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Your body
You cannot think your way out of a body that is braced. This area starts there: the breath, the ground under you, moving, eating, resting, and the small physical things that change how the rest of the day lands.
Narrowed down
121 practicesHow long you have
Approach · Medical and treatment
When · Any ordinary day
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…
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…
If light touch makes you squirm but firm deep pressure feels wonderful, that is worth knowing about yourself. It is the same preference behind weighted blankets and a very tight hug.
Once you know it, you can arrange for it: a heavier duvet, a firm rather than gentle massage, sitting with your back against something solid,…
If several medications have failed, ask whether anyone else in the family had the same experience. A pattern of non response runs in some families.
It is a question that rarely gets asked and can save a year. If a parent or sibling went through the same list without success and then responded to…
The study most often quoted for magnetic stimulation in attention difficulties had eight people in it, and half of those on the dummy treatment improved too.
That dummy half is the interesting number. It tells you how much improvement can come from attention, hope and being taken seriously, before any…
Lead with what has evidence behind it. Save the thinly supported options for when the person brings them up themselves.
Mentioning something is a form of recommending it, whatever hedges you attach, and families will spend money and hope accordingly. If they raise it,…
If something is safe, affordable and it helps you, the fact that the effect may be mostly expectation is not a reason to stop.
The test worth applying is practical: is it safe, can I afford it, is it taking the place of something that works better, and would that money and…
Regular massage has been studied with restless, distractible children and teenagers, and their teachers noticed the difference in class as well as the young people noticing it in themselves.
The pattern in these studies is modest and repeated: short sessions, twice a week, over several weeks, with mood and behaviour improving rather than…
Aching shoulders and a bad back are not separate from finding it hard to concentrate. Pain takes up room in your head, and there is less left for anything else.
People who are restless tend to hold more tension and pick up more injuries, and then the pain makes the focus worse, and round it goes. So it is…
In placebo studies, people improve even when they have been told outright that the pill is inert. They also usually spend half an hour talking with someone who is paying attention.
That half hour is easy to dismiss as a detail of the study design, and it may be most of the treatment. Which is oddly encouraging: careful listening…
Reviews do not support acupuncture as a treatment for attention difficulties. Some studies of acupuncture alongside counselling have done better than dummy needling alongside counselling, which is a more modest claim than it first sounds.
The likeliest reading is that a warm, unhurried practitioner who examines you carefully is doing much of the work. Needles are very fine and harm is…
People who are sure they could never lie still for an hour tend to be asleep within ten minutes of getting on the table. Being unable to fidget seems to do it.
Worth saying in advance to anyone who is putting off booking. It is the same effect as a car journey knocking out a child who has not stopped moving…
A useful picture: the parts of your brain are sections of an orchestra. In dysregulation they are playing different tunes at different speeds. The aim is timing, not repair.
This is a kinder frame than damage, and a more accurate one. Nothing is broken or missing. What has gone is the coordination between parts that used…
Neurofeedback has its strongest support in attention difficulties, decent support in depression and anxiety, and for trauma it is promising rather than proven.
Reported gains include better sleep and attention, less irritability and fewer trauma symptoms. The honest caveats are cost, wide variation in how…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Neurofeedback reads your brain's electrical activity through sensors on your scalp and turns it into a game. Nothing goes into your head.
You might watch a plane that flies smoothly when your brain produces the pattern being encouraged and wobbles when it does not. Nobody tells you how…