Five minutesAny ordinary dayMindfulnessAnger

Sit still, choose a position, and hold it. Within seconds your body will be asking to move the chin or scratch the neck, and each of those small urges is a free repetition of letting an impulse pass.

You do not need anyone to provoke you for this. Notice the urge, breathe once, let it sit there without obeying it, and carry on. Two or three minutes gives you a dozen small trials, which is far more practice than waiting for life to hand you something to be angry about.

Qur’an and Sunnah

Seek help with steadfastness and prayer, though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble (Quran 2:45). The verse does not pretend that staying with something difficult is easy.

وَٱسۡتَعِينُواْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِۚ وَإِنَّهَا لَكَبِيرَةٌ إِلَّا عَلَى ٱلۡخَٰشِعِينَ

Seek help with steadfastness and prayer- though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble

Qur’an 2:45read it in the library

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

What the research says

In a long term follow up of an internet delivered treatment for irritable bowel syndrome that combined exposure with mindfulness, most of the original participants were traced and their gains had held. That is a different problem entirely, and a follow up rather than a controlled comparison. What it supports is modest: practices built on staying with discomfort instead of escaping it can hold up over time.

Ljótsson B, Hedman E, Lindfors P, Hursti T, Lindefors N, Andersson G, Rück C. (2011). Long-term follow-up of internet-delivered exposure and mindfulness based treatment for irritable bowel syndrome.. Behaviour research and therapy doi

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

Why it works

Urges fade on their own if you do not act on them, and this shows you that at low stakes.

When not to

If sitting still brings on flashbacks, panic or a sense of being far away from yourself, stop, and try it only with someone experienced alongside you.

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

Pick the news channel you cannot stand and watch ten minutes of it on purpose. The only job is to notice what rises in you and let it go by.

Twenty minutesMaking it stick

There is an old story about two wolves fighting inside a person, and the winner turns out to be whichever one gets fed. It is only a story, but the arithmetic in it is right.

Five minutesMaking it stick

If you held back at four o'clock and then snapped at seven, the holding back still happened. A later slip does not reach backwards and cancel it.

A minuteMaking it stick