment and medication

Keep the bond

You do not need greenery for outside to help. Snow, grey sky, bare trees, a car park at dusk. Getting out still does something.

This matters if you live somewhere that is brown and frozen for half the year, or in a city with more concrete than park. Wrap up, go out for fifteen…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 106:2One line of research

No particular kind of movement wins. Balance work, martial arts, tai chi, swimming, all of it helps about as much, and what predicts the benefit is moving regularly at all.

This is good news, because it means you can stop researching and start doing. Pick whatever you have access to and will still be doing in a month. If…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:70One line of research

Learn a long sequence in small pieces and join them up afterwards. Nobody should be holding twelve steps in their head at once.

Take the first two moves until they are boring, then add the third. It feels slower and it is not, because the version learned this way stops falling…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:15One line of research

Doing the identical sequence every time is not boring for everyone. For some people the sameness is precisely what settles them.

Tai chi runs the same series again and again, and there is nothing to decide once you know it. It is a bit like having a programme on that you have…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:153One line of research

A hard walk or a run works a little like a small dose of something. Alertness up, mood up, for a while afterwards.

This is a useful way to think about it because it puts movement in the category of things that do something to you, rather than things you ought to…

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

Movement gives you back some willingness, not just some focus. The problem is often not that you cannot concentrate but that you cannot make yourself care enough to start.

Those are two different difficulties and the second one is usually the more disabling in adult life. After moving, the same task tends to feel…

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

Bolt the movement onto something you would want to do anyway. A game with a friend, a walk to somewhere with good coffee at the end, a route past the river.

People keep up a weekly game with a mate for forty years and never once call it exercise. The friendship is what they turn up for and the moving…

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

The best exercise is whichever one you go back to. Something you enjoy, outdoors if you can, with other people if that helps, and above all something you will do again on Thursday.

There is always a more efficient programme on paper. It does not matter if you stop after a fortnight. Judge any plan by whether you would still be…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:153One line of research

Classes and clubs work mostly because somebody notices when you are not there. It is the being expected, more than the workout, that gets you out of the door.

A running club, a swimming group, a friend at the gate at seven. On the evening when you feel like nothing, an arrangement with another person…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:26One line of research

Moving your body and being with people you like are the two most reliable things for feeling well. Doing both at once is not a trick, it is just efficient.

Each of them changes how you feel through the body, and neither depends on you having a good week. A walk with a friend gets you both. If you can…

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

Clumsy is not a description you can work with. Balance, core strength, shifting your weight, big movements, small ones, catching a ball, keeping a beat: those you can look at one at a time.

Break it down and you usually find a child is fine in four of those and struggling in two. That turns a vague sense that they are awkward into…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:16One line of research

Not every family can get occupational therapy. Almost anyone can get outside with a skipping rope, a long rope turned by two people, or a board.

Skipping and boarding ask for much of what a therapist would be working on anyway: both sides of the body keeping time with each other, judging the…

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

Children need to move before school, during it and after it. Keeping a child in at break until the work is finished takes the movement away from the very child whose finishing depended on it.

Break time is not the whole of it either. A few minutes on their feet between lessons, a walk before the day starts, something physical when they…

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

Moving your body is not a pleasant extra alongside the proper treatment for low mood. It has been tested as a treatment in its own right and it holds up.

This matters most when you are already doing other things and still struggling. Walking, cycling, swimming, anything that lifts your heart rate for a…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 9:105One line of research

If a movement class sounds like it comes with somebody else's beliefs attached, ask what actually happens in the room before ruling it out. Much of it can be done as plain movement.

Stretching, holding a shape, breathing steadily, none of that belongs to anyone. Teachers vary, and plenty will leave out the chanting or the framing…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 25:63One line of research

You do not have to walk into a room full of strangers for this to work. The moving and the attention are the active parts, and both travel happily to your living room.

Group classes suit some people and cost others far more than they give. A video at home, a quiet corner, the same fifteen minutes, all of it counts.…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 53:40One line of research