A minuteAny ordinary dayMindfulnessAnger

If the word mindfulness makes you wince, leave the word out. Paying attention to your breath, or to the sounds in the room, is the whole of it.

A lot of people turn the practice down before trying it, because the label sounds like it belongs to somebody else's religion or somebody else's sort of person. The label is not the practice. Call it whatever you like and then judge it on whether it has done anything for you after a fortnight.

Qur’an and Sunnah

But We shall be sure to guide to Our ways those who strive hard for Our cause: God is with those who do good (Quran 29:69). The striving and the doing are what get named, not what anyone calls them.

وَٱلَّذِينَ جَٰهَدُواْ فِينَا لَنَهۡدِيَنَّهُمۡ سُبُلَنَاۚ وَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَمَعَ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ

But We shall be sure to guide to Our ways those who strive hard for Our cause: God is with those who do good

Qur’an 29:69read it in the library

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

What the research says

A meta-analytic review of randomised trials found that smartphone apps can teach acceptance, mindfulness and self-compassion, with small effects. What matters here is that the skills survived being delivered in a plain, stripped down, unceremonious form. Small effects are small and an app is not a teacher, so this is a modest point about packaging rather than a claim about how powerful the practice is.

Linardon J. (2020). Can Acceptance, Mindfulness, and Self-Compassion Be Learned by Smartphone Apps? A Systematic and Meta-Analytic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.. Behavior therapy doi

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

Why it works

People refuse labels far more readily than they refuse experiences, so it helps to skip the label.

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

Telling someone they have changed their brain lands harder than telling them they have changed their mind. That is worth knowing, and worth handling carefully.

A minuteMaking it stick

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.

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