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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235 practices

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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

How often you move matters more than how hard. Pick something you would still do on a mediocre Tuesday.

Big efforts on good days followed by nothing for a fortnight tend to average out at very little. Three easy sessions a week that you actually keep…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 31:19One line of research

Talk first, move second. Ending a hard conversation with something physical gives the body a route back down.

This works for a therapy group and it works for an evening at home. Say the difficult thing, then walk, stretch, wash up, anything that puts you back…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 62:10One line of research

Unstructured play in a big open space settles a child. A structured class teaches them how to be with other children. You want some of each, for different reasons.

If you only ever book the class, you take away the roaming that calms them down. If you only ever send them out to roam, they miss the taking turns…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 71:19One line of research

Whatever gets you outside and quiet for a stretch of time counts. Fishing, sitting in a hide, weeding, waiting in the car park with the window down.

There is more about your body than the practices: the your body area has the themes and the courses too.

Nobody has to call it mindfulness for it to work like mindfulness. Hours of low demand attention outdoors, with nothing much required of you, is the…

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

Martial arts happen to bundle four useful things at once: hard physical work, a fixed structure, feedback in the moment, and a teacher who stays. That is why they suit restless minds so well.

Any one of those on its own helps a little. Together they cover the arousal, the shapelessness of time, the need for a reward that arrives today…

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

A practice kept up for years stops being something you do and becomes part of who you are. That is when it no longer needs willpower.

People who started something physical as children and carried on often point to it as where their steadiness came from. The early years are the…

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

Keep a movement practice going long enough and your body starts doing it without you. People who have practised for decades describe the form running itself while their mind is elsewhere.

In the early months it takes all your concentration, which is why it feels expensive. Later it stops asking for that, and you get the calm without…

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

With a small child who is struggling with both movement and speech, start with the body. Balance and steadiness come before a child can take in much language or learning.

A child who is using most of what they have simply to stay upright in a chair has little left for the words on the page. Sorting out the physical…

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

An hour a day of moving enough to warm you and shorten your breath. Keep a record of it, on a watch or on a scrap of paper, because meeting a number you can see turns out to be quietly satisfying.

It does not have to arrive in one block and it does not have to look like exercise. Walking to the shop, taking the stairs, standing at the desk for…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:40One line of research

Once a shape feels safe, it becomes somewhere to explore from. The question stops being am I doing this right and turns into how does my body want to move now.

Stay in an easy position long enough for it to go slightly dull. Dull is the sign that the ground under you is steady. From there, small experiments:…

Five minutesPosture and how you carry yourselfBody basedQur’an 3:191One line of research

Picture a cat getting up from a nap. One side lengthens and reaches while the other side curls in, then they swap over. Do that. Add breath and sound if you want them.

After a minute of copying the animal, drop the instructions and let your body carry on however it likes. That is the reason for starting here:…

Five minutesPosture and how you carry yourselfBody basedQur’an 19:58One line of research

Take a shape that asks something of you, warrior or mountain, eyes open, the middle of your body switched on. Then, without coming out of it, drop your attention inside and let the pose hold you instead.

Two things get practised in one position. First the doing: strong legs, clear gaze, a body that is ready. Then the yielding: still there, still…

Five minutesPosture and how you carry yourselfBody basedQur’an 2:238One line of research

Play belongs here. Being a lion, a tree, a hissing snake, the way children do it with no embarrassment at all.

A lot of people meet trauma work as something solemn, and solemn is easy to sit through without ever softening. Silliness is harder to fake. If a…

Twenty minutesPosture and how you carry yourselfBody basedQur’an 22:27One line of research

Half watching a programme while half answering emails is the worst of both. The work takes twice as long and the evening gives you nothing back.

Pick one and let it be the whole thing. If it is work, work, and you will usually finish earlier than you expected. If it is rest, shut the laptop,…

Five minutesRest and pacingADHD skillsQur’an 94:7One line of research

Rest is not the prize waiting at the end of the work. It is part of what makes the work possible, and it does not have to be earned first.

Self control runs down over a day the way a battery does, and the thing that fills it back up is properly stopping. What that looks like is yours to…

Twenty minutesRest and pacingADHD skillsQur’an 10:67One line of research

Open your mouth and put on a big obvious fake yawn. More often than not a real one follows, and the soft palate lets go with it.

Yawns are catching, so if you are sitting with someone else one of you starting will usually set off the other. Let it be a proper one: jaw wide,…

A minuteTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 8:11One line of research

When the person in front of you starts yawning during body work, it is usually not boredom. Bodies yawn as they let go of what they were holding.

Say so out loud, because most people apologise for it and then clamp down on the very thing that was starting to shift. A simple 'that is a good…

A minuteTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 19:24One line of research

Let the corners of your mouth lift about as much as they would if you had just remembered something mildly pleasant. Not a smile anybody would notice.

This comes from dialectical behaviour therapy, where it is used as a way of softening without pretending. You are not being asked to feel happy, and…

A minuteTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 90:17One line of research

Work one side of your face or body first, then stop and compare. The difference between the treated side and the untreated one is often surprisingly clear.

This is a useful trick if you tend to finish a practice thinking nothing happened. Rather than asking whether you feel better, which is a vague…

A minuteTouch and bodyworkBody basedQur’an 12:96One line of research