Your body

Pick one word for what is bothering you and let that word stand in for the whole thing while you do the soothing. You do not have to run the memory to work on it.

The word can be plain: the hospital, that message, Sunday. Bring it to mind once, then let it sit in the background while your hands and your…

Picture somewhere peaceful and then walk in it. Feel the ground under each foot, your legs moving, and count the steps up to twenty.

The counting keeps you there instead of drifting off, and the feet are the important part. A calm scene that stays a picture in your head does very…

Cross your hands to the opposite shoulders and stroke slowly down to your elbows and hands, like a hug you are giving yourself. Three to five strokes, unhurried.

Then, if you want the rest of it: from the middle of your forehead out to the temples and along the hairline to the ears, from the crown down towards…

Pain is rarely one thing. There is the raw sensation, the memory of every other time, how you feel about it now, whether you think you can cope, and what you conclude about yourself.

Pulling those apart is useful because they do not all move together. You may not be able to change the ache itself, and you can often change how…

Ordinary harmless sensation competes with pain on its way up. Rubbing, squeezing or stroking near a sore place gives the nerves plenty of other traffic to carry.

This is why everybody rubs a banged elbow without being taught to. The useful part is that you can do it deliberately: firm strokes along the limb, a…

If pain is the thing you live with, start the session with the stroking sequence rather than the conversation. Arms, forehead, crown, cheeks, slowly.

It does two jobs in one go: gentle wide contact takes some edge off the pain, and it brings a person out of guarded alertness into being able to…

Squeeze slowly down one arm with the opposite hand, then the other, and work over whatever muscles you can reach. No table, no appointment, nobody else in the room.

Firm and rhythmic beats fiddly. Give the forearms, upper arms, shoulders and thighs a proper squeeze and release, a few seconds each. Doing it…

There is a route the calming nerve takes through you: eyes, then jaw and mouth, then throat and neck, then shoulders and chest, then belly. You can visit each stop in turn and simply notice what is there.

Give every area a moment before you move on. Soften around the eyes, let the jaw hang, sigh the throat loose, feel the chest lift, then rest a hand…

Talking is not the only door in. Exercise, massage, acupressure, yoga, tai chi and the rest go at the body first and let the mind follow, which is the opposite direction from most therapy.

That is why they sit well beside talking work rather than competing with it. If words keep circling the same ground, changing what your body is doing…

The best ending is often that therapy stops and the practices carry on. People finish their sessions and keep the yoga, the bodywork, the acupressure, the sitting quietly.

It is worth building towards that from early on rather than at the end. If everything that settles you happens in one room with one person, then…

Body based approaches have been linked with better physical and mental health, easier relationships, and in some settings lower use of painkillers and psychiatric medication.

That last one tends to interest the people holding the budget, so it is worth knowing if you are trying to get this kind of work taken seriously…