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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35 practices

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Four steps you can do in ten seconds in the middle of anything: stop, take one breath, look at what is actually happening, then carry on.

It fits inside an argument, a shopping queue, the second before you send a message you will regret. The value is not the breath itself, it is the…

A minuteGrounding and settlingMindfulnessQur’an 7:205Long taught, never tested

Cold water on your face, especially around the eyes and cheeks, slows things down fast. Splash it, or hold a cold flannel there for half a minute.

This is one of the few things that works when you are too far gone to concentrate on anything. It asks for no skill and no privacy beyond a tap. Lean…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 8:11Long taught, never tested

Cross your arms over your chest, hook your thumbs together, and tap your shoulders slowly, left then right. You set the pressure and the speed.

Twenty or thirty seconds is enough to feel something shift, and most people find the breath falls into step with the tapping on its own. Warmth in…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 48:4Long taught, never tested

When you are helping someone settle, put the technique in their hands rather than your own. They tap themselves, they set the pressure, they stop when they want to.

Being touched by someone else, even kindly and with permission, asks a lot of a person whose body has been handled badly before. Self-administered…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 40:64Long taught, never tested

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

Trace a square in the air with your finger while you breathe: in for four along the first side, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.

The counting brings the breath down to somewhere between four and six a minute, depending on how fast you count, which is the range most of the heart…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 78:7Long taught, never tested

In the thick of it, keep your eyes open and give them something outside you to rest on. A fingertip, a doorframe, the line where the wall meets the ceiling.

Closing your eyes takes away the evidence that you are here and safe, and for some people it lets images in that they were holding off. Most…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 2:22Long taught, never tested

Breathe in, then let it out as a sigh you can actually hear. Not a polite one.

The sound is the point. A silent out breath does some of the work, and letting the voice into it adds a bit more, which is probably why sighing turns…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 3:126Long taught, never tested

Tap the fleshy side of one hand with the other and say it plainly: even though I am feeling all this in my body right now, I can accept that this is how I am.

You can strip away everything else and this part still stands up. Naming the state and accepting it in the same sentence blocks the second wave, the…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 9:118Long taught, never tested

Before you try anything, give your distress a number out of ten. Do the thing. Then give it a number again.

Even a drop from eight to six is worth having, because you were the one who moved it. That is often the more important result: not the two points,…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 50:16Long taught, never tested

When you have gone numb rather than frantic, try a long low sound on the out breath. Voo, drawn out until the breath runs out, so your lips and chest buzz with it.

This is for the flat, far away state, not the racing one. The buzz gives you something unmistakable to feel when nothing else is registering, which…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 7:205Long taught, never tested

After you have tried something to settle, check: how here do you feel now, compared with before? Do not assume it worked just because it usually does.

This takes ten seconds and does two jobs. It tells you whether that particular thing is worth reaching for again, and it slowly trains you to notice…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 39:23Long taught, never tested

Rest one hand on your forehead and the other on your chest. After a few minutes, move the forehead hand down to your belly. Eyes open or closed, whichever you prefer.

Again the instruction is only to notice what goes on between the two hands. That noticing is quietly the training: it is body awareness arriving…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 79:32Long taught, never tested

Two senses rarely get named: the one that tells you where your limbs are, and the one that tells you which way is up. Pressing your feet into the floor or slowly turning your head feeds both.

When someone feels unreal, or far away from their own body, these are the channels that have gone quiet. They carry plain information with no feeling…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 20:53Long taught, never tested

Keep one strong smell for when you have gone flat, lemon or peppermint, and one soft smell for when you are wound up, something like lavender. Smell asks nothing of you, which is its whole advantage.

Set this up in advance, because the moment you need it is the moment you will not feel like planning. A small bottle in a bag, a sprig in a pocket, a…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 48:4Long taught, never tested

For coming down, something sweet taken slowly tends to help more than anything you chew: sipped through a straw, or let dissolve on the tongue. Nobody around you can tell you are doing it.

Slow sucking soothes in a way that goes right back to the first weeks of life, and it is quiet enough to use in a meeting, on a bus, in a waiting…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 106:4Long taught, never tested

When you have gone flat and far away, chew something noisy or blow something: pretzels, raw carrot, bubbles, a slow puff at a candle flame. It lifts you without tipping you into panic.

Collapse does not respond to calming, since you are already too far down for that. What helps is work for the jaw and a long active out breath, both…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 9:118Long taught, never tested

On a video call, two things still work well: touching your own face gently, and rocking. Both are yours to do, and both are visible enough to be done together.

Distance takes away most of what one person can offer another physically, so it helps to know what survives it. A hand resting on your cheek, fingers…

A minuteGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 2:186Long taught, never tested

If your attention has no filter, everything in the room arrives at once, and you are tired before the day's actual work begins. That is not laziness, it is a bill coming due.

Two things drain you at the same time: the unfiltered noise itself, and the effort of holding yourself together in spite of it. That is why the…

Five minutesGrounding and settlingMindfulnessQur’an 28:73Long taught, never tested

If you have spent thirty years being told you are careless, lazy or too much, no attention technique will touch that. Kindness practice, aimed at yourself, is the part that does.

It usually feels absurd at first, and slightly embarrassing, which is worth expecting rather than reading as a sign that it is not for you. Start…

Five minutesGrounding and settlingMindfulnessQur’an 9:118Long taught, never tested

Keep a short list of things that settle you, and choose from it by how you actually are, not by which one you like best. Wound up and racing needs something different from flat and switched off.

When you are speeding, the things that help slow you down: a long out breath, cold water on the face, attention to your feet and hands, pushing…

Five minutesGrounding and settlingBody basedQur’an 16:15Long taught, never tested