Behaviors

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.

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.

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.

Lead movement from the head rather than starting from the feet; example given was teaching boxers to bob by manipulating head position because the feet organize underneath.

Practice both broad listening to all sounds at once and narrow cone auditory focus as distinct attentional modes to explore in movement and daily life.

Increase healthy consensual touch in life and practice many ways of being at different distances from others and touching/being touched in different ways, rather than always contextualizing contact the same way.

Use practice to learn volume control over reactivity to touch and closeness and, in some scenarios, remove reactivity altogether for better performance and clearer thinking.

Use grappling as one traditional practice for exploring touch, proximity, and contact.

Use contact improvisation classes/practice to explore touch, proximity, and non-martial interaction.

Use Latin dance classes as a way to explore touch, proximity, and movement with others.

Repeated consensual exposure to touch/proximity in day-to-day practice may help unpack and reframe prior traumatic experiences.

Before entering potentially triggering environments, imagine the difficult event already having happened to create a protective layer.