Your body

To come down, move slowly and rhythmically: rock, sway, walk at half speed. To come up, move properly: jog on the spot, jump, dance fast, or carry something heavy.

Heavy work is the interesting one, because it settles as well as it lifts. Carrying the shopping in one trip, shifting furniture, pushing hard…

Once a day, run through five things in order: how your mind is, what your body feels, how the breathing is going, what the emotional weather is, and how much energy you have. Curious, not marking yourself.

The order matters more than the answers do. Without a set path, checking in with yourself slides easily into chewing over the same worry, and you…

The same check-in can take two minutes or fifteen. Match the length to the day you are actually having, not to the version you were taught.

A long deep look inward is not always the better one. On a day when you are already far from yourself, going deeper can take you further out rather…

Finish a check-in by asking what actually brought you here. Not the task in front of you, the thing underneath it that you want.

Noticing how you are can leave you sitting in it. One more question turns it outward: what am I hoping for, what am I moving towards. It might be…

Start with a couple of minutes of movement before any of the difficult talking. Not a warm up for its own sake: a body that has moved is easier to think in.

Two or three minutes is enough. Roll the shoulders, round and lengthen the spine, turn gently side to side. It also says something without anyone…

Take the spine through all six of its movements: forward, back, bending to each side, turning to each side. Standing or sitting, it takes under five minutes.

Doing the whole set matters more than doing any one of them beautifully. Left to ourselves we skip the direction that feels stiff or guarded, and…

Posture does not only show what you feel, it decides what you can feel. Anger is very hard to reach with a collapsed chest, and grief is hard to reach when you are held rigidly upright.

If a feeling seems to be nowhere at all, look at the shape you are sitting in before deciding it is absent. Let the chest open a little, or let a…

Once a movement is familiar, drop the pattern. Let it curve and wander towards wherever your body seems to want it, rather than doing it correctly.

Following instructions well is a skill many people learned early, sometimes because it was not safe to do anything else. A practice made entirely of…

Instead of breathing deeply in general, pick the place that feels tight, the front of the ribs, the chest, one shoulder, and send the breath there.

You are not really moving air into your shoulder, but putting your attention there while you breathe does two things: you start to feel that area in…

Let the breath go along with the movement rather than counting it out. If you are guiding someone, do not set the pace of their breathing for them.

Being told exactly when to breathe in and out is unpleasant for more people than you would expect, and for anyone whose breath was held tight through…

After movement, take a moment on five things: the quality of your mind, of the sensation in your body, of your breathing, of your mood, and of your energy.

Doing this after moving rather than before gives you something to notice, since the body has just changed. Over time it builds a vocabulary. People…

End a check-in with a question rather than a summary: what do I need in order to be properly here today?

Noticing your state can leave you stuck in reporting on yourself. The need question turns it into something you can act on, and the answer is often…

When you are low, the thing most likely to help is the thing you have least appetite for. Make the first step small enough that appetite is not required.

Getting as far as the front door can be the whole task on a bad day. Standing up, putting your shoes on, then deciding, is a fair plan. Anyone…

A movement practice comes apart into pieces: the shapes, the breathing, the noticing. On a day when the whole thing is beyond you, take one piece.

Just the breathing, sitting where you already are, is a practice. So is one stretch held for a minute. Doing a fragment keeps the thread going, and…

When somebody does not take up the movement you suggested, ask what got in the way before deciding they did not want to. Usually it is money, childcare, transport or time.

Cost, an awkward class time, nobody to watch the children, a room full of people you would have to make conversation with. None of that is…

If you are the therapist, you do not need to become the movement teacher as well. Sending somebody to a person trained for it is the better version of helping.

The evidence is for movement alongside therapy, not for therapy with a few stretches added by someone who picked them up from a video. Handing it…

Once a shape feels safe, it becomes somewhere to explore from. The question stops being am I doing this right and turns into how does my body want to move now.

Stay in an easy position long enough for it to go slightly dull. Dull is the sign that the ground under you is steady. From there, small experiments:…

Picture a cat getting up from a nap. One side lengthens and reaches while the other side curls in, then they swap over. Do that. Add breath and sound if you want them.

After a minute of copying the animal, drop the instructions and let your body carry on however it likes. That is the reason for starting here:…

Find the place that is always tight, your jaw, your shoulders, the top of your back. Take it over deliberately. Squeeze it harder than it holds itself, then let it go.

Do that a few times and something changes. The holding stops being weather that happens to you and becomes something you are doing, which means it is…

Take a shape that asks something of you, warrior or mountain, eyes open, the middle of your body switched on. Then, without coming out of it, drop your attention inside and let the pose hold you instead.

Two things get practised in one position. First the doing: strong legs, clear gaze, a body that is ready. Then the yielding: still there, still…