Body Scan for Sleep If you're listening to this,
Then most likely you're having trouble getting to sleep or you're awake in the middle of the night.
I know from my own experience how frustrating disturbed sleep can be,
So you certainly have my sympathy.
We'll use this meditation to help to settle the mind and the emotions and to relax the body.
But firstly,
It's important to acknowledge that trying to force ourselves to fall asleep very often just ends up creating more tension.
And we get trapped in a vicious circle of being awake,
Trying to sleep,
Getting tense and worrying,
Trying to get back to sleep,
Failing,
Being awake,
And so it goes on.
So the first thing to do is think about how you're feeling about being awake.
What's actually going on in your experience as you lie here?
How's your body feeling?
And if you notice tension in your body,
See if you can release it a little bit with each out breath,
Letting it go a little as you give the weight of your body up to the bed as you breathe out.
Really allow yourself to sink into the bed as you lie here,
Letting your bed support you as best you can.
And what kind of thoughts are flowing through your mind?
Just seeing what's going on without any judgment.
Maybe you notice you're worrying about your health,
Which is very understandable.
Or maybe you're worrying about tomorrow or about something that happened during your day.
Again,
These kind of thoughts are very normal for all of us.
Doing mindfulness means just becoming aware of this.
This will help you be a little bit less caught up in your thoughts and less swept away by them.
Now imagine that your mind is like a clear blue sky and that all these thoughts are like clouds passing across the sky.
See if you can let them come and go,
Come and go,
Recognizing they're just thoughts,
Not even necessarily true.
While they are coming and going,
There's another part of your awareness that can watch these thoughts with more perspective.
And this awareness that can look at your thoughts is like a beautiful,
Clear blue sky.
So we don't need to be so caught up with what our thoughts are actually about.
We just rest in the sky-like mind.
And there's another very helpful way to untangle ourselves from all these thoughts about tomorrow,
About our tiredness,
About frustration with being awake when we really want to be able to sleep.
And that's to shift our awareness into the body.
So we move from being in our thoughts to being aware of our body.
It's simple and powerful and works because we can't be lost in thinking and being aware of the body at exactly the same moment.
We just can't do that with the way we are made as humans.
Of course,
We might bounce straight back into thinking in the next moment,
But that's okay.
We can learn to notice this when it occurs and gently invite our awareness back into the body again and again.
This is what mindfulness is,
And it's a very helpful way to calm the mind.
To help deepen this experience,
We'll now do a body scan meditation where we'll move our awareness all the way through the body,
From the head to the feet.
We'll start off in the head.
It can sometimes feel like our thoughts are right there in our head,
Perhaps buzzing around there.
And then we'll gradually draw our awareness right down through the body to come to the feet.
This is a good way to gradually anchor our awareness very deeply in the body.
We can come to greater rest and hopefully sleep.
So to begin with,
Let's get a sense of the body resting on the bed.
See if you can let your body be heavy and to rest into all the places where it touches the bed,
In the back,
The legs and the head.
Seeing if you can give the weight of your body up to gravity.
Don't force or strain,
Just allowing your body to rest and settle onto the bed.
To help deepen the sense of letting go,
Let's take a slightly deeper breath in and then release and let go even more on the out breath before allowing your in breath to naturally flow back into your body in its own time.
Do this a few more times if you'd like to.
Really giving your weight up to the surface it's resting on with each out breath.
And now allowing your breathing to settle and to find its own natural rhythm as you lie here.
Feeling the weight of the head on the pillow,
Let the head be heavy and give its weight up to the support of the pillow.
Perhaps letting go a little bit around the base of the skull without forcing or straining,
Just allowing this area to get a little bit softer.
Coming into the face and let your forehead be smooth and soft.
Let your eyes lightly close,
Maybe letting your eyelids be like little blankets gently resting on your eyes.
Let your cheeks be soft,
The nose soft,
The lips soft,
The tongue and the mouth and the jaw soft.
Allowing your breath to flow freely through the back of the mouth on the way into the body and on the way out of the body as you breathe.
Moving down to the neck and letting this be soft,
The front,
Back and the sides of the neck.
Having a sense of the whole head resting heavily on the pillow.
Maybe even getting a sense of all the thoughts getting quieter inside your head,
Getting a little softer and more gentle.
Now allowing your awareness to pour down into the shoulders and letting the shoulders fall back towards the bed.
Letting the arms fall away from the shoulders and rest into gravity.
You can either have the hands resting at the sides of the body,
Palms upwards,
Or you can have your hands very lightly resting on your body,
On the hips or the belly or the ribs,
Palms downwards.
Just whatever is most comfortable for you at this time.
And allowing the arms to rest on the bed,
Rest into gravity and let go and soften.
Now allowing your awareness to flow back up the arms and to pour into the trunk,
The middle of your body.
First of all coming into your back,
Feeling into the movements in the back of the ribs and the back of the lungs as you lie here breathing and giving your weight up to the mattress.
Coming into the middle back,
The lower back and the buttocks resting on the bed.
Now going wider to be aware of the whole back of the body.
Allowing the whole back to participate in the natural rhythm of breathing as you lie here.
Don't force or strain,
Just being with your breathing however it is showing up in your back.
Back breathing brings in the part of the nervous system that helps us feel calm.
But if your breathing feels uncomfortable doing this,
Then just focus on the feeling of the bed underneath you and let go into this.
Or you could shift your awareness into your hands or another part of your body,
Anywhere that helps you feel steady.
Maybe you'll find that your mind keeps running off into thinking as you do this body scan,
That your mind is still very active.
But that's okay.
Every time we notice we've got caught up in thinking again,
We're having a successful moment of mindfulness.
And then we have a choice.
Rather than staying caught up with thinking,
We can choose to shift our awareness back inside the body.
Back inside the stillness and the support of the body as it lies on the bed.
Every time we do this we're calming the nervous system a little bit more,
Especially if we relax into the bed.
We allow our body to be heavy and rest into the support of the bed as best we can.
So this is what mindfulness is.
Catching the mind,
Coming back in the body,
Releasing and resting.
Doing this again and again.
Now allowing our awareness to move into the body.
Now allowing our awareness to move from the back into the front of the body.
Feeling into the soft belly,
The stomach.
Maybe it's expanding a little bit on the in-breath,
Coming back a little bit on the out-breath.
Feel into these gentle movements and let your breathing be as natural as possible.
Now coming into the chest area.
Having a general sense of the breath in the chest.
And if your breath is uncomfortable here,
Then you could drop your awareness into the back of your body again and feeling into the support and stillness of the bed.
Now going wider to be aware of the whole torso.
That's the whole of the middle of your body.
The front,
The back and the sides.
The inside and the whole surface of the body as you lie here.
Always giving the weight up to the bed and not forcing your breathing in any way.
Now coming down to the hips.
Checking that your buttocks are soft on the bed as it takes your weight.
And let your legs fall away from your hips.
So the hips can release any tension you might feel in this area a little bit.
Let your legs be supported by the bed as they rest into gravity.
Letting your awareness flow down into the thighs.
The front,
Back and sides of the thighs.
Feel inside the thighs as they rest here.
Now allowing your awareness to pour down into the knees.
Feeling inside the knees,
The shape of the knees.
Then allowing awareness to pour down into the lower legs.
The front,
The back,
The sides.
The soft calves at the back and the shin bones at the front.
Let the whole lower legs be full of awareness.
Resting into gravity,
Resting on the bed.
Coming down through the ankles and allowing awareness to pour into the feet.
The soles of the feet,
The tops of the feet.
And pouring into the toes.
Letting each and every toe become full of awareness as you rest here.
Maybe the feelings are strong in your toes.
Or maybe your toes feel numb or dull.
It doesn't matter how strongly you can feel your toes.
The main thing is simply to be aware.
And now broadening awareness to be aware of the whole body lying here.
Resting here.
Giving your weight up to the bed.
Letting go into gravity.
Let your body be heavy and supported by the bed.
Resting in a broad open awareness.
Rest in blue sky mind.
Letting any thoughts that are still present come and go.
Like clouds passing across the sky.
Letting sensations in the body flow through the moments.
Likewise,
Letting emotions come and go,
Come and go.
And letting the body,
The heart,
The mind drop ever deeper into rest and into sleep.
