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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1388 practices

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No step happens without the person agreeing to it. Not ordered, not dragged, not talked round in a bright voice. Agreement is a condition of the thing working, not a courtesy.

Coerced exposure teaches two lessons at once: that the situation is dangerous, and that you are not safe with the people who arranged it. After that…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 20:46One line of research

Ask which step they are willing to try, and then go with their answer. A smaller step they chose themselves tends to get attempted, and a bigger one you chose for them often does not.

In practice this means holding the ladder loosely. You keep the shape of it, they pick the rung, and if they pick lower than you hoped you take the…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

There is more than one way to feel your body. The outward senses, the inward signals like hunger and tension, and the sense of where your limbs are in space are separate channels, and on a hard day one of them will be easier than the others.

If tuning into your chest feels like too much, that is worth knowing rather than pushing through. You can go instead to what your feet are pressing…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody basedQur’an 32:9One line of research

Thirst, hunger, the ache of having sat too long: these are not nagging, they are instructions. When self-care keeps failing, it is often because the instruction never arrived.

People who have been through a lot sometimes stop registering the signal at all, and then eating, sleeping and resting all go sideways. If that is…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody based

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

Feeling from the inside

Structure and routine

What you are actually defending

The cost of avoiding

Breaking the worry loop

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Remembering to do it

Being seen and judged

Growing empathy

Facing it a step at a time

Making it stick

Treatment and medication

When you use something to cope

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Obsessions and compulsions

Tolerate distress

When anger turns to harm

Staying regulated in conflict

Posture and how you carry yourself

When you go numb

Listening and understanding

Question the thought

Shared spiritual life

Use your strengths

Living with uncertainty

Rituals of connection

Anger, alcohol and the body

Act on your values

Meaning after harm

Your window of tolerance

Notice the pattern and flex

Let the wave come

Help someone grieving

Get it out of your head

Face it gently

Letting it out safely

Your worth is not conditional

Qur’an 30:8

One line of research

If you are going to bring attention to your body, start with where your body is rather than what it feels. Feet on the floor, back against the chair, the weight of your hands in your lap.

Attention to the inside, the chest, the stomach, the throat, sits close to the emotional wiring and can open more than you meant to open. Position in…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody basedQur’an 51:21One line of research

Your nervous system decides whether a room is safe before you have had a single thought about it. Tone of voice, a face, the way someone walks in: it reads all of that and answers underneath your awareness.

This is why you can leave a perfectly pleasant meeting wrung out, or take against someone who has done nothing you could point to. The reading is…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody basedQur’an 50:16One line of research

The reading happens without you, but you can catch up to it. Naming what your body has already concluded, out loud or in your head, is most of the work.

Something like: my shoulders came up when he walked in. That is all it needs to be. You are not deciding yet whether it was fair, you are bringing a…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody basedQur’an 91:8One line of research

An alarm system can be wrong in two directions. It can scream in a safe room, and it can stay silent somewhere it should not.

Most talk about trauma assumes the first: too much alarm, too often. But some people come out of hard years with the volume turned right down,…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody basedQur’an 17:36One line of research

One question does a lot of work: is what my body is doing right now a fair match for what is actually in front of me? Ask it plainly, and let the answer be either yes or no.

The point is not to talk yourself out of the feeling. The signal is information and it deserves a hearing. But you can hold it up against the room…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody basedQur’an 12:53One line of research

When someone is distressed, moving too fast to settle them can land as a message that their distress is not welcome here. Let them set the speed.

Offering a breath, a blanket, a change of subject: all of it can help, and all of it can arrive as a shutting down if it comes before the person has…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideBody basedQur’an 15:97One line of research

You do not have to close your eyes. If keeping them open, soft and lowered, is what lets you stay in the room, that is the better version for you.

Closing your eyes takes away your ability to check the room, and for anyone whose body is used to watching, that costs more than it gives. Make it an…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 22:46One line of research

Try going into the next few minutes without deciding in advance what will happen in them. Curiosity in place of prediction.

A mind used to danger plans constantly, because planning once kept you safe. Sitting somewhere ordinary and letting the next moment be unknown is…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 16:78One line of research

The body answers in sensations, in pictures, in a mood that turns up without explanation. If no words come when you check in, nothing has gone wrong.

People often decide they are bad at this because they went looking for a sentence and found a tight jaw instead. The tight jaw is the answer. Take…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 12:84One line of research

Picture what you feel as weather. A clear morning, a wind picking up, a storm sitting on the far hills. Weather is real, and weather moves.

The useful part is the distance. You are the field, not the storm. And every kind of weather in the picture is on its way somewhere, which quietly…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 39:23One line of research

If something will not shift, pair it with the breath: 'I am' as you breathe in, 'letting go' as you breathe out. Let the out breath be the longer one.

Giving the mind two short phrases to hold occupies it just enough that it stops arguing with the feeling. Meanwhile the long exhale does its own…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 13:28One line of research

Let the uncomfortable thing be uncomfortable, without arguing with it. People are often surprised by the relief that follows.

Much of what makes a bad feeling unbearable is the second layer: the objecting, the wishing it gone, the fear that it means something about you. Drop…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 12:86One line of research

You are allowed to move. Wiggle your toes, rub one arm from shoulder to hand, put a palm on your chest. A body that is doing something is much easier to feel than one held still.

Sitting perfectly still and waiting for sensation is hard work if you are numb, and it often ends with the conclusion that you are broken at this.…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 89:27One line of research

If a few quiet minutes with your body turn up an ache or a tightness you had not noticed before, the practice has not made things worse. It has shown you something that was already there.

This catches a lot of people out. They sit down hoping to feel calmer, meet a knot in the stomach instead, and decide the whole thing is not for…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 3:29One line of research

If you keep falling asleep whenever you sit quietly, take it as news rather than as a failed attempt. Your body is telling you how tired it is.

Welcome the first few times. Being tired enough to drop off the moment nobody needs anything from you is worth knowing about, and the honest response…

Five minutesFeeling from the insideMindfulnessQur’an 75:14One line of research

If cognitive behavioural therapy is the approach you keep being offered for ADHD, part of the reason is that it is easy to measure. It has good evidence behind it, and being the most studied is not the same as being the only thing that helps.

Structured, session by session approaches produce tidy numbers, so they get trialled more often and written up more often. That leaves quieter…

Five minutesFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 20:25One line of research