The one system you can reach directly.

The fastest way down. Base for everything else.

The drop comes on the exhale, not the inhale. By the third round your shoulders are lower than you left them and the noise in your head has thinned out.

Quiets the mind. Used under pressure.

The count is the point. Five numbers is just enough to hold your attention, and while it is holding your attention it is not on the room. Things get quiet from the outside in.

Deep relaxation and sleep.

It arrives in stages rather than all at once. Each step up the ladder takes a bit more of the day with it, and the last few rounds are the ones that put you out.

Evens out both sides. Settles without sedating.

It settles without sedating. The static clears, and where that leaves you depends on when you run it. Clear enough to work in the afternoon, quiet enough for bed at night.

Stacked breaths and a hold. Goes deeper than one round.

The stack does something a single breath does not. By the hold you are already further down than one round of foundational breath takes you, and the sigh finishes it.

Longer exhale than inhale. When box isn't enough.

Easy to keep going, which is the whole point. It is the one you can run for ten minutes without it turning into a job, and the long exhale does the rest.

Golden light in, smoke out. Puts the day down.

Slower to arrive than the counted techniques. The change tends to show up around the point the cauldron feels empty, and it keeps going after you stop.

Standing, slow, with a travelling picture.

Steady rather than sedating. The stance is half of it, and you finish more awake than you started.

Wakes the body up. Morning, or before training.

You feel it fast. Warm, awake, and buzzing slightly, the way you do after the first minute of a hard walk.

Forceful both ways. Builds heat.

Heat first, then your stomach starts to burn. Afterwards there is a lightness that takes a minute to settle.

A held walk. Runs while you are moving.

It pulls you out of your head and into your legs. By the second or third hold the chatter has stopped and you are just counting steps.

Forceful exhale only. Works the stomach.

Your stomach does the work and you feel it there first. Past five minutes it goes very quiet.

Warms you up fast. After cold water, or before training.

Heat, fast. Three breaths in and you feel it in your face. As good for shifting a stuck head as a cold body.

Twist and exhale hard. Warm-up that works the core.

Your stomach is doing most of it. It also puts you somewhere your body does not usually go, which is half the point.

Loud on the exhale. Clears the deck before the day.

Loud, and faintly ridiculous for the first minute. Then it stops being ridiculous and you notice how much you were holding on to.

Breath of fire, arms overhead. Harder.

The arms are the hard part. Somewhere past a minute the burn in your shoulders takes over and the breathing starts running itself.

Lion's breath and a stomach vacuum. Standing.

Odd, and unmistakable. You feel the vacuum up under your ribs rather than in the stomach muscles, and standing up on the inhale is the part that wakes you.

Forty breaths and holds. The big one in this pillar.

Tingling in the hands and the face after the first round, then a wave of nervous anxiety on the empty hold. That wave is the whole point. Past it you come out light, warm and very awake.

The deep one. A facilitated ceremony.

The first ten minutes are work and your head argues the whole way. Then it stops arguing and something else takes over. Most first times are sensory rather than emotional, tingling and cramping hands, which is the usual way in. Later ones can go somewhere else entirely.