Practices

Cutting sugar does not improve ADHD, and nor does stripping out additives. Both have been tested repeatedly, including under conditions where nobody knew which child had eaten what.

The belief survives because parties are where children eat sweets, and parties are also loud, crowded and thrilling. The sugar takes the blame for…

Megavitamins, antioxidant products such as pycnogenol and assorted trace minerals have not beaten placebo for ADHD. They stay popular on the strength of a good story about how they ought to work.

The gap between a mechanism and an outcome is the thing worth teaching, because it will still be useful when the next product appears. Ask what…

Chiropractic neurologic organisation training, the kind involving manipulation of the skull, has no credible theory behind it for ADHD. The main harm is not the treatment itself but the months and the money that go into it.

Families meet this because it is marketed at them at the exact moment they are most willing to try anything. Naming it plainly, once, is usually…

With EEG neurofeedback, the weaker the study, the better the results look. Six large trials using sham feedback, with parents and teachers kept unaware of who received what, found nothing beyond placebo.

That shrinking with rigour is itself the finding. Blinding matters especially here because the outcome is a rating made by adults who have watched…

Brain training makes you better at the game, and at things that resemble the game. It does not seem to reach the parts of life you bought it for.

Cogmed, the several hundred apps, the balance based programmes: they all hit the same wall when someone independent tests them with a proper control…

One senior researcher in this field is approached by ADHD app startups roughly once a month and no longer takes part, on the view that the companies are not seriously trying to build something that works.

You do not have to share his judgement to borrow the question. Before paying for a digital product, ask who tested it, whether those testers were…

Once a shape feels safe, it becomes somewhere to explore from. The question stops being am I doing this right and turns into how does my body want to move now.

Stay in an easy position long enough for it to go slightly dull. Dull is the sign that the ground under you is steady. From there, small experiments:…

Picture a cat getting up from a nap. One side lengthens and reaches while the other side curls in, then they swap over. Do that. Add breath and sound if you want them.

After a minute of copying the animal, drop the instructions and let your body carry on however it likes. That is the reason for starting here:…

Find the place that is always tight, your jaw, your shoulders, the top of your back. Take it over deliberately. Squeeze it harder than it holds itself, then let it go.

Do that a few times and something changes. The holding stops being weather that happens to you and becomes something you are doing, which means it is…

Take a shape that asks something of you, warrior or mountain, eyes open, the middle of your body switched on. Then, without coming out of it, drop your attention inside and let the pose hold you instead.

Two things get practised in one position. First the doing: strong legs, clear gaze, a body that is ready. Then the yielding: still there, still…

Grounding and relaxing are two different prescriptions. A squat with your back against a wall puts you back into your legs. Deep guided rest takes you downwards. Reach for whichever one is missing.

When someone has gone numb or absent, often from the waist down, weight bearing work in the legs gives the body something loud and unmistakable to…

Before you go looking for practice at staying steady, make sure you already have something to do instead of your usual reaction. Practising with nothing to put in its place mostly rehearses the old response.

Pick the alternative first and keep it small: a slow breath, one fixed phrase, a decision to say nothing until your hands unclench. Then you can let…

Most of what feels wounded when someone slights you is a story you carry about who you are. A story can be looked at, which is a very different thing from having to defend it.

Try naming yours in one plain line. I am the reliable one. I am the one who does not get things wrong. I am nobody's fool. Then notice that the…

Nearly every everyday flare up comes from one small family of stings: being disrespected, disapproved of, invalidated, misunderstood, or brushed aside. Learning the family is easier than learning a thousand separate grievances.

Next time you are angrier than the event seems to deserve, ask which of those just landed. Most people find one or two do the bulk of the work in…

Some people move through the day half expecting to be slighted, and the scanning itself wears them out. If most days seem to contain someone who did not give you your due, part of the pattern may be in the looking.

It helps to notice the scanning rather than to argue with it. Ask how many of today's slights you actually witnessed and how many you inferred from a…

A cut heals and you stop thinking about it. An insult has no moment where the body tells you it is over, so it stays available to be replayed for years.

That is worth knowing, because it explains why a remark from a decade ago can still tighten your chest, and why you are not weak for that. The…

You do not need to get rid of your pride to stop being ruled by it. Having a sense of yourself is ordinary and useful, and the trouble starts only when every exchange has to feed it.

Introductions, small talk, the way you tell someone what you do, all of that runs on a bit of self presentation and there is nothing wrong with it.…

If the room decides how you feel about yourself, anyone in a bad mood can set your whole day. A quiet part of this work is moving that judgement back inside.

It does not have to be a speech you make to yourself. For many people it is closer to a settled sense of what they were trying to do today and…

People who get angry a lot are rarely hard. They are easily hurt, and the anger arrives about a second later to cover the hurt.

This changes what you work on. Instead of asking how to control the shouting, ask what keeps landing so easily and where that softness came from. If…

Ask yourself what you would least like the person in front of you to be thinking about you right now. Whatever surfaces is usually what your anger has been guarding.

It tends to be one short sentence and an old one. That you are weak. That you are stupid. That you do not matter. In a session a therapist can ask…