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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1894 practices

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You can tell you are back when there is choice in it again: you can pick which thought to keep hold of, and how to answer what you feel.

The settled state is not the absence of things. It has a texture: clear, connected, reasonably hopeful, able to understand somebody and to feel…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 10:62One line of research

Excitement and panic run on the same fuel. What turns it into play is feeling safe while it happens.

If you have learned to distrust your own energy, anything lively reads as a warning: a fast heart before a party, the buzz of an argument you are…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 78:11One line of research

Long stress does not have one look. Some people end up permanently switched on. Others end up flat, heavy and hopeless. The two need opposite things.

If you are the switched on kind, the work is coming down: a longer breath out, less caffeine, a real end to the working day. If you are the flattened…

Five minutesYour nervous systemMedical and treatmentQur’an 30:23One line of research

The stress hormone that carries you through a hard month also quietens your immune system while it is high. When it drops, the immune side comes back up.

That is the plain version of a relationship usually summed up as stress making you ill, which is too blunt to be much use. Running high and running…

Five minutesYour nervous systemMedical and treatmentQur’an 32:9One line of research

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

Being seen and judged

The cost of avoiding

Treatment and medication

Knowing your partner

Remembering to do it

When you use something to cope

Facing it a step at a time

Breaking the worry loop

Shared spiritual life

Feeling from the inside

What you are actually defending

Fondness and admiration

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Emotions as signals

Obsessions and compulsions

Tolerate distress

Answering bids

Staying regulated in conflict

Listening and understanding

Posture and how you carry yourself

Rituals of connection

Affection and touch

When anger turns to harm

Anger, alcohol and the body

Notice the pattern and flex

Rest and pacing

Living with uncertainty

Your worth is not conditional

Act on your values

Get it out of your head

Care for yourself in loss

Listen to the body

Your window of tolerance

Long histories of unresolved stress show up in bodies: inflammation, gut trouble, broken sleep, conditions that end up labelled unexplained. Being told it is all in your head is both wrong and useless.

There is a well known overlap between hard early lives and diagnoses such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and several autoimmune conditions. Overlap…

Five minutesYour nervous systemMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:3One line of research

An immune system that stays switched on with nothing to fight can begin turning on healthy tissue. It is doing its job with the wrong target.

That is a kinder account than the ones people are usually handed, which tend to imply they brought it on themselves by not coping. None of this is…

Five minutesYour nervous systemMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:46One line of research

Digestion runs on the resting side of your nervous system, which is one reason long stress and gut trouble travel together so often.

People with reflux, irritable bowels or years of unexplained stomach pain are often told the two things are unrelated, or that it is stress in the…

Five minutesYour nervous systemMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:22One line of research

Heart rate variability is not about how fast your heart beats. It is about how much the gaps between the beats vary as you breathe.

People often assume a slow heart rate must mean a healthy one. You can have a perfectly normal rate with a rigid, unvarying rhythm, and the rigidity…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 6:96One line of research

A better definition of resilience than never being knocked over: how quickly you come back once you have been.

It is kinder and it is more accurate. Nobody is judged on whether the alarm went off. What tells you something is whether you are still shaking two…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 91:7One line of research

The unsettled pattern is not simply a smaller rhythm. It is a jagged one, swinging up and down without much order to it.

Which matches how it feels from inside: fine at eleven, flooded by half past, flat by two. If that is you, the aim is not to iron the swings out into…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 13:28One line of research

If you want to breathe more slowly, add one count at a time over weeks. Four in and four out this month, five next month, and no hurry after that.

Very slow breathing can bring on air hunger, that feeling of not getting enough, and for some people it tips straight into panic. Good reason to…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:286One line of research

The point of all this is not that your heart never pounds. It is that when a car pulls out in front of you, you are back to yourself in a minute instead of an hour.

People who take permanent calm to be the goal end up reading every jolt of adrenaline as proof they are still broken. That is a miserable way to live…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 78:9One line of research

Yoga, breath practice, loving kindness, gratitude, forgiveness work, tapping, rubbing your own shoulders: they all seem to move the same dial. Choose whichever one you will actually keep doing.

It is a strangely mixed list, and the mix is the point. If practices that look nothing alike arrive at similar places, then the argument about which…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 33:41One line of research

There are implanted devices that send small pulses along the vagus nerve, used for epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis, depression and other conditions. Breath practice is a slow, unplugged cousin of the same idea.

Worth knowing mostly for what it implies. One nerve, nudged electrically, is used for an inflammatory disease and for a mood disorder, two things we…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 32:9One line of research

Some routes ask you to do something: breathing, moving, stretching. Others ask you to receive: music, warm water, somebody else's voice. Keep one of each, because which one you can manage depends on the day.

When you are shut down and heavy, an active practice can be more than you are able to start. When you are wired and watchful, lying still while…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 28:73One line of research

When somebody tells you a practice will calm you, treat that as a hypothesis about you rather than a fact. Try it and watch what actually happens.

Promised effects set people up to fail. When the promised calm does not turn up, the usual conclusion is that their body is broken, rather than that…

Five minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:260One line of research

Connection settles people, but the right amount of it varies enormously. Some settle with a house full of family and some with one person and no talking at all.

If closeness costs you something, plan around that rather than pushing through. Shorter visits, sitting side by side instead of face to face, a walk…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:260One line of research

A regular sitting practice is training rather than a treat. What you practise when things are calm is what your body can find when they are not.

The state people describe in mindfulness and the state of feeling safe in your own body overlap almost completely. That is a good reason to keep the…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 33:41One line of research

Yoga, slow breathing with feedback, neurofeedback and listening programmes are all aiming at the same target. Pick the one you can actually get to and keep doing.

Because they share a mechanism, they are largely swappable. Cost, travel, waiting lists and whether you enjoy it are legitimate grounds for choosing…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:152One line of research

If you understand your history perfectly and nothing has changed, you are not failing at this. Insight alone is pushing water uphill against the current of information coming from your body.

Articulate people get stuck here often, because talking is the thing they are best at. What tends to be missing is an actual experience of being safe…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 13:28One line of research

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Practices

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