Little Signals: Quiet Moves

Description

Thirty things to do when a feeling gets too big to talk about.

Some feelings are too big to talk about, and too big to sit still with. Quiet Moves is a book of things to do instead — thirty of them, one to a page, in no particular order.

Open it anywhere. Do one, or none. Then shut it again.

It is spiral bound so it lies flat on a floor, hands-free, open at one move — because a child in the middle of a hard moment cannot hold a book open, and neither can the grown-up holding the child.

The moves are grouped by what a body needs:

• press and carry — for a body that needs something heavy
• breathe out — for when the breath has gone short
• slow — for a body going faster than it wants to
• touch — for hands that need a job
• big first — for a body that has not finished being fast
• notice — for after, when looking around is possible again

Every page has a stop. One line on every single move saying it is alright not to. Nothing is a step, nothing is numbered, nothing is completed, and nothing here is scored or rewarded.

And every page can be done by either of you. Hand it to a child, or pick it up yourself and start doing one. Most of the time it will be the grown-up who reaches for it — and that is what it is for.

Nothing in here promises calm. It gives a body something to do while a feeling comes down, and a grown-up something to do alongside them. Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes the feeling comes down on its own a while later, which was always going to happen, and is not a failure of the book.

Ten of the thirty work in a corridor or a queue without anyone noticing.

From The Regulated Human Co. — quiet tools for nervous systems of every size.

Regulation before optimisation.