Your body

Open your mouth and put on a big obvious fake yawn. More often than not a real one follows, and the soft palate lets go with it.

Yawns are catching, so if you are sitting with someone else one of you starting will usually set off the other. Let it be a proper one: jaw wide,…

Let something out of your throat. A sigh, a groan, a hum, or the word for whatever is stuck, said aloud to an empty room.

It does not have to sound nice and it will not. Most of us learned early to go quiet when upset, so the throat becomes very good at holding. If a…

Closed eyes are optional. If closing them makes you anxious, or the inside of your head gets loud, open them and look around the room.

Name a few things you can see, listen for the furthest sound you can hear, notice any smell in the air. Looking outward like this is a way of…

The first time you slow a rising panic with your own breathing, something changes that no amount of reassurance could have changed. You have evidence now.

Panic runs on the belief that the sensations are in charge and you are not. One demonstration to the contrary is worth more than a hundred…

The first twinge often brings back every previous episode with it, and that dread is not separate from the pain. Fear tightens the muscles and turns the volume up.

Catching the moment is what helps: this is the twinge, and here comes the film of the last three weeks I lost to it. You are not talking yourself out…

Most of us hold a whole day around the eyes without knowing it. Scrunch them shut, open them wide, then rest your fingertips lightly over them for a few breaths.

After that, try the small points: the spot between your eyebrows, your temples, the soft dip under each eye where the cheekbone begins. Press only as…

Slide one hand behind your head at the base of the skull and rest the other on your forehead. Let your hands take the weight for a minute.

The bony ridge at the back is where a lot of eye and neck strain gathers, and it rarely gets touched. Do not press or twist anything: just support,…

Put your right hand flat on your left upper chest, gather the skin gently and draw it downwards, then tilt your head and lift your left ear away from it. Hold there and wait.

You are making a long slow stretch up the front of the neck, not pressing on anything. Wait rather than count: somewhere in the next minute a deeper…

Add one small thing, then stop and let it filter through. A stretch, a bit of self massage, then nothing at all for a moment.

The pause is not wasted time. It is where the change actually happens. Piling technique on technique floods a system that was already overloaded, and…

One of the quiet gains from body practice is that you can feel more without having to do something about it straight away. The feeling arrives, you watch it, it passes.

That watching part is worth practising on small things: an itch you do not scratch, cold hands, mild boredom. Building room in ordinary moments means…

Some situations do not move, and accepting that is itself a way of coping rather than a failure to cope.

Fighting an unchangeable thing adds a second layer of suffering on top of the first. Acceptance here does not mean approval or giving up on care. It…

Tapping pairs light contact on acupressure points with saying the trouble out loud. The claims made for it run ahead of the evidence, and it is cheap, quick and safe enough to try.

The idea underneath is that you hold the distressing thing in mind while your body receives a steady, harmless signal at the same time. Whether the…

The usual round runs inside eyebrow, outside eye, under eye, under nose, middle of chin, collarbone, under arm, with the top of the head if you want it. About five soft taps at each, naming the thing briefly as you go.

Nothing here should hurt. Fingertips, light, more of a tap than a knock. The practical value of a route like this is that your attention keeps moving…

What you started with often changes as you go. The headache becomes sadness, the irritation becomes fear. Follow the new thing rather than dragging the old one along.

Say what is there now and adjust your words to match it. A shift like that is usually the most interesting moment in the whole round, because…

Instead of a diet, take one craving and stay with it: the food, the moment, the pull. Tap or breathe through it until the pull itself loosens.

Pick a single situation rather than a whole eating plan. Six in the evening, the cupboard, the third biscuit. Restriction tends to make the forbidden…

If tapping feels too jumpy, use the same face points differently. Feel for a tender spot inside the eyebrow, under the eye, or just below the cheekbone towards the nose, then make slow small circles there.

Vary it: lighter, then a little deeper, circling one way and then the other, and see which direction the tissue seems to prefer. Slow steady contact…

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…