Glossary

When breathing out takes longer than breathing in, the body shifts towards rest: the heartbeat slows by itself on the out-breath, and a long out-breath stretches that moment. This is well measured, and it is the one lever on your nervous system that you can move yourself, any time. It takes no technique and no counting either, only a little more time for the way out than for the way in.

Try it for three breaths, right now, without wanting anything. More: Breathe

Most people at rest breathe twelve to sixteen times a minute. At about six breaths, breath and heartbeat fall into a shared rhythm; research calls this resonance breathing and measures the greatest variability of the heartbeat there, a sign of recovery. The breath on this site moves at this pace, and you can set it slower or faster. The right pace is the one at which you are not searching for air.

If you feel dizzy, simply breathe again as it comes. More: Breathe

After the out-breath, a calm breath rests for a moment by itself before the next one comes. This pause is not a holding of the breath: nothing is held on to, the body only waits until it wants air again. At the top of the in-breath it hardly exists; there a brief lingering is enough. Whoever holds their breath on purpose is practising a technique. All that is meant here is leaving the breath its own rest.

On your next out-breath, notice the quiet moment after it. It has always been there. More: Breathe

A brief halt before something begins: three seconds in which nothing happens. Between what prompts us and what we then do there is always a small space, and pausing means noticing it. It is nothing more than that, and nothing has to come of it. That is why the breath on this site does not begin straight away.

Before you do the next thing: breathe out once. More: Breathe

The word comes from Japan, shinrin-yoku, and means nothing more than spending time among trees with no aim. Several studies have measured a calmer pulse and fewer stress hormones afterwards; how much of that is down to the forest and how much to rest and movement is not settled. It does not take a special forest. A park, a path through the fields, a tree outside the window are a beginning.

If you can, step into the open. The most healing thing may not be here at all. More: Into the open

Whoever sings or hums breathes out long without thinking about it: the note needs air, and the body shares it out by itself. Added to that is a fine vibration in the chest and head that many find soothing. Studies have found that singing, especially together, lowers tension and lifts the mood. It is among the oldest ways of coming to rest; every lullaby uses it. It does not have to sound beautiful.

Hum a single long note, as softly as you like. More: Breathe

An anchor is a small cue, a word, an image or a touch, that you link to a good moment so that it can bring it back later. Behind it lies the learning Pavlov described in his dog: what often occurs together, the brain connects. This is happening all the time anyway; an anchor is simply such a link that you set on purpose. What is established is the learning principle. That an anchor turns every heavy hour around is something nobody here promises.

Set it when something is good right now. On heavy days it is then already there. More: Anchor

This is psychology’s name for learning by linking. Ivan Pavlov rang a little bell before every feeding; soon the bell alone was enough, and the dog’s mouth watered. The same happens in people all the time and mostly unnoticed: a song, a smell, a place brings a feeling back. The principle has been well established for more than a hundred years. It works for heavy memories just as it does for good ones, and the good ones you may tend on purpose.

Which song takes you back to a good place? More: Why this carries

When the same worries run through your head again and again without anything being solved, it is called rumination. It feels like thinking things through, but it keeps the body tense and steals sleep. A better thought rarely helps against it. What helps more is giving your attention something simple and steady: a sound, the breath, something to touch. The circle does not stop on command, but it loses its hold when attention rests elsewhere.

You don’t have to send the thoughts away. Just give them nothing to do for a while. More: Listen

A calm, steady sound, sea or rain or a soft tone, that wants nothing from you. Such sounds mask sudden noises and give the mind something gentle to hold on to; many people fall asleep more easily with them. The sounds on this site are created on your own device. Nothing is recorded, and nothing begins on its own.

Let it play softly and do nothing else. More: Listen

What we tell ourselves often becomes, in time, the road our thoughts take by themselves. That holds for harsh sentences about ourselves just as it does for kind ones. A good word, chosen again and again, is therefore no magic spell but practice: it lays a path that is a little easier to walk the next time. What is established is that the tone in which we speak to ourselves helps shape our mood. A sentence alone works no miracles.

Choose a word that does you good, and come back to it. More: Words

Being mindful means being with what is here right now without judging it straight away: this breath, this sound, this feeling. The practice is thousands of years old and has been well studied since the 1970s; it lowers tension and helps against the circling of thoughts. It takes no programme, and no cushion either. Everything on this site is at heart the same movement, only without the word.

What do you hear right now, in this room? More: Why this carries

Being grateful means, to begin with, only this: noticing what is good. People who do so regularly, for instance by noting three good things from the day each evening, have been shown in studies to be more content and more resilient. Gratitude does not ask you to overlook what is hard; both may stand side by side. And it grows when you pass it on.

What was good today, even if it was small? More: Give

Not a technical term but a practice of this place: seeing a person who is hard for you, for a moment, as the child they once were — curious, unprotected, everything still ahead of them. This look excuses nothing and changes nothing about what is hard. But it softens the heart, and that does good first to the one who looks this way.

Try it with someone who annoyed you today. More: Give

A grudge is anger that has stayed. It is aimed at someone else and yet weighs longest on the one who carries it; research on forgiveness finds less tension and better sleep in people who lay a grudge down. Laying it down does not mean approving and does not mean forgetting, and nobody has to before they are ready. It only means not carrying the burden any longer than necessary.

You may lay it down whenever you are ready. Not before. More: Give

Two particles of light from the same source remain a single whole even as they fly far apart: what is measured on one shows in the same instant on the other. This has been tested across more than a thousand kilometres, and in 2022 it earned the Nobel Prize. Messages cannot be sent this way. But it means that the world cannot be fully taken apart into separate pieces. What that means for us is open.

Being separate is not the world’s last word. More: What stays open

At the smallest scale, some things happen without any cause that could be found: when a single atomic nucleus decays cannot be predicted, and physics searched for a hidden reason for a long time. Most physicists read this as true chance; other interpretations hold that, hidden away, everything is fixed. It is not settled. But the picture of a clockwork merely running down has lost its self-evidence.

As far as we know, the future is written nowhere. More: What stays open

The word is meant literally. The heavy building blocks of your body, the iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the oxygen in every breath, were made inside stars and flung out into space when those stars ended. That is measured, not poetry. Everything you see and everything you love comes from the same beginning.

You are related to everything you see. More: For the night

The theory of relativity knows no now that holds for everyone; what is simultaneous depends on the standpoint. Some physicists conclude from this that all moments are equally real and that the past is not gone but merely lies elsewhere in time. This picture is called the block universe. It is an interpretation, not a proof, and the experts argue about it. Einstein wrote it to the family of a friend who had died, as comfort.

That you have been can never again stop being true. More: What stays open

That it feels like something to be you is the nearest thing of all and at the same time the greatest riddle. Science describes how things behave; how experience arises from matter, nobody has yet explained. Some therefore take experience to be a basic ingredient of the world, others something the brain produces. Neither side can prove its answer. Only one thing is certain, that you experience, and everything else you know through this one window.

An open door, not a doctrine. More: What stays open

This is the name for what some people report whose hearts stopped and began to beat again: peace, no fear, a light, often a look at one’s own life. What is measured is that roughly one in five to one in ten remembers something like this after a cardiac arrest, and that the fear of death stays smaller for years afterwards. What the experience means is interpretation: a last merciful image granted by the brain, or a glimpse of what remains. Nobody can decide that, because all reports come from people who came back.

You don’t have to settle on any interpretation to take the comfort in it. More: What stays open

For a long time it was held that grief had to be suffered through in stages. Research has corrected that: the most common response to a loss is a resilience most people find in themselves without ever having practised it. After a long life told to its end, gratitude often takes the place of grief, and it is no disloyalty. Harder are the deaths that came too early. When grief does not grow lighter over many months, help from outside is no sign of weakness.

There is no right measure. Even a little grief is love. More: For the night

Wonder is the moment when something is larger than our picture of it: a starry sky, a birth, a thought. Studies have found that people are more generous afterwards and judge their own worries to be smaller. Whoever wonders is, in that moment, not circling around themselves. It takes nothing rare, only a second look.

When did you last not understand something and feel glad about it? More: What stays open

Four ways of standing in the world: It happens to me. I can do something. It happens through me. It lives as me. The outline comes from the spiritual tradition and is today also read soberly, as a description of how the relationship to one’s own life can change. None of the sentences stands above another, and most people wander between them every day. The rooms of this place are built along this movement.

Which sentence are you in right now? It is the right one for now. More: Why this carries

The Stoics, thinkers of antiquity such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, drew a strict line between what is in our power and what is not. In our power is how we judge something and what we do; not in our power are the outcome, other people, what has been. Calm here does not mean coldness of feeling, but putting your strength where it moves something. Much in today’s psychotherapy goes back to this thought.

What of this is truly up to you today? More: In good company

The Viennese doctor Viktor Frankl survived several concentration camps and afterwards wrote about what carries people. He liked to quote Nietzsche on this: whoever has a why to live can bear almost any how. For Frankl, meaning is not something you think up but something you find: in a task, in a person, in the stance you take towards what cannot be changed. His teaching is called logotherapy. That meaning protects mental health has been confirmed many times since.

Who or what makes your tomorrow worthwhile? More: In good company