Practices

Open your mouth and put on a big obvious fake yawn. More often than not a real one follows, and the soft palate lets go with it.

Yawns are catching, so if you are sitting with someone else one of you starting will usually set off the other. Let it be a proper one: jaw wide,…

Let the corners of your mouth lift about as much as they would if you had just remembered something mildly pleasant. Not a smile anybody would notice.

This comes from dialectical behaviour therapy, where it is used as a way of softening without pretending. You are not being asked to feel happy, and…

Work one side of your face or body first, then stop and compare. The difference between the treated side and the untreated one is often surprisingly clear.

This is a useful trick if you tend to finish a practice thinking nothing happened. Rather than asking whether you feel better, which is a vague…

End by pressing your palms together and staying there a moment. Each hand is giving and being given to at the same time.

It is a small thing that lands hard for people who only know how to be the one who helps. Notice the warmth and the pressure and notice that you…

Finish by letting your eyes travel slowly from one side to the other a few times, open or closed, then bring them back to the middle and notice how you are.

The idea borrowed from EMDR is that this helps the calmer state settle in rather than evaporate at the door. Whether it does that is not established,…

If light touch makes you squirm but firm deep pressure feels wonderful, that is worth knowing about yourself. It is the same preference behind weighted blankets and a very tight hug.

Once you know it, you can arrange for it: a heavier duvet, a firm rather than gentle massage, sitting with your back against something solid,…

If something is safe, affordable and it helps you, the fact that the effect may be mostly expectation is not a reason to stop.

The test worth applying is practical: is it safe, can I afford it, is it taking the place of something that works better, and would that money and…

You are not trying to get calm here. You are trying to find out what is actually going on in you, and whatever turns up is the useful part.

If a practice becomes something you can pass or fail, it will quietly join the list of things you are bad at. So drop the target. Ask what you notice…

Most of us hold a whole day around the eyes without knowing it. Scrunch them shut, open them wide, then rest your fingertips lightly over them for a few breaths.

After that, try the small points: the spot between your eyebrows, your temples, the soft dip under each eye where the cheekbone begins. Press only as…

Find the soft place just under and behind your jaw, near your ears, and rest your fingers there. Then open and close your mouth slowly, slide the jaw forwards and back, and draw your chin gently towards your throat.

Jaws get held all day, often by the same hunched screen posture that pushes the head forward. Go slowly enough that nothing clicks or hurts. You may…

If you carry everything in your neck, that is not a separate problem from feeling on edge. The nerve that settles you passes right between the muscles that are gripping.

The ones you can feel most easily run from behind each ear down towards the collarbone, with more just behind them along the side. Rest a warm hand…

Put your right hand flat on your left upper chest, gather the skin gently and draw it downwards, then tilt your head and lift your left ear away from it. Hold there and wait.

You are making a long slow stretch up the front of the neck, not pressing on anything. Wait rather than count: somewhere in the next minute a deeper…

Do not put a clock on any of this. Stay with each position until your body asks for a deeper breath or produces a yawn, then move on.

Timing by the clock turns the practice into another task to be completed. Waiting for a signal teaches you what your own signs of release actually…

After the throat, go straight to the chest. Most people feel the two loosen together, and noticing that link teaches you something about your own wiring.

Sigh the throat open, then put both hands on your breastbone and let the breath drop lower. If you have ever had a lump in your throat and a…

Rest both hands on your chest, feel it lift and fall, and let the breath go low enough that your belly moves too. If someone you love turns up in your mind while you do it, let them stay.

Gratitude works here as well, as long as it is specific and true: one thing from today rather than a list you are supposed to produce. Pets count,…

Hands on your belly, breathe so that it moves, and listen. A gurgle down there is a real sign that you have stopped bracing.

Digestion is one of the first things to shut down when you feel under threat and one of the first to come back when you do not. That is why the noise…

There is a real difference between a practice you add to your treatment and one you use in place of it. Massage, breathing, acupressure and the rest belong in the first group.

Nobody minds you tapping, stretching or seeing an acupuncturist. What matters is that none of it quietly takes the place of the medication, the…

One of the quiet gains from body practice is that you can feel more without having to do something about it straight away. The feeling arrives, you watch it, it passes.

That watching part is worth practising on small things: an itch you do not scratch, cold hands, mild boredom. Building room in ordinary moments means…

Words for feelings tend to arrive after the body has been noticed, not before. Find the sensation first, then see what it wants to be called.

Try it in that order: tight across the chest, hot in the face, heavy behind the eyes. Then a name, if one comes, and no forcing if it does not.…

Not all of this is a matter of how you say you feel. Breathing, exercise and hands on work shift things that can be measured from outside: heart rhythm, stress hormones, muscle tone.

That matters if you are the kind of person who suspects their own good moods, or if you have to make a case to a colleague who wants numbers. It also…