All practices

Fifteen minutes at a pace of about six breaths a minute, with no holds and no gaps. This is the rate at which the breath and the heartbeat tend to line up; the practice is to hold the pace without turning it into a performance.

Twelve minutes of breathing through one nostril at a time. It is the most structured practice on this site, and the structure is the point: the hands have a job, so the mind has less room to wander off script.

Six minutes and one hand. Most adults breathe into the chest without knowing it, especially at a desk. This check tells you which pattern you are running, and then gives you the shortest practice that changes it.

Twenty minutes comparing each area on the left with the same area on the right. Difference is easier to feel than absolute tension, so this scan finds what a straight sweep misses.

Eight minutes of phrases offered to people you will never see again, done standing, sitting, or walking. No one can tell you are doing it, which makes it the most portable practice here.

Twenty minutes with someone you find mildly difficult — not the hardest person in your life. The instruction is to stop at the edge of what you can actually do and stay there, rather than performing a forgiveness you do not feel.

Fifteen minutes in the worst acoustic environment you have. Drills, traffic, a shared kitchen, a building site. The method is counter-intuitive: instead of narrowing onto one sound, you widen until the unpleasant one is a small part of a large field.

Twelve minutes following individual sounds all the way to their disappearances. The site's own timer bell is enough; no recording is required. What you are training is the ability to stay with something that is ending.

Eight minutes walking the length of one room, very slowly, turning at the wall. It requires about four metres of floor and no equipment at all — the most contained practice here.

Ten minutes, ten steps at a time, at normal walking speed. This is the practice that fits a commute, a corridor or a dog walk — no special place, no slow motion, nobody able to tell what you are doing.

Five minutes standing in a line you did not choose to be in. Waiting is the one resource nobody wants and everybody has; this is what to do with it.

Four minutes a day, taken from time you already spend at a sink. This is the practice that proves the point of the whole site: nothing has to be added to a day for attention to have somewhere to land.