Free practices · Insight Timer

Meditate.

Short practices for a nervous system that has been running for months. Free, on Insight Timer, no account needed to listen. Most are under ten minutes and one of them you can do at your desk with your eyes open.

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Out now

A grounding practice to set your intention for the new month.

Ask yourself what you want this month to feel like, rather than what you want to achieve. A few minutes, and most of it is practice rather than talking about practice.

Listen to this one →

The ten

Find the one that matches what is actually happening.

None of these ten are live yet. They are written, and they are being recorded and released across the rest of the year, one every second week. The one above is the only practice on the profile today, so this list is what is coming rather than what is there.

Each is a different technique rather than the same session at a different length, which is why the durations are all over the place. Insight Timer listeners choose by how long they have, so there is a three minute one and a sixteen minute one and not much in between by accident.

3 min
Recording

You have four minutes between two meetings

A physiological reset you do sitting up, at a desk, with your eyes open. Nobody in the room needs to know you are doing it. This is the one to start with if you have never done any of this before.

6 min
Recording

Your body is anxious and your mind will not stop

Sighing and orienting. Two things the nervous system already knows how to do, done deliberately, which is the difference between waiting for it to pass and shortening it.

12 min
Recording

You are carrying something that was never yours

A descending scan, top of the head to the soles of the feet, putting things down on the way. The longest of the short ones and the one people come back to.

10 min
Recording

You cannot hear what you want under the sensible answer

A question, then silence long enough for something other than the first answer to arrive. Most guided practices do not leave the gap. This one is mostly gap.

14 min
Recording

You want an intention that survives past week three

Building the sentence, one word at a time, and testing it in the body as you go. If something tightens, the sentence is wrong, and that is useful rather than a failure.

9 min
Recording

You find it easier to give than to receive

Open hands, and the uncomfortable practice of taking something in. Worth that does not depend on the next outcome is a skill, not a personality.

10 min
Recording

You are being harder on yourself than you would be on anyone else

An adapted kindness practice. It does not ask you to like yourself, which is usually where these fall over. It asks you to be as fair to yourself as you are to a colleague.

11 min
Recording

You are chasing something without knowing how it will feel

A sensory practice for the version of you on the other side of it. Not visualising the outcome. Feeling the ordinary Tuesday afterwards, which is the part that actually tells you whether you want it.

7 min
Recording

You are in the moment you usually reach for something

Riding the wave. Urges rise and fall on their own if nothing is done, and this is a practice for the ninety seconds in the middle.

16 min
Recording

You are carrying grief and there is nowhere to put it

The longest and the slowest. It does not try to move you through anything. It gives you somewhere to be while it is heavy.

Following on Insight Timer is how you hear when one of these lands. It is the only notification I will ever be able to send you there, and I will not use it for anything else.

Follow on Insight Timer The podcast

If one of them lands

Some of these are a conversation, not a track.

Putting down what was never yours, hearing what you actually want, building an intention your body will keep. Doing them alone is a fair test of whether you want to do them with somebody.

That is what The Long View is. Nine sessions, root to crown, the same moves done properly with your history in the room rather than a stranger’s voice in your ears.

How The Long View works

These sit underneath everything else here. The podcast is the same thinking spoken, the letter is it written, and both come out weekly.