LongerAny ordinary dayMedical and treatmentYour body

A few sessions give you an effect that fades. A few months of it starts to change your baseline. Plan for the longer version if you can.

One class leaves you calmer for an afternoon, which is real and also temporary. Fifteen weeks of the same practice is where people start reporting steadier attention and steadier mood in general. So when you are choosing between a taster and a term, the term is doing something different in kind. If money forces the shorter option, keep practising at home between courses.

Qur’an and Sunnah

You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual (Quran 12:47). The plan given was long and repeated, because that is what actually builds up a store.

قَالَ تَزۡرَعُونَ سَبۡعَ سِنِينَ دَأَبࣰ ا فَمَا حَصَدتُّمۡ فَذَرُوهُ فِي سُنۢبُلِهِۦٓ إِلَّا قَلِيلࣰ ا مِّمَّا تَأۡكُلُونَ

then I can return to the people to inform them.’ Joseph said, ‘You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual. Store all that you reap, left in the ear, apart from the little you eat

Qur’an 12:47read it in the library

Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.

What the research says

In pooled randomised trials of exercise for depression, the effect held up after correcting for publication bias and was larger in supervised, higher intensity programmes. Those trials compared how hard and how supervised the exercise was rather than how many weeks it ran. So the general point that a more substantial programme yields more is supported, while the specific claim about duration is not directly tested.

Schuch FB, Vancampfort D, Richards J, Rosenbaum S, Ward PB, Stubbs B. (2016). Exercise as a treatment for depression: A meta-analysis adjusting for publication bias.. Journal of psychiatric research doi

Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.

Why it works

Short exposures give you a temporary lift, while months of repetition shift where you sit when you are not practising.

This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.

Near this one

Put music on. A faster tempo pulls your pace up without you deciding to, and the same effort feels lighter when there is something to listen to.

Twenty minutesMoving your body

Doing the identical sequence every time is not boring for everyone. For some people the sameness is precisely what settles them.

Twenty minutesMoving your body

Move earlier in the day if you can. Whatever it gives you is then available for the hours that follow, and the day has fewer chances to swallow it.

Twenty minutesMoving your body