Root · Muladhara
Coming home to the ground

4–10 minutes · for mornings when you wake up already behind · safe, secure, held

Still water and old trees. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Begin by giving your weight away. Feel the exact places where your body meets the chair, the mat or the floor, and let those places take more of you than they were taking a moment ago. The ground has been carrying everything for a very long time. It can carry you too.

Breathe in for a slow count of four. Breathe out for a slow count of six. The long exit is the point — a lengthened out-breath is the body's own switch out of alarm and into rest. Do that ten times without hurrying.

Now name three things that are true and solid right now: the floor under you, the air moving in and out, the fact that in this minute nothing is being asked of you. Say them silently. Say them slowly. Then rest the words down and simply feel the weight of your legs.

You cannot grow upward from a body that does not believe it is safe. Ground first. Everything else is second.

Sacral · Svadhisthana
Letting the water move

6–12 minutes · for stiffness, guilt and joylessness · feeling, pleasure, creativity

Waves arriving and withdrawing. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Watch the water arrive and withdraw a few times without doing anything about it. Notice that the sea never apologises for the size of a wave. It simply comes in, and then it goes out, and the shore is not damaged by either.

Bring one hand low on your belly. As you breathe in, feel that hand rise. As you breathe out, feel it fall. Let the breath be soft and rounded rather than sharp. If it helps, imagine each in-breath filling a bowl of warm water just below your navel.

Then ask yourself one honest question and let the answer float up rather than dragging it out: what have I not let myself enjoy this week? Do not solve it. Just let it be named. Feeling is not indulgence; unfelt feeling is what eventually turns into stiffness, resentment and fatigue.

Close by rocking your hips gently side to side, five or six times, the way water moves in a bowl. Movement is permission.

Solar Plexus · Manipura
The small fire that is yours

5–10 minutes · for the days you have shrunk yourself · will, warmth, self-respect

Late sun over a still lake. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Place both palms just above your navel and let them warm that patch of skin. This is the part of you that decides. Not the part that performs, or explains, or keeps the peace — the part that quietly knows what it will and will not do.

Breathe in through the nose for four. Hold gently for two. Breathe out through the mouth for six, as if you were fogging a mirror. Eight rounds. If holding the breath feels tight or frightening, drop the hold entirely and simply lengthen the exhale.

Now finish this sentence in your own words, silently, three times: Today I am allowed to… Let it be small and real — to eat properly, to answer tomorrow, to say the true thing once. Confidence is not a feeling you wait for. It is the residue of small promises kept to yourself.

A fire kept too small goes out. A fire fed everything burns the house. Balance is the discipline of the middle.

Heart · Anahata
Loosening the chest

8–15 minutes · for grief, loneliness and the armour you did not choose · love, forgiveness, connection

Green water falling through rainforest. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Let both hands rest one on top of the other in the centre of your chest. Do not push. Simply let the weight of your own hands be felt. Many of us have not been touched with any real gentleness for a long time, and the body notices when it is.

Breathe normally for a minute. Then, on each out-breath, silently offer a single line to yourself: May I be well. May I be at ease. May I be spoken to kindly, including by me.

When that feels steady, picture someone easy to love and send the same three lines to them. Then someone neutral — the woman at the market, the driver on your route. Then, only if you have the strength today, someone difficult. This is the classic loving-kindness sequence taught in the Buddhist tradition, and its power is that it widens by degrees rather than demanding instant forgiveness.

If your chest tightens or tears arrive, that is the practice working, not failing. Stay with your own name and let the rest wait for another day.

Throat · Vishuddha
Saying the true thing

5–10 minutes · for swallowed words and jaw you have been clenching · truth, voice, expression

Open horizon, clear sky. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Unclench the jaw. Let the tongue fall away from the roof of the mouth. Let there be a finger's width of space between your back teeth. Most of us hold an entire unspoken conversation in that joint.

Breathe in through the nose. Breathe out through the mouth with a soft, audible haaa, the sound of relief rather than performance. Six rounds. Then hum on the out-breath for six more and feel the vibration in your lips, teeth and the bones behind your face. Humming lengthens the exhale on its own and is one of the gentlest ways to settle a nervous system.

Then ask: what is the one sentence I have been carrying but not saying? Say it out loud here, in a room where nobody is keeping score. Speaking a thing once in private often removes half its weight before you ever take it to the person concerned.

Third Eye · Ajna
Watching thought instead of wearing it

10–20 minutes · for overthinking and 3 a.m. spirals · clarity, intuition, discernment

Falling water, mist, changing light. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Let your gaze soften on the water, or close your eyes and rest your attention in the space just behind the brow. Do not squeeze or strain the eyes; there is nothing to see.

Now change your relationship to thinking. Instead of trying to have no thoughts, watch them the way you are watching that water: something passing, in motion, not you. Each time a thought appears, name it in one plain word — planning, remembering, worrying, judging — and return to the breath.

This is the oldest instruction in contemplative practice, and it is what Patanjali's Yoga Sutras point at in their opening lines: yoga is the settling of the turnings of the mind. Not the deletion of thought. The settling of it — the way silt settles when you stop shaking the jar.

Twenty naming-and-returning cycles is a complete practice. Count them if it helps.

Crown · Sahasrara
Letting go of the handle

10–20 minutes · for evenings and endings · surrender, meaning, belonging

Last light over open water. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

This one asks for nothing. Sit, or lie down. Let the breath breathe itself — you have never once had to remember to do it.

Rest your attention at the very top of the head, and imagine the smallest opening there, no bigger than a coin. On each in-breath, imagine light entering. On each out-breath, imagine effort leaving.

Then drop the instruction entirely. Sit with no technique. This is the part every tradition eventually arrives at — the Tao that cannot be told, the prayer without words, the moment the swimmer stops fighting and floats. You are not going anywhere. You are already inside the thing you have been looking for.

Surrender is not giving up. It is putting down the weight of things that were never yours to carry.

Two extra rooms

Ten minutes before sleep

Forest waterfall — steady white noise for winding down. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Turn the screen brightness down. Breathe in for four, out for eight. Then go through the body from scalp to feet, and at each place silently say you can stop now — forehead, jaw, throat, shoulders, hands, belly, hips, knees, feet. Most people do not reach their feet.

Three minutes at your desk

A quiet lake edge. Footage: Pexels, free licence.

Feet flat. Shoulders down. Three slow breaths where the out-breath is longer than the in-breath. Then name five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can feel, two you can smell and one you can taste. This is a grounding sequence used widely in trauma-informed care, and it works because it makes the present moment louder than the story in your head.

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All scenery footage is used under the free licence of the stock library that supplies it and remains the copyright of the individual filmmakers. The written practices on this page are original work by Naomi Christie and draw on the classical yogic, Buddhist and Taoist teachings described in Teachings and in the book The Spicy Guide to Balance Living: Unlocking the Universe.