Practices
Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.
Narrowed down
264 practicesArea
How long you have · Twenty minutes
Who it is written for
Where you are right now
On your own, or with someone · On my own
Theme
Approach
No particular kind of movement wins. Balance work, martial arts, tai chi, swimming, all of it helps about as much, and what predicts the benefit is moving regularly at all.
This is good news, because it means you can stop researching and start doing. Pick whatever you have access to and will still be doing in a month. If…
Learn a long sequence in small pieces and join them up afterwards. Nobody should be holding twelve steps in their head at once.
Take the first two moves until they are boring, then add the third. It feels slower and it is not, because the version learned this way stops falling…
Doing the identical sequence every time is not boring for everyone. For some people the sameness is precisely what settles them.
Tai chi runs the same series again and again, and there is nothing to decide once you know it. It is a bit like having a programme on that you have…
Slow movement practices seem to help mood, sleep and the general hum of stress. Bringing that background level down often does more for your concentration than trying to concentrate harder.
Running on a constant stress signal wears down exactly the part of you that plans, waits and holds a thought. So lowering the load is not a soft…
Tai chi, qigong, karate, whatever is running near you at a time you can make. Choose on availability, cost and what you actually like, because those decide whether you keep going.
The ingredients are much the same across these: steady movement, a structure somebody else designed, and a session that happens whether or not you…
A hard walk or a run works a little like a small dose of something. Alertness up, mood up, for a while afterwards.
This is a useful way to think about it because it puts movement in the category of things that do something to you, rather than things you ought to…
Movement gives you back some willingness, not just some focus. The problem is often not that you cannot concentrate but that you cannot make yourself care enough to start.
Those are two different difficulties and the second one is usually the more disabling in adult life. After moving, the same task tends to feel…
The best exercise is whichever one you go back to. Something you enjoy, outdoors if you can, with other people if that helps, and above all something you will do again on Thursday.
There is always a more efficient programme on paper. It does not matter if you stop after a fortnight. Judge any plan by whether you would still be…
Moving your body is not a pleasant extra alongside the proper treatment for low mood. It has been tested as a treatment in its own right and it holds up.
This matters most when you are already doing other things and still struggling. Walking, cycling, swimming, anything that lifts your heart rate for a…
If a movement class sounds like it comes with somebody else's beliefs attached, ask what actually happens in the room before ruling it out. Much of it can be done as plain movement.
Stretching, holding a shape, breathing steadily, none of that belongs to anyone. Teachers vary, and plenty will leave out the chanting or the framing…
You do not have to walk into a room full of strangers for this to work. The moving and the attention are the active parts, and both travel happily to your living room.
Group classes suit some people and cost others far more than they give. A video at home, a quiet corner, the same fifteen minutes, all of it counts.…
How often you move matters more than how hard. Pick something you would still do on a mediocre Tuesday.
Big efforts on good days followed by nothing for a fortnight tend to average out at very little. Three easy sessions a week that you actually keep…
Some of what you are carrying has not finished happening. Movement that soothes rather than pushes tends to suit that better than anything strenuous.
Advice built around a danger that has passed does not fit a person still meeting it weekly, whether that is racism, an unsafe household or work that…
When obsessions start early and dig in deep, ask gently what anxiety looks like elsewhere in the family. Often there is an undiagnosed parent, and often that parent is helping in ways that keep the whole thing running.
None of this is about blame. A parent who checks the locks for their child, answers the same question fifteen times, or arranges the evening around a…
If the urge to arrange has to go somewhere, point it at something that can actually be finished. A kitchen drawer ends. A desk you keep re-sorting never does.
The ending is the part that matters. Finishing leaves you with something real to have done, which competes with the small relief that compulsive…
Peripheral biofeedback, the sort that tracks skin conductance and heart rate rather than brainwaves, has more behind it than neurofeedback does. You practise letting the body drop into a calmer state while a monitor shows you it happening.
Once that state is familiar, pair it with a distinctive scent used only for this. After enough repetitions the smell starts pulling the state along…
If you are going to take supplements, it is worth paying a small subscription to a service that assays what is actually in them. ConsumerLab is one, at roughly sixty dollars a year.
The thing to check about any such service is who funds it, because a tester paid by manufacturers is a marketing department with a laboratory…
When omega levels are low, everything about ADHD tends to get louder: attention, mood swings, holding things in mind. Low omega does not cause ADHD, but it can be sitting on top of it.
Think of it as one more layer to lift off rather than the thing underneath. Specialist labs can measure levels if it seems worth checking, and…
One woman's ADHD symptoms climbed and her thinking slowed as each B12 injection wore off, then settled again after the next one. The deficiency came down one side of her family and the ADHD down the other.
The two lived in the same person without either causing the other. What made it findable was the timing, because difficulties that follow a cycle are…
Calm is only half the training. Plenty of people are more frightened of stillness than of adrenaline, because stillness puts the guard down.
If everything you practise is a settling practice, half the range goes untrained, and you may be asking someone to drop a defence they still need. So…
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