Behaviors

For shifting a late chronotype earlier, wake up two to three hours before your typical wake-up time consistently.

For shifting schedule earlier, aim to go to sleep two to three hours before your usual bedtime.

If consuming substantial caffeine, hydrate adequately and get enough salt.

If taking MAO inhibitors or other dopamine-pathway drugs, be careful with cheeses such as Parmesan because of the cheese effect, including migraines and elevated blood pressure.

Use physical contact with loved ones to increase serotonin; examples include holding hands, hugs, cuddling, and contact with romantic partners, children, friends, and even pets.

Allow grief to be felt rather than drowning it out with substances, delusion, or other distractions. Adaptive grieving involves facing the loss directly instead of avoiding it.

Work with a trained professional to move through grief, especially in complicated or prolonged grief.

Complete the publicly available questionnaires/surveys linked in the show notes to help distinguish prolonged grief disorder, complicated grief, and non-complicated grief. The surveys are available for different loss types and languages.

Write about the deepest emotions, thoughts, and memories related to the lost loved one as a way to access attachment states; this can include writing a letter to the person who was lost as part of the exercise.

Practice long-exhale breathing while consciously thinking about slowing your heart rate on the exhale and increasing it on the inhale to train respiratory sinus arrhythmia, strengthen vagal pathways, and build vagal tone. Do this for 1–3 minutes or 1–5 minutes, either occasionally or daily.

Access a bereavement group for support while grieving.

Stand with knees straight and feet pointing forward; bend at the waist with a flat back if possible and assess how close you can get to touching your toes or the floor.

To increase range of motion, contract the muscle opposite the one being stretched before repeating the stretch. Examples: for hamstrings, contract the quadriceps as hard as possible for 5–15 seconds, ideally 10 seconds; if needed, increase to 20–30 seconds. Pointing the toe back toward the shin can help contract harder. For triceps stretching, contract the biceps during the overhead triceps stretch. For quadriceps tightness, contract the hamstrings intensely for 10–30 seconds by bringing the heel toward the glutes, then relax and repeat the quadriceps stretch.

Use proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretching, leveraging neural circuits such as spindle and Golgi tendon organ mechanisms; can be done alone, with straps, machines, weights, or a partner. It can also be interleaved with static stretching by loading the antagonistic muscle group during rest periods.

Raise core body temperature a bit before stretching to reduce injury risk. If already warm from running, weight training, or other activity, do the stretching session at the end of that workout. Otherwise, do 5–10 minutes of easy cardiovascular exercise or safe calisthenic movements first.

Define end range of motion as the place where you can feel the stretch in the relevant muscle groups, rather than forcing a fixed distance or position. Feel the target muscles as you stretch them, and do not get attached to hitting the same stretch depth every session because range of motion varies day to day. Hold the static stretch at the point where you cannot go much further; later sets may increase range of motion further.

Despite possible performance tradeoffs, use static stretching before weight training or sport if limited range of motion is preventing proper form or stability.

Use breathing as a mental strategy to cope with discomfort or pain; highlighted as the strongest strategy used by yoga practitioners during a cold pain task.

Use awareness of motion as an entry point into movement practice; repeatedly bring attention to motion/flux rather than just thoughts or body parts. Train it regularly so recognition of dynamic flux becomes clearer over time and can become a safe haven that unlocks strength and freshness.

Allow subtle movement during sitting to refresh attention and avoid becoming stale.

Use a piece of floor, a wall, or a corner of a room as a movement environment for discovery and play.

Recommendation against narrow sport specialization, especially in kids, in favor of broader movement development.

Use movement categories to identify imbalance and choose practices that move you toward balance rather than feeding existing strengths.

Some discomfort/challenge should be present; too much means you've gone overboard and can't make progress, while none may mean you're only gratifying yourself.

Accumulate 30 minutes per day in an unloaded resting squat position; not 30 minutes straight, but accumulated throughout the day. Build up gradually and be mindful of dosage because some people can get hurt if they try to do it too quickly.

Watch animal movement as inspiration and as a way to understand movement possibilities reflected within humans.

Introduce wave-like spinal movement patterns; can produce emotional release, refresh athletes, and defragment specialized movement patterns.

Practice subtle, small-frame movements that mobilize little bits of the body rather than only large-frame motions; especially beneficial and largely absent from modern physical culture.

Torso/spinal movement should be taught and practiced in an elaborate, gradual progression to avoid getting stuck in a single new pattern.

Actively train eye movements because people do not move the eyes as well as they think. When encountering difficulty in other layers of movement, start with the eyes as an entry point because eye training has far-reaching effects.