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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265 practices

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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

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

When obsessions start early and dig in deep, ask gently what anxiety looks like elsewhere in the family. Often there is an undiagnosed parent, and often that parent is helping in ways that keep the whole thing running.

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

When anger turns to harm

The fear underneath anger

When everything feels flat

Growing empathy

Rituals of connection

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Repair after rupture

Grounding and settling

Your sense of time

Knowing your partner

Making it stick

Structure and routine

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Anger, alcohol and the body

Feeling from the inside

Equanimity and perspective

When you use something to cope

Cool the body first

Answering bids

Obsessions and compulsions

Posture and how you carry yourself

Practising under provocation

Tolerate distress

Treatment and medication

Remembering to do it

Choosing your response

Care for yourself in loss

Keep the bond

Listen to the body

Rest and pacing

Facing it a step at a time

Safety and grounding

None of this is about blame. A parent who checks the locks for their child, answers the same question fifteen times, or arranges the evening around a…

Twenty minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 114:6One line of research

Headsets have become cheap enough to sit in an ordinary consulting room, and the use with the best backing is graded exposure. You can set the intensity exactly and repeat it as often as the person needs.

The value is in the control. A feared situation can be dialled up in small steps, run again the moment it stops being frightening, and ended without…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 73:20One line of research

A weighted vest seems to do its work in roughly the first quarter of an hour. Twenty minutes did not beat fifteen, so longer is not more help.

Use it as a tool for a moment rather than a garment for the day: on before the piece of work that needs the most sitting still, off once that is…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:81One line of research

With some sensory routines, the part doing the work may be a parent's steady hands and full attention rather than the technique itself. Worth knowing, because contact carries into the rest of the day and a protocol does not.

Views differ on this and the research has not sorted it out. What follows practically is that a family who cannot keep the exact routine going has…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:185One line of research

When a test trips a child on something it was never meant to measure, change how they answer rather than what is asked. A spelling test spoken aloud is still a spelling test.

One girl saw letters as solid three dimensional shapes that would not sit together on a page, so writing them was a perceptual problem rather than a…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286One line of research

Ask for photographs of every bottle rather than a list from memory, then pass that list to the prescriber. Recall is patchy about names and hopeless about doses.

Intake forms catch some of it and a photo of the shelf catches the rest, including the two things nobody mentions because they seem too minor to…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 6:141One 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

Go to the gym without the getting ready. No mirror check, no fixing your hair, just train and come home.

This works because it lands exactly where many people quietly keep their worth, and because the real consequences are nil. Nobody there is thinking…

Twenty minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 22:35One line of research

After a betrayal, heal by talking the injury through together, fully, rather than skipping past it in silence.

Couples who avoid the subject drift apart; those who talk it through, honestly and thoroughly, are the ones who make it.

Twenty minutesRebuilding trustGottmanQur’an 2:42One line of research

Atonement is not only apology; it is changed behavior over time. Let your actions become the apology.

Words open the door; sustained new behavior walks through it. Trust returns through consistency, not speeches.

Twenty minutesRebuilding trustGottmanQur’an 25:70One line of research

Let the hurt partner set the pace of healing. It takes as long as it takes; there is no rushing trust back.

You cannot demand that trust return on a schedule. Honor the injured partner's timeline without pressure.

Twenty minutesRebuilding trustGottmanQur’an 2:286One line of research

Take one of the gaps you already have, the commute or the walk or the shower, and use it to ask what is coming up this week and what might be slipping. No new tool, no new app, just the question.

That turns something accidental into something you can count on. It works best in the same place each time, so that the place starts asking the…

Twenty minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 24:37One line of research

Name one old hurt with your spouse that still aches, gently and without re-litigating.

When you were not there that day, it marked me. Naming it is not attacking, it is asking to heal.

Twenty minutesRepair after ruptureEmotionally focusedQur’an 42:40One line of research

When your spouse names a wound you caused, listen without defending, even once.

Not I didn't mean to. First: I hear that I hurt you, and I am sorry. Defence can wait.

Twenty minutesRepair after ruptureEmotionally focusedQur’an 4:135Seen more than once

Where the harm has truly stopped, begin to set down a grievance you have carried.

Not forgetting, releasing. Once the wound is no longer being made, let it start to close.

Twenty minutesRepair after ruptureEmotionally focusedQur’an 24:22One line of research

Revisit a past fight only once you are both calm, from the balcony, without climbing back into it.

Processing means talking about the incident, not re-fighting it. Wait until the heat is gone.

Twenty minutesRepair after ruptureGottmanQur’an 4:128One line of research