A compendium of practices
Practices to carry the work between sessions. Use what you're drawn to.
The session opens a state. These practices are how you keep returning to it — and how the change settles into your body for good.
All of them do one of a few simple things: settle the nervous system, ground you back into your body, help held energy discharge, or turn your attention inward so you can see what's moving. None of it is complicated, and none of it asks you to believe anything. Done a little and often, they retrain the system through repetition — which is how any lasting change is made.
Use what you're drawn to. Five minutes is enough. Consistency matters more than length.
A fuller, more active practice — to move energy, clear what's stuck, and re-activate the work between sessions. Three rounds of thirty breaths, with holds, set to music that inspires you.
Why it works. The breath is the most direct lever you have on the autonomic nervous system. Sustained connected breathing shifts your physiology and blood chemistry enough to loosen what's held — often surfacing emotion or sensation for release. Breath practices have measurable effects on mood and arousal (Balban et al., 2023). This one is activating and cathartic, not calming — use it when you want to move something, not to wind down.
Set up. Lie down somewhere safe and private. Nothing in your mouth, nothing to fall against. Never in or near water, never while driving. Allow 20–30 minutes including rest.
The practice — three rounds:
1. Connect the breath. Breathe in and out through the mouth (or nose if you prefer) in a continuous circle — no pause at the top, no pause at the bottom. Inhale a little fuller and more active than normal; let the exhale fall. Keep it connected and rhythmic.
2. Build the round. Stay with the connected breath for 30 breaths. Sensations will come — tingling, heat, emotion, the urge to move. Let them. Keep breathing.
3. The hold. At the end of the round, exhale fully and hold the breath out for as long as is comfortable. When you need to, take one deep breath in and hold it in for 10–15 seconds. Then release and let the breath return to normal for several breaths.
4. Rest, then repeat. Rest a moment, then begin the next round. Three rounds in total.
5. Land. When the rounds are done, stop and lie still for a few minutes. Let the breath do whatever it wants. This stillness is part of the practice — move straight into the Chakra Meditation if you like.
What's normal. Tingling, cramping in the hands or face (tetany), lightheadedness, temperature changes, waves of emotion, the urge to move or make sound. All common, all pass. If it's too much, return to slow, normal breathing and ground.
Safety. This is a strong practice. Do not do it if you are pregnant, or if you have epilepsy, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, an aneurysm or retinal condition, or a history of psychosis, mania or bipolar disorder — and not soon after surgery. Never in water or while driving. It is not a substitute for medical or psychological care. If in doubt, check with your practitioner first.
Source: Balban et al., Cell Reports Medicine (2023).
A two-to-five minute reset for an activated nervous system. Use it anywhere — before sleep, after stress, mid-day.
Why it works. A long, slow exhale stimulates the vagus nerve and tips you toward the parasympathetic "rest and digest" state. This is one of the best-evidenced breath techniques there is: a 2023 Stanford randomised trial found five minutes a day of exhale-weighted breathing improved mood and lowered physiological arousal more than mindfulness meditation (Balban et al., 2023).
The practice (cyclic sighing):
1. Inhale slowly through the nose until your lungs feel full.
2. Take a second, short sip of breath in through the nose, to fully expand.
3. Exhale slowly and completely through the mouth — longer than the inhale.
4. Repeat for two to five minutes.
The principle is simple: make the exhale longer than the inhale. If cyclic sighing feels fussy, just breathe in for a count of four and out for a count of six or eight. The lengthened exhale is what does the work.
Use it any time you want to come down — unlike the connected breathwork, this one only settles.
A short focusing meditation drawn from Serpent Rising — six minutes. Beautiful on its own, or straight after the connected breathwork.
Why it works. At its simplest this is a concentration and interoception practice: you rest attention on one area of the body at a time and feel what's there. Training attention inward this way builds the capacity to sense your own internal state — the same capacity this whole body of work is rebuilding.
The practice:
Lie on your back, arms slightly away from the body, palms upward. Settle into a fourfold (box) breath — inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Keep this rhythm throughout.
1. 2–3 minutes — Mind's Eye (Ajna). Close your eyes and gently project them slightly upward, as if gazing toward the brow point from the inside. Bring your full attention to this point — the space behind the forehead, between and just above the eyes. Focusing here stimulates the pineal gland directly. Hold the attention and the breath here. Don't force; simply keep returning.
2. 2–3 minutes — Seventh Eye. Shift your attention to where the hairline meets the forehead — then one centimetre outside the head, directly above that point. This is the seventh eye. Only ever come to it after the mind's eye, never on its own: the mind's eye moves energy upward, and the seventh eye completes the arc. Keep the palms open to receive. Hold the attention here uninterrupted and allow the energy to continue moving up.
When you finish, take a moment before you move. Let the attention come back to the whole body and the room.
Note. There's nothing to force or visualise. The practice is simply sustained, gentle attention on each centre. If the mind wanders, bring it back — that returning is the practice. A caution: the seventh eye is potent and can leave you feeling withdrawn or socially depleted for the rest of the day — practise it when you have quiet time afterward, not before a busy or social day.
Framework: Paar, Serpent Rising: The Kundalini Compendium.
A self-led healing meditation. You let the body choose the centre that needs attention, then bring light to it with breath and focus. Eight to ten minutes.
Why it works. This is focused attention turned into care. Rather than working a set sequence, you let your own awareness find the centre that feels dim, tight or closed — the body usually knows before the mind does. Resting sustained attention and breath on one point is a concentration and interoception practice; the imagery of light simply gives the attention something to hold. Nothing is being added to you. You are bringing awareness to what is already there, and letting it move.
The practice:
1. Arrive and settle. Sit or lie comfortably. Let the breath lengthen and slow on its own. Take a few moments to feel the weight of the body and the ground beneath you.
2. Scan, and let a centre choose you. Move your attention slowly up through the body — base of the spine, lower belly, solar plexus, heart, throat, brow, crown. Don't analyse. Simply notice which centre draws your attention, or feels tight, heavy, dim or closed. Trust the first one. You don't need to know why.
3. Bring the light. Imagine a soft light gathering at that centre — clear white light, or the colour that belongs to it (below). Use whichever comes naturally. Let it rest there like a small, warm glow.
4. Breathe into the point. Keep your attention on that centre and breathe as if breathing into it. On each inhale the light gathers a little brighter; on each exhale, let the area soften around it. Stay here for several minutes.
5. Feel it soften and open. Without forcing anything, notice any sense of warmth, loosening, spaciousness or movement. If nothing shifts, that's fine — the attention itself is the medicine. Stay gentle and curious.
6. Close gently. Let the light settle and dim. Draw your awareness back to the whole body and the room. Take a slow breath, and a moment, before you move.
Note. There is nothing to force or get right. If no colour comes, stay with clear white light or simple warmth — white suits any centre. Choose intuitively: the centre that draws you, not the one you think it should be. If strong emotion surfaces, let it move, breathe, and ground afterwards.
When you feel scattered, buzzy, spaced-out or overwhelmed.
Why it works. Grounding shifts the nervous system out of activation and back toward "rest and digest" through the body and the senses — slow, physical, downward input the system reads as safe. Simple and reliable.
Practices — pick one, two minutes is enough:
Note. If you're very activated, do the physical ones first (cold, feet, weight) — they work faster than anything cognitive.
When the work leaves you ungrounded, what you eat helps bring you back into the body. These follow the Ayurvedic principle of grounding an over-activated (vata) system: warm, cooked, simple, nourishing.
Why it helps. After activation the nervous system is often light, fast and scattered. Warm, cooked, easily digested food is settling and steadying — it asks little of the body and gives back warmth and weight. Stable blood sugar also steadies the nervous system. Favour warm over cold, cooked over raw, simple over complex while you're integrating.
A simple, complete one-pot dish. Deeply settling and easy to digest.
Warm the ghee, add the spices until fragrant, add rinsed rice and dal, water and veg. Simmer 25–30 minutes until soft and porridge-like. Eat warm.
Simple rule: if you feel spacey, eat something warm, cooked and a little heavy. Save the raw, cold and light food for when you feel solid.
General wellbeing guidance from the Ayurvedic tradition, not medical or dietary advice. Adjust for your own needs, allergies and any conditions.
Most smoothies are cold, raw and light — the opposite of grounding. These are built to settle rather than scatter: warming spices, healthy fats, a little natural sweetness, room temperature rather than ice-cold.
Why it helps. Fats and protein slow the release of sugar and give the body something steady to work with; warming spices counter the cold, light quality that can leave you more ungrounded. Let ingredients come to room temperature, and skip the ice.
Blend until smooth. Drink slowly, not ice-cold.
Note. A smoothie is a snack, not a replacement for warm cooked meals while you're integrating — lean on those first.
General wellbeing guidance, not medical or dietary advice.
Not a diet. A way of eating that keeps the nervous system steady while it recalibrates.
Why it helps. When you're integrating, the system is sensitive. Stable blood sugar, real hydration and fewer stimulants make regulation easier; spikes, crashes, alcohol and heavy processed food make it harder. Many people also notice their tastes change on their own after this work — the body quietly asking for what steadies it.
The principles:
The test, not the rules: after a meal, do you feel steadier or more scattered? Let that guide you more than any list.
General wellbeing guidance, not medical or dietary advice. If you have a medical condition or eating concerns, work with a qualified professional.
For seeing where you are, what's moving, and where you're heading. Inner-self enquiry, on the page.
Why we do this. Putting honest, difficult experience into words is one of the better-evidenced ways to process it: across decades of research, expressive writing produces measurable improvements in wellbeing, partly by helping you regulate emotion and turn raw feeling into a story you can actually work with (Pennebaker; Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005). Writing makes the invisible visible — and you can't change what you can't see.
How. By hand if you can. No editing, no audience, no performance. Set a timer for ten to twenty minutes and keep the pen moving. The questions that make you want to stop are usually the ones worth staying with.
Prompts — direction and self:
Date each entry. Over weeks, the pattern in your own words tells you more than any single session can.
Sources: Pennebaker, expressive-writing research; Baikie & Wilhelm, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2005).
Why we do this — simply put. The "shadow" is everything you've learned to disown: the traits, needs and feelings you decided, somewhere along the way, were unacceptable. They don't disappear when you bury them — they run from underneath, showing up in what you over-react to, what you judge in others, and the patterns you can't seem to break. Shadow work is just the practice of turning toward that material on purpose, so it stops running you without your say. What stays unconscious stays in charge; what you can see, you can finally choose.
How. Same as journalling — by hand, unedited, timed, honest. Go gently. Where a prompt stings is usually where the work is. If something feels like too much, stop, ground, and come back to it another day (this isn't a substitute for therapy).
Prompts:
The aim isn't to fix yourself. It's to stop disowning parts of yourself — because every part you reclaim is energy that comes back to you.
Shadow concept after C. G. Jung; supported by expressive-writing research (Pennebaker; Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005).