Somatic Meditation For Beginners

This Somatic Meditation invites you to use focused attention to deeply ground into the felt sensations in your body. Somatic practices can help you recognize and start to release habitual patterns of stress and tension and replace them with healthy movement patterns and improved posture. This practices introduces aware attention placed on different regions of the body, and does not require any particular level of skill or experience to have a positive impact on your wellbeing. These gentle invitations to tune into your body from head to toe can help you cultivate a greater sense of being at home with sensations in your body without judging or trying to change them.

Transcript

This is a somatic meditation suitable for beginners. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down where you feel supported. Arrange any bolsters or pillows in ways that allow muscular release across your whole body. Feel free to shift your position at any time to maintain receptivity to the meditation. You may close your eyes or keep your eyes open with a soft gaze lowered to a few feet in front of you. First, Having gotten yourself as comfortable as possible, Bring attention to the physical sensations inside your body. Start by feeling into your hands. What subtle sensations can you notice in your fingers, Your palms, The back of your hands? Perhaps very faint prickling or pulsing? Or do you feel warmth or tingling? There are no right or wrong sensations. Just explore the effects of conscious contact. When you feel ready, Shift your attention down to your feet and toes. Feel the soles of your feet, Perhaps making contact with the floor or the bed. Notice any shifting sensations, Maybe heaviness or lightness, Warmth or tingling. Perhaps a sense of space opening up inside your feet or between your toes. Continue experimenting with receptive awareness of sensations dancing within and around different parts of your body, In this case your feet. Now I invite you to slowly float your attention up from the feet through the ankles, Lower legs and knees. As you go, Feel into the calf muscles and shins. Feel the spaces above your kneecaps, Spaces between your thigh bones. Sensations in our bodies are likely to continuously evolve, Like weather patterns. Clouds of tingling and vibration. Storms of intensity and then dissipation into a whole body sunset. Or just riding waves of physical being. Now I invite you to gradually climb through the valleys and peaks spanning your back. Feel each vertebra supported by the floor or perhaps resting against a chair or another surface. How does contact with your back feel across your shoulders? Allow your spine to unravel as your attention climbs each rung of your back. Does your awareness bloom upward through the forests and caves comprising your inner ecosystem? Now you can bring soft but aware intention into your chest. What subtle physical feelings move through with each in-breath and out-breath? With your attention here, Can you detect slight shifts in physical energy pulsing just below the surface with each heartbeat? As you climb the inner terrain of your chest, Notice how raw sensations morph and scatter into new patterns like migrating birds. When you are ready to close your practice, You can bring your attention back to the space that your body is occupying. Perhaps gently wiggling fingers and toes. Maybe moving your head slowly and subtly with small movements. You might like to reach your arms overhead for a full body stretch if that energizes you. And when you're ready, You're welcome to blink your eyes open if they've been closed. Just remain in this space of awareness and attention. Consciously watching somatic experience integrate back into the space around you. Sense how present moment awareness continues permeating reality through sensed phenomena after you've meditated. Did you discover new spaces inside your feeling experience through this somatic journey? Can you access mindfulness now with more stability, Having explored your embodied terrain?