Practices

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…

Most people are already doing something for themselves outside your room: herbs, a chiropractor, breathing videos, a weekly massage. Ask, plainly and without a raised eyebrow.

If you treat it as fringe behaviour, you will simply stop being told about it, and then you are working half blind. You want to know what is…

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…

Tapping pairs light contact on acupressure points with saying the trouble out loud. The claims made for it run ahead of the evidence, and it is cheap, quick and safe enough to try.

The idea underneath is that you hold the distressing thing in mind while your body receives a steady, harmless signal at the same time. Whether the…

The usual round runs inside eyebrow, outside eye, under eye, under nose, middle of chin, collarbone, under arm, with the top of the head if you want it. About five soft taps at each, naming the thing briefly as you go.

Nothing here should hurt. Fingertips, light, more of a tap than a knock. The practical value of a route like this is that your attention keeps moving…

If tapping feels too jumpy, use the same face points differently. Feel for a tender spot inside the eyebrow, under the eye, or just below the cheekbone towards the nose, then make slow small circles there.

Vary it: lighter, then a little deeper, circling one way and then the other, and see which direction the tissue seems to prefer. Slow steady contact…

There comes a moment when the tissue under your fingers gives a little and allows more depth. Wait for that instead of pressing your way to it.

It sounds fanciful until you have felt it once, and then it is obvious. Rest your hand, keep the pressure steady, and let the softening decide the…

Regular massage has been studied with restless, distractible children and teenagers, and their teachers noticed the difference in class as well as the young people noticing it in themselves.

The pattern in these studies is modest and repeated: short sessions, twice a week, over several weeks, with mood and behaviour improving rather than…

Aching shoulders and a bad back are not separate from finding it hard to concentrate. Pain takes up room in your head, and there is less left for anything else.

People who are restless tend to hold more tension and pick up more injuries, and then the pain makes the focus worse, and round it goes. So it is…

In placebo studies, people improve even when they have been told outright that the pill is inert. They also usually spend half an hour talking with someone who is paying attention.

That half hour is easy to dismiss as a detail of the study design, and it may be most of the treatment. Which is oddly encouraging: careful listening…

Reviews do not support acupuncture as a treatment for attention difficulties. Some studies of acupuncture alongside counselling have done better than dummy needling alongside counselling, which is a more modest claim than it first sounds.

The likeliest reading is that a warm, unhurried practitioner who examines you carefully is doing much of the work. Needles are very fine and harm is…

There is a route the calming nerve takes through you: eyes, then jaw and mouth, then throat and neck, then shoulders and chest, then belly. You can visit each stop in turn and simply notice what is there.

Give every area a moment before you move on. Soften around the eyes, let the jaw hang, sigh the throat loose, feel the chest lift, then rest a hand…

Talking is not the only door in. Exercise, massage, acupressure, yoga, tai chi and the rest go at the body first and let the mind follow, which is the opposite direction from most therapy.

That is why they sit well beside talking work rather than competing with it. If words keep circling the same ground, changing what your body is doing…

The best ending is often that therapy stops and the practices carry on. People finish their sessions and keep the yoga, the bodywork, the acupressure, the sitting quietly.

It is worth building towards that from early on rather than at the end. If everything that settles you happens in one room with one person, then…

Body based approaches have been linked with better physical and mental health, easier relationships, and in some settings lower use of painkillers and psychiatric medication.

That last one tends to interest the people holding the budget, so it is worth knowing if you are trying to get this kind of work taken seriously…

People who are sure they could never lie still for an hour tend to be asleep within ten minutes of getting on the table. Being unable to fidget seems to do it.

Worth saying in advance to anyone who is putting off booking. It is the same effect as a car journey knocking out a child who has not stopped moving…