Practices

If your body is braced to run and there is nowhere to run to, try running in extreme slow motion. One knee lifting over several seconds, then the other.

The urge to bolt does not disappear when you sit on it, it just stays in the muscles as shaking, tightness or ache. Doing the movement so slowly that…

Picture something that could hold what you cannot deal with today. A box, a safe, a chest with a lid. You choose the size, what it is made of and where it is kept.

The details matter more than they sound: deciding what holds it, and knowing you can open it again, is what makes this different from pushing…

If the even square does not touch it, stretch the shape: in for six, hold for four, out for six, hold for four.

Having a second version matters more than which numbers you use. When one pattern does nothing, people usually conclude that breathing techniques do…

Some people find it helps to tap lightly on points around the face and hands while saying out loud what they are feeling and that they accept feeling it. It is easy to try and hard to be sure about.

The full method comes with a sequence of points and a set number of rounds, and free manuals for it are everywhere. What it puts together is rhythmic…

Rolling or throwing a ball back and forth with someone is more useful than it looks when one of you has gone blank. It gives the body a job and the two of you a rhythm at the same time.

It works over a video call as well: ask them to fetch a ball from another room and bounce it while you talk. Say what you are doing and why, so it…

When you have collapsed rather than escalated, more calming will only take you further down. What helps is gentle rousing: rhythm, weight, sound, movement.

A weighted blanket, rocking, drumming your hands on your thighs, singing or chanting something you know by heart, running on the spot for twenty…

Slide your right hand under your left arm so it rests at the side of your chest, and lay your left hand on your right shoulder. Then just sit, and notice whatever happens between your hands.

There is nothing to do beyond holding the position and waiting. Most people find a long breath arrives on its own after a while, sometimes a slight…

If turning attention inward makes you feel more unreal rather than less, stop turning it inward. Go outward instead: what you can see, what you are grateful for, where you are and what day it is.

The usual advice to notice what is happening in your body assumes there is an inside that feels solid enough to visit. When it feels empty or fake,…

When you are wound up and when you are flat, you need opposite things. Sweet tastes, soft light, slow rocking and steady weight bring you down; sharp smells, crunchy food, bright images and quick movement bring you up.

Before reaching for anything, work out which way you actually need to go. Racing, jaw tight, heart going: choose from the settling side. Foggy,…

Sound that repeats slowly, waves, rain, steady recitation, brings you down. Fast, loud, unpredictable music, or whistling, brings you up.

Have both ready before you need them, one playlist for each direction. Whistling is worth knowing about because it does two jobs at once, lifting you…

Steady pressure suits both directions. A weighted blanket, a firm squeeze of your own hands, lotion rubbed in with real pressure, bare feet pressed into the floor.

This is the one thing on the list that works whether you are wound up or gone flat, which makes it a good default when you cannot tell which you are.…

To come down, move slowly and rhythmically: rock, sway, walk at half speed. To come up, move properly: jog on the spot, jump, dance fast, or carry something heavy.

Heavy work is the interesting one, because it settles as well as it lifts. Carrying the shopping in one trip, shifting furniture, pushing hard…

Let the breath go along with the movement rather than counting it out. If you are guiding someone, do not set the pace of their breathing for them.

Being told exactly when to breathe in and out is unpleasant for more people than you would expect, and for anyone whose breath was held tight through…

Walk somewhere at a deliberately slower pace than normal. Stop now and then to look at something properly, and let your breathing settle into the pace.

Choosing to go slower is itself the exercise, because it is a small piece of holding back that you can actually feel. Ten minutes is plenty. Outdoors…

Attention problems often travel with anxiety or low mood, and those two eat working memory as well. Settling that layer can make everything else look quite different.

If you are anxious most of the day you will lose track of things, forget what you came into the room for and struggle to hold a plan, whether or not…

Nobody sees the times you did not say the cutting thing, including you a week later. Put them somewhere you can look at: one sticky note on the wall for each.

Memory is unfair about this. The single evening you lost your temper stays vivid while thirty quiet successes disappear, and then it feels as though…

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.

All or nothing scoring is the quickest route from one lapse to giving the whole thing up: I lost it, so none of it was working, so why bother. Count…

The aim is not to stop feeling angry. It is to stretch the time between the feeling arriving and you doing anything about it, from no seconds to a few.

That target has the advantage of being honest and checkable. You can ask whether you got a moment this time that you did not get last time. The anger…

One move to interrupt, one to settle. Open your hand, then take the slow breaths: the first buys you the gap and the second gives you something to do with it.

An interrupt on its own leaves you standing there, aware and still flooded. A settling practice on its own never gets going, because the moment goes…

The old angry route does not get deleted. What you are building is a rival route beside it, and at the start the new one is small.

Expect the old path to show up when you are tired, ill or caught off guard, because it is still there and it is well worn. That is not proof the work…