Your body

When someone describes a day like that, do not answer with a lecture on living better. Say that this is hard, and that you find parts of it hard too.

They have heard the virtue speech many times already and it has never once helped. Admitting that you also struggle to exercise, or to keep up with…

Notice one thing your body is telling you right now. Thirsty, needing the loo, shoulders up somewhere near your ears. That noticing is a skill and it does come back with use.

Long stretches of stress teach you to override the body's signals until you stop hearing them at all. Then hunger, tiredness and the early edge of…

What frightens a body is usually not how hard a thing is, it is having no way out. So put movement as an offer. If it feels alright, you might try lifting your arms.

The wording is doing quiet work here. Lift your arms, and see what happens if you lift your arms, are the same physical event, but only one of them…

Whatever a person walks in carrying belongs in the practice. The ache in the hip, the irritation, tears that arrive for no reason, the part that thinks all of this is nonsense.

Complex trauma teaches people to leave pieces of themselves at the door, and a yoga mat is an easy place to carry on doing exactly that, particularly…

When you start paying attention to your body, things wake up. More feeling, a deeper breath, memories arriving sideways. That is the practice working, not the practice going wrong.

Say this at the start, not afterwards. People who were not told tend to decide the movement made them worse and stop, when what actually happened is…

You are not here for a longer hamstring. You are here for a nervous system that can change gear, work when work is needed and settle when it is not.

An ordinary class measures you against the shape, and that measuring is the same self driving that wore you out in the first place. The therapeutic…

When attention has nowhere to settle, give it something. A fixed point on the floor, the breath, the shape your hands are making, or the plain feel of the position you are in.

Which one you choose matters more than people expect. Focusing on the breath turns attention inward, and inward is the wrong direction for anyone…

Say it, out loud if you can manage it: I am done for the day. A decision, rather than a slow guilty drift away from the desk.

The hours after a proper clocking off feel different from the same hours drifted into, even when nothing else about them changes. It does mean facing…

With your eyes closed, bring to mind someone who is glad to see you, and let your face receive that look. A small smile usually arrives in the eyes on its own.

It can be someone you love, someone who loved you, a teacher from years ago, or an animal. The point is not the memory but the feeling of being…

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,…

When the person in front of you starts yawning during body work, it is usually not boredom. Bodies yawn as they let go of what they were holding.

Say so out loud, because most people apologise for it and then clamp down on the very thing that was starting to shift. A simple 'that is a good…

Let the corners of your mouth lift about as much as they would if you had just remembered something mildly pleasant. Not a smile anybody would notice.

This comes from dialectical behaviour therapy, where it is used as a way of softening without pretending. You are not being asked to feel happy, and…

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…

Sometimes eyes water during body work with no sad thought attached to it. Nothing has gone wrong, and there is nothing that needs explaining.

If it happens to you, let it happen. If it happens to someone you are working with, say something plain and warm: that this is common, that they do…

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…

Tap the fleshy outside edge of your hand and say something like: even though I feel this, I accept myself completely. Three times, in whatever words are actually true for you.

The shape of the sentence is the point. It names the problem and refuses to make your worth conditional on solving it, which is the exact opposite of…

Work one side of your face or body first, then stop and compare. The difference between the treated side and the untreated one is often surprisingly clear.

This is a useful trick if you tend to finish a practice thinking nothing happened. Rather than asking whether you feel better, which is a vague…

End by pressing your palms together and staying there a moment. Each hand is giving and being given to at the same time.

It is a small thing that lands hard for people who only know how to be the one who helps. Notice the warmth and the pressure and notice that you…

Finish by letting your eyes travel slowly from one side to the other a few times, open or closed, then bring them back to the middle and notice how you are.

The idea borrowed from EMDR is that this helps the calmer state settle in rather than evaporate at the door. Whether it does that is not established,…