Body Scan

This body scan is an opportunity to truly feel yourself, in the present moment, just as you are. I slowly guide you to visit each part of your body, breathe into it, and let it rest. This practice is a wonderful way to encourage self-acceptance and even self-love. The body scan is also an excellent way to prepare for stressful events or to settle yourself into sleep.

Transcript

Hi,

This is Kat Enright,

And today I want to share with you one of my favorite practices,

The body scan.

First,

Get yourself really comfortable.

I would encourage you to lie down on the floor,

On the couch,

On the bed,

But if you don't have that option,

Sit in a way that's very comfortable for you so you can really,

Really relax.

Take the time to get the pillows,

The blankets,

Maybe you like an eye covering,

Maybe a moment to close the window or close the door,

Whatever you need to do to have some quiet time,

And then get yourself settled in.

In a body scan,

I'm just going to name these parts of your body,

And you don't need to do anything.

Just take your awareness to whatever body part I've named,

And try to keep your full attention there.

You might even try to breathe into that part,

And outside of that,

Don't try to improve,

Fix,

Repair,

Just be with whatever's there.

A body scan is a way to encourage acceptance of yourself,

And maybe even acceptance that would evolve into love.

Okay,

So let's begin by feeling your feet.

If you're lying,

Maybe it's the backs of your heels,

I want you to notice here what part of your foot,

Each foot is touching the floor.

Bring your full attention to the left heel and the right heel at the same time.

Remember,

There's nothing to fix,

There's nothing to do,

Just be with your heels.

And then shift your attention to the bottoms of your feet,

From your heels right up to where your toes begin,

Sometimes called the sole of the foot.

What is felt there?

Is it cold,

Warm,

Dry,

Itchy,

Or maybe you just don't feel anything at all?

Just feel what's there in the bottoms of your feet right now.

Maybe breathe into the bottoms of your feet,

And now begin to feel your big toes,

Left and right big toes.

Can you then feel your second toe?

What about that middle toe?

Can you feel the difference between those two?

And what about the fourth toe,

Maybe called the ring toe,

On the left and the right foot?

And then how about feeling your pinky toes?

Don't be discouraged if you can't feel your toes as individuals,

Just feel them as best you can.

Breathe into the toes,

And now move your awareness to the tops of your feet,

From the roots of your toes along the top surface up towards your ankles.

Let's include the ankles in this part too,

Inner ankles and outer ankles.

What can you feel right now in your ankles and the tops of your feet?

What is it like to give your whole attention just to this one part of your body?

And now I want you to feel for the space between the tops of your feet and the bottoms of your feet.

What is it like to feel inside your feet and possibly breathe into your feet?

Let's rest the feet now and bring attention into the back of your calves.

If you're lying,

You can probably feel your calf muscle kind of squishing out there on the floor.

And what is it like to feel that softness?

Or maybe there's tightness.

So notice in this scanning of the body that we might be feeling pain,

And we still don't need to do anything about it.

We can just experience it,

Honor it,

Give it a moment to be felt,

Recognized.

Let's shift attention now to the shins,

Lower legs here,

All the way from your ankles to your knees.

Stay in that space with your awareness.

You can also call this the top of the lower leg,

The side that's facing the sky,

Whereas the calf is the bottom of the lower leg or the back.

And now start to feel that place in between the front and the back of your lower legs.

What is it like to live into this calf?

Maybe you're very sensitive and you can feel your bones or your blood moving or the nervous system gliding along its pathways.

What do you feel right now?

You might notice also that there's nothing right to feel or wrong to feel.

We're just exploring,

Just reconnecting into the body and meeting it exactly as it is.

And then you could move your awareness into your knees.

So the front or the top of the knee is the kneecap facing the ceiling.

Then feel the back of your knee,

The inner knees and the outer knees.

And then let's feel for the inside of the two knees.

To me,

The knees seem kind of like spheres.

And what is it like to have your awareness on the inside of those spheres?

And then we'll shift again.

Let's feel the thighs,

The full distance from your knees to your hip joints.

Feel that the legs have both volume and length,

That there's an outside of the thighs.

We could say the skin is the outside layer of the thighs.

And then there's also the inside.

Can you feel the insides of your thighs?

What needs to happen for you to be able to feel the inside of your thighs?

Now for me,

The answer is always relax more.

If I relax more,

I can feel more.

We'll transition again into the pelvis.

So the pelvis is quite complex.

We've got the buttocks on the back body,

Outer hips on the sides.

Pelvis also includes lots of organs,

Organs of sexuality,

Reproduction,

Elimination.

So we might spend some more time breathing into the pelvis just to acknowledge the complexity here.

Bones here are very dense,

Very heavy.

Can you experience both the inside and the outside of your pelvis all at once?

What is it like to breathe into and be present with this lower part of your trunk?

You might be able to literally feel your moving breath in this lower trunk that I would say includes something like a lower belly.

And now we'll continue our body scan moving into the abdomen.

Feel this region where the spine is moving through the back.

The ribs we could say define the top edge of the abdomen.

The organs,

Lots of organs there right along the bottom of your diaphragm.

And it's possible that you can feel your breath here in your belly.

What is it like to feel into this abdominal region?

So we might also notice that as we go through different parts of the body,

Little stories arise,

Very likely stories that have judgment.

Is this good?

Is this bad?

Is it right?

Is it wrong?

Let's do our best just to suspend all those stories for now.

Just put them back wherever it is you found them and come back just into feeling,

Feeling your abdomen,

Possibly feeling your breath,

Maybe even feeling the movement of your diaphragm.

And then we'll continue moving into the upper part of the trunk.

So we'll define this region that I'm going to call your chest from the bottom of your rib cage.

Maybe feel the contact between your rib bones and the floor.

Ribs are the enclosure for the lungs and heart.

Spine continues up through this region.

Of course,

You also have shoulder blades on this upper back,

You maybe feel them on the floor,

Right on up into where your neck starts.

So this is a common area for us to have tension.

Just let that tension be there,

Letting it know it's it's actually okay to have tension.

Breathe into that tension.

Acknowledge it.

Feel the sides of your chest and your armpits,

The front of your chest,

Possibly breasts,

Skin,

Maybe the movement of the breath is easier to feel in the chest.

There isn't a right way to breathe.

Just breathe the way that it's natural for you.

And now let's move awareness into the shoulders themselves.

This part we call the shoulders.

Again,

For me,

They feel like two spheres,

Like the knees.

Can you experience these shoulders,

These spheres from the outside,

As well as feeling them from the inside?

What is it like?

What is the life like inside your shoulders?

Can you breathe into these shoulders?

Let's include the arms.

Feel your arms from your shoulders to your elbows,

Breathing inside and outside these arms.

Feel where your arms are touching the floor or where your clothing is touching your skin.

Let's also include the lower arms,

From the elbows to the wrists.

What are the sensations?

It might be more beneficial to just feel and not even try to name the sensations.

Just feel the life that's there in your lower arm.

Let's feel now the backs of the hands.

Maybe your hands are facing upward and you feel the floor.

What do you feel there in the backs of your hands?

These amazing hands that do so much for us.

What is it like when they are at rest?

Now let's feel the front or the palms of the hands.

Feel for the space between the palms and the backs of the hands.

You might feel sensations of tingling or vibrating,

Cold,

Warm,

Moist,

Dry or maybe nothing at all.

Just be with what you're feeling and sensing.

Now let's start to feel into the two pinky fingers.

You might notice the sensitivity that the hands often have.

Lots and lots of nerves.

We use these hands to find our way around in life and to express ourselves,

To make and to take apart.

Maybe also to give affection or receive affection.

Let's take attention now into the ring fingers.

You experience them as having volume just as you did a while ago with your legs.

Now feel the middle fingers.

Without having to move or change or do anything,

Just notice the life in those fingers.

Now pointer fingers.

Now the thumbs.

Feel your thumbs.

Left thumb,

Right thumb.

Again,

Without judging,

Without needing to change or fix or wish or hope.

Just letting them be.

Now let's feel all ten of the fingers and the hands and the forearms and the upper arms and the shoulders.

Feel that whole region you visited.

Now let's start to feel into the neck as well.

Feel the distance from your trunk up to your head.

The neck is also a common place for tension to be held.

Can we just sit with that,

Whatever it is.

Welcome it in.

Without dread,

Without worry,

Without hope.

Just being with the sensations of having a neck.

Inside the neck is your throat and your air pipe.

I don't know the anatomical word for that.

Maybe larynx?

I don't know.

All this is encased in your neck,

Which of course includes the top part of your spine.

Now feel how that neck gives way to your head.

After narrowing,

Now it broadens out.

Feel the back of your head.

Maybe your head is resting on the floor.

Maybe you have hair on your head,

Or maybe not.

Maybe there's a hood or a blanket there on the back of your head.

Now feel the sides of your head and your ears.

Feel the top of your head and your scalp.

Now start to feel your forehead from if you have hair,

The edge of your hair,

All the way to your eyebrows.

This is another place we often hold muscle tension.

Release that tension and let the forehead become free of worries.

Feel your temples.

Let them soften and broaden.

There's a strong muscle that connects from these temples down to the jaw.

The jaw is such a strong and often used part of us.

It sometimes forgets to rest.

Let's feel that whole space from the temples all the way down to the curve of your jaw.

Letting that part know it can be just as it is,

Whether it's tight or not tight.

Feel along the line of your jaw,

The more pointy part in the middle.

Let your teeth separate a little bit.

Let's feel this muscle that connects your jaw to your cheeks.

Feel all the way up,

Let's say over the top of the cheeks,

Until just under the eyes begin.

Feel across your nose and the bridge of your nose.

Feel the inside of your nose and the outside.

Now start to feel for your eyebrows.

Eyebrows are on top of these bones there that form the eye sockets.

Can you feel all around those bones around your eyes,

Perimeter there?

Then feel your eyes themselves,

Your eyelids and your eyelashes and your eyeballs.

Two more spheres.

Can we feel the inside of the spheres of your eyeballs?

Maybe this is getting a little too weird for you.

I hope you can stay with me.

Now let's feel down the whole length of the cheeks into that little space between your nose and mouth,

The cupid's bow it's often called.

Then feel your lips and now feel the inside of your mouth.

Teeth,

Gums,

Tongue,

Roof of the mouth,

The throat.

Let's feel that the head itself has an inside and an outside.

Can we experience both the inside and the outside of the head?

What is it like to have a head?

So often our sense of identity lives in the head.

Let's feel that head now as well as the neck,

Shoulders and arms,

The entire trunk,

The legs,

Feet and the toes.

Let this whole body be breathed as one,

One living being.

Now as you can experience and feel your whole body as one,

Let this whole body rest and relax and settle down on the good earth.

Nothing to do,

Nowhere to go,

Nothing to fix or improve,

Nothing even more to notice.

This might be a wonderful time to just fall into sleep,

To allow yourself to completely let go.

I hope this body scan was helpful to you.

Thanks for spending time with me.

Reviews

Very relaxing I fell asleep will try the body scan again. Have added it to my bookmarks. Namaste 🙏 🕊❤️🧘‍♀️

Excellent voice and cadence.