Mindfulness of the Body

Mindfulness of the Body, part of a 6 week introduction to mindfulness meditation taught by Brent Morton, Spirit Rock/IMS trained meditation/dharma teacher living in Seattle.

Transcript

Welcome to the body scan meditation.

Sitting with comfort,

Ease,

Dignity,

Uprightness.

Keeping the spine relatively straight.

Back of the neck long,

Chin slightly tucked in.

Releasing all of the muscles in the face,

The jaw,

The tongue.

Allowing the shoulders to relax down the back.

Much like a coat on a hanger.

Allowing the bones to keep you straight.

The rest of the body to soften around the bones like a coat on a hanger.

Really relaxing the buttocks,

The hips,

So that the low back can be relaxed.

We begin by allowing the hands to come together and touch each other.

It doesn't matter how they touch.

Maybe just allowing the hands to be collected in the lap.

I ask you the question,

What do you feel in your hands?

Common response to that question,

If you stop someone on the street and ask them,

Hey,

What do you feel in your hands?

A common response would be,

I feel my hands touching.

In mindfulness practice,

We are looking for something much deeper.

Hands touching is a concept.

There's no sensation called hand.

What we experience on a moment to moment level is sensation.

Another word for that is the lived experience or the felt sense.

So we don't feel hands touching,

We feel tingles perhaps,

Maybe we feel warmth,

Vibration,

Coolness,

Moisture,

Vibration,

Aching,

Swirling,

Expansion,

Contraction.

The hands as we bring our mindfulness to them are not solid,

They are dancing.

They're moving,

They're changing,

They're vibrating.

The hands like everything else in the universe are in motion.

Show me two moments when the hands are the same and I'll show you where your mind has created a concept.

Living the hands,

Experiencing the hands.

Hands touching is like this.

In much the same way,

The hands are moving.

In much the same way as we felt the hands,

We'll begin to feel the left foot.

Notice what you notice in the left foot,

We're not looking for anything spectacular,

We're not looking for the right sensation or what we should be feeling,

We're noticing what we are feeling.

That might be hardness,

Might be aching,

Might be tickling,

Swirling.

Notice what you notice in the left foot,

Bottom of the left foot,

Top of the left foot,

Left toes.

Living the left foot,

The lived experience.

If you feel nothing,

That's an experience as well.

Feeling the numbness,

Numbness is like this.

Resting the mind in that numbness should it be there,

Not trying to change it or fix it.

And just like every meditation object,

We will lose track of the body,

We'll get distracted.

We'll go into thought and fantasy,

Future and past,

We'll fall asleep,

We'll fall into doubt.

What is the use of this?

This is stupid,

Maybe I should try Sufi dancing or Tibetan chanting.

When you notice that the mind has slipped away from the meditation object,

Which in this case is the left foot,

Bringing it back with all of the patience of a Buddha,

All of the patience of one who is awake.

You might do that a thousand times in this half hour and that's fine.

There's no need to add judgment or blame or doubt to that process of coming back again and again.

Experiencing now the left calf,

Left shin,

Left foreleg.

See if you can rest your mind in the left foreleg.

There might be very strong sensations,

Might be very subtle sensations,

Doesn't matter.

Notice what you notice in the left foreleg.

This might be quite difficult for you,

If it is,

That's fine.

There's an interesting phenomenon that happens with meditation,

It's that when we relax the concentration tends to get better,

Tends to strengthen.

A relaxed attention of your left foreleg.

So perhaps relaxing the eyes,

Often a tendency to try to focus the eyes on the left calf.

We're not using the eyes here,

We're using the felt sense,

Different kind of seeing.

Relax the jaw,

Face,

Shoulders,

And resting the mind in the left calf,

Left shin.

Letting go of the left foreleg and focusing the mind now in the left knee.

The left knee is like this.

Relax the jaw,

Face,

Shoulders,

And resting the mind in the left calf.

Relax the jaw,

Face,

Shoulders,

And resting the mind in the left calf.

Letting go of the left knee,

Feeling now the left thigh.

The left thigh is a large object of meditation,

Feeling the whole gestalt of the left thigh.

It might even be possible to feel the left hamstrings and left femur bone.

What do you feel in your left thigh?

Is it tingling?

Is it light?

Is it heavy?

Is it burning?

Is it pleasant?

Is it unpleasant?

The point of this meditation practice is not to get the right sensations or the right experience.

It's to open up to your experience as it is,

Without judgment,

Without aversion,

Without holding on,

Without ignorance.

Relaxing the mind.

Feeling now the left hip,

Left buttock.

There will most likely be a strong sensation where the left buttock is touching the cushion or the ground.

Is it hard?

Is it burning?

Allowing those sensations to be lived,

Knowing that you know.

Relaxing the mind.

Moving now to right foot.

Right ankle and right foot.

Right foreleg,

Right calf,

Shin.

Feeling,

Living,

Experiencing.

Feeling right knee.

If you feel nothing,

That's an experience too.

Feeling numbness,

Numbness is like this.

Feeling right thigh.

Letting your attention be broad,

Feeling the whole right thigh.

Or you can make the attention quite narrow,

Maybe just feeling the little point of tickling or aching or whatever else you feel in the right thigh.

Knowing what you're feeling,

Without judgment,

Without blame.

Feeling the right buttock,

Right hip.

And if you notice tension,

Great place to relax.

When our buttocks are tight,

Our low back is tight,

When our low back is tight we don't breathe so good.

When we don't breathe so well,

Our shoulders,

Jaw gets tight.

Release the buttocks,

Notice the effect,

Perhaps on the whole body,

Maybe the nervous system.

Feeling the groin,

The genitals.

Feeling the muscles.

Feeling the sphincter,

Anal sphincter.

Tailbone.

Feeling the bowl of the pelvis,

The two hips,

The groin,

The buttocks,

All at once.

Resting in the root,

The basement of the house of the body.

Feeling now low back.

It's the low back,

Tense,

Loose,

Aching,

Expansion,

Contraction.

Notice what you notice.

Let your attention be wide,

Encompassing,

Or quite narrow.

See what works for you.

Letting go of low back,

Feeling now the belly.

It can be helpful to even place a hand on your belly so that the sensations might be a little stronger.

In a common place we hold tension.

If you notice tension,

A great thing to do is to relax it.

It's the tensing belly on a moment-to-moment level.

It's tingling now.

Now it's aching.

Now it's tense.

Now it's expanding.

Now I feel the breath in the belly.

Now I feel the swirl of maybe an emotion that lasts for a few seconds and is replaced by ease.

Track your process,

Your lived experience in the belly.

No feeling is final.

See the law of impermanence manifesting in your belly in this moment.

See the law of impermanence manifesting in your belly in this moment.

See the law of impermanence manifesting in your belly in this moment.

Lifting the attention to the chest,

Letting go of the belly,

Feeling now the chest.

Chest is the energetic heart center.

What are you feeling in your chest?

Without judgment,

What are you experiencing in your chest?

Perhaps surface of chest may be even deeper into the center of the body.

Lifting the attention to the chest,

Letting go of the belly,

Feeling now the chest.

That is the exhalation.

Letting go of chest,

Feeling now upper back,

The two shoulder blades in between the shoulder blades.

A relaxed,

Kind attention,

Knowing that you know.

Letting go of upper back,

Feeling now the shoulders,

The sides of the neck,

Even the throat.

Noticing heat,

Tension,

Aching,

Numbness.

Notice what you notice.

Feeling the left upper arm.

From the shoulder to the elbow.

Feeling the left forearm from the elbow to the tips of the left fingers,

Left hand.

Letting go of left arm,

Feeling upper right arm,

From the shoulder to the right elbow.

Feeling right forearm from the elbow to the tips of the right fingers,

Including the right hand.

Letting go of left arm,

Feeling upper right arm,

From the elbow to the tips of the right fingers.

Letting go of arms,

Coming now to the jaw.

Feeling jaw,

Tongue,

Lips,

Mouth,

Roof of the mouth,

Tongue,

Teeth.

Feeling back of the neck to the base of the skull.

Feeling the face,

The cheeks.

The nose,

Eyelids,

Brow,

Backs of the eyes.

Feeling ears,

Temples,

Sides of the head.

Feeling top of the head,

Scalp.

Feeling now the whole body sitting here.

Whole body sitting is like this.

A kind attention,

Knowing that you know.

Knowing that you know that you're sitting here.

Little poem by Franz Kafka.

Mmm,

Never mind.

Little poem by David White.

Enough,

These few words are enough.

If not these words,

This breath.

If not this breath,

This sitting here.

This opening to the life we have refused again and again.

Until now.

Until now.

May the beneficial energies of this practice be for the benefit of all beings.

Thank you.

Reviews

Not contrived with music or sounds to take you to “someplace special” .... genuine, spontaneous guidance, loved the fart.🙏😊

I dig thus every time I sit and listen to this...

Comprehensive body scan with a good balance of pauses and talk.

So great. Thanks!

An excellent guided body scan

My mind was distracted a few times, but I have learned to accept that and this was a great body scan

Good very focusing

Excellent! Just the right length of gaps between speaking. Calming voice.