Body Scan with Kindness

This Body Scan focuses on bringing kindly awareness into the body to bring about greater ease and peace. It is good for anybody wanting to feel more grounded and less tense and it employs gentle breathing to help this.

Transcript

This will be a body scan meditation,

Where we focus particularly on embodiment and filling your body with kindly awareness.

So we're learning to rest inside the body with an attitude of care and calm,

Rather than struggling against the body.

And of course this is particularly common if we're living with pain and illness.

So to begin with,

Let's allow the body to rest down into the position that we've chosen.

You can do it lying down,

You can do it sitting on a chair,

Or you could do it standing.

It's completely up to you.

Choosing a position where you'll be as comfortable as possible and yet alert.

And when you've chosen your position,

Allowing the body to rest down into stillness.

To rest down into the support beneath you.

Whether that's the floor,

The bed,

The chair.

And seeing if you can have a quality of yielding,

So allowing the body to be held.

Letting go of gripping and the body-heart-mind,

Even if just a little bit.

And to help this,

You might like to take a deep breath in.

A long breath out.

Just do that if you'd like to.

Do it a few times.

And with each out-breath,

Have a quality of release,

Letting go,

Yielding,

Arriving,

Resting.

And then when you're ready,

Allowing your body to find its own natural rhythm.

An opening quality on the in-breath and a subsiding quality on the out-breath.

And now allowing awareness to pour down through the body,

All the way down inside the feet.

And you might find it helpful to imagine that awareness is like water.

Maybe your awareness is starting off in the head,

That's very common.

It pours down through the body like water and pools inside the feet.

And feeling the feet directly.

Sensation,

Temperature,

Contact with the floor of the bed.

Or maybe there's a quality of absence and numbness.

If that's the case,

Then being aware of that,

That becomes your awareness practice.

And now allowing this watery awareness to pour up inside the legs.

To feel both legs and the feet.

Resting inside sensation,

Temperature,

Tingling,

Buzzy,

Numbness,

Dullness,

Whatever it is.

And seeing if you can greet whatever's arising and passing with an attitude of care,

Of kindliness.

Seeing if you can care about your legs and your feet.

If you've got pain or discomfort noticing,

Any tendency to harden and resist,

Contract and tense.

In the noticing,

Seeing if you can soften a little bit,

Perhaps particularly with the out-breath.

Always yielding back into the support beneath us with the out-breath.

Resting back into the support of gravity.

And now allowing awareness to pour up to fill the whole torso.

The buttocks and the back of the body,

The front of the body.

The sides,

The inside,

The surface.

Resting deep inside and having a quality of opening a little bit in all directions on the in-breath.

And subsiding a little bit in all directions on the out-breath.

There's no need to force or strain,

Just resting inside the natural rhythm of breathing.

Opening,

Yielding,

Opening,

Yielding.

And if at any point breathing becomes uncomfortable or feels a bit forced,

You can always broaden awareness.

Coming to the hands or the feet or the bottom on the chair or the bed.

Moving back inside breathing if or when you want to.

And now allowing awareness to pour inside the shoulders on either side of the torso.

Letting the shoulders fall down and back a little bit into gravity.

Again being careful not to force or strain.

And allowing awareness to pour through the shoulders all the way down inside the arms,

All the way to the tips of the fingers and the thumbs.

Awareness like water.

Kindly and tender,

Gentle.

So we're inhabiting the arms,

Wrists,

Hands,

Fingers with awareness.

With this kindly tender awareness.

Resting inside sensation,

Temperature,

Buzzing,

Tingling,

Numbness.

Whatever's presenting itself to awareness in the arms and the hands.

Just resting there.

And pouring back up through the arms,

Through the shoulders,

Into the neck and the head.

If we're lying down,

Just seeing if we can give the weight of the head up fully to the pillow or the cushion.

So we're not gripping hold of the head with our muscles.

If we're sitting,

Seeing if we can have the head poised on the top of the spine.

Releasing through the base of the skull and yet openness in the throat.

Soft jaw.

Likewise if we're standing.

Letting the jaw be soft,

The tongue soft,

Lips,

Mouth soft.

So the breath can flow freely through the back of the throat on the way in and out of the body.

Cheeks soft,

Eyes soft,

Forehead soft.

Being aware of the whole head.

Letting the brain rest inside the head.

You won't feel this directly but having a quality of feeling into the physicality of the head.

The head is not separate to the body,

It's a limb of the body.

And the brain which can feel so dried out,

Full of thoughts,

Tight.

Letting it be the watery organ that it is.

Resting inside the head,

Something like 78% water.

Soft,

Fluid,

Open.

And now broadening to be aware of the whole body.

The legs and the torso and the arms,

Neck,

Head,

Face.

Being aware of the process of embodiment.

Breath flowing through the moments,

Sensations flowing through the moments,

Awareness flowing through the moments.

Resting inside the whole body.

And seeing if we can have the attitude we'd naturally have towards a loved one.

We'd care about them,

We love them.

And as we rest in the body,

Seeing if we can bring this attitude to all of our experience.

Right here,

Right now.

Fluid and open and tender and kind.

And you can stay here longer if you'd like to,

Or you can bring this body scan to a close.

When you feel ready to move,

Coming out of the practice carefully and gently,

Being careful not to strain the body.

And seeing if we can take this quality of awareness with us into whatever is coming next.

Reviews

I am working on making my way through all of your tracks here on Insight Timer. I love how you describe embodiment, and even give descriptions of our anatomy, during the body scan meditations. Thank you so very much. 💜💜💜

So comforting. Your voice is immensely soothing.

Lovely, relaxing practice. Thank you 🙏

Ahhhhhh.....

❣️

Thank you for the tools to cope with the pain.

Thank you 🙏

Great led practice, useful when I need a quick break at work

A wonderful variation on the body scan. I love the image of “watery awareness.” Thank you!

Loved it(:
Thanks(:

So lovely, Thank you 😊

Thank you for the lovely, caring meditation 🙏

I love these body scans. I can feel the care exuding from Vidyamala’s voice, and can’t help but feel like I need to care more for myself. 🙏♥️

Beautiful. Deep body awareness with kindness and love. Relaxing and yielding.

Thank you 🙏

Great meditation for when I wake up feeling anxious or agitated.

Lovely 🙏