Areas › Your body
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
10 practicesTheme · Touch and bodywork
How long you have
Approach · Medical and treatment
When · Any ordinary day
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…