Take a moment to settle in.
Feel the body.
Feel the atmosphere of the room we are in.
How does the body feel?
So today we are going to do an exploration of the body.
But through this exploration of the body we are also going to explore our mental faculties.
So you might have heard of the term concentration and mindfulness.
These refer to the development of two different faculties of mind.
Concentration means developing stability of attention.
Mindfulness means developing an open,
Inclusive awareness.
As you listen to these words,
You are attentive to them.
You are using attention.
It might feel as if the words are at the forefront of your consciousness,
At the center of your experience.
This is attention.
The development of concentration means being able to direct attention and leave it in some place for extended periods of time.
As you listen to these words,
You can still be aware of your body,
Of the feeling of the air touching your skin or your clothes,
And of different phenomena that happen in other sounds or sights.
This is awareness.
Attention and awareness can function simultaneously.
So as we do this body exploration practice,
Attention will have a task,
And awareness will have a task.
And we're not going to switch between one and the other,
But rather we're going to do both simultaneously.
We are going to start with the mindfulness aspect of the practice,
Which uses awareness.
So throughout this sit,
The job of awareness is to keep feeling the full body.
It doesn't need to be detailed,
But rather it can just feel like you're getting a sense for the general energy in the body.
The simple sense that you have a body.
And this felt sense can even seem like it extends a bit beyond your physical body,
Just like a cloud of sensations that are of different color,
Different shapes,
But it's still the sense of your body.
And you can gently remain aware of that throughout the day,
Even as you go to sleep.
So that's the first aspect of the practice,
Feeling the full body.
Anytime you feel like awareness has closed in on a specific part of the body,
Open it back up.
Feel the full body.
Open,
Clear,
Very natural.
Now let's move to the second aspect of the practice.
And while you listen to these instructions,
Remember the first facet of the practice of keeping the felt sense of the body open and inclusive.
So the attention part of the practice is that we are going to scan the body,
Part by part.
So how this will feel is that at the foreground of experience,
At the center of experience,
There will be a particular part of the body.
This is going to be more detailed than the rest.
But still in awareness,
The full sense of the body,
The fuzzy cloud of sensations that surround that area we're going to be watching more attentively,
Is going to be open.
First let's start with the top of our head.
Let's look at sensations at the top of our head while we maintain a sense of the full body.
Sensations can be a lot of things.
Pressure,
Tingling,
Vibrations,
Pleasant,
Unpleasant.
There's no better or worse sensations.
You're just watching to see what's there.
Anything you experience is actually a sensation.
Now the back of the head,
Keeping the rest of the body open and clear.
The left temple.
The right one.
The forehead.
Feel the sensations in the forehead.
Bring the flashlight of attention there.
Keeping the rest of the body illuminated,
Clear,
Open.
The nose.
The left eye.
The right eye.
The left cheek.
The right cheek.
The lips.
The chin.
The back of the neck.
The throat.
The front of the neck.
As we keep shifting from area to area,
All these other areas that you've been passing through should remain somewhat alive in awareness.
However,
You're focusing on a specific part of the body.
So one area comes to the forefront,
But the rest stays in the background.
It's not shut out completely.
It's a very natural way of looking.
The upper back.
The lower back.
The left shoulder.
The left upper arm.
The left elbow.
The left forearm.
The left hand.
The right shoulder.
The right upper arm.
The right elbow.
The right forearm.
The right hand.
Keep feeling the whole body.
But bring the center of experience to this specific part of the body.
Right now,
The right hand.
Now the chest area.
The solar plexus.
The abdomen.
The pelvic area.
The left thigh.
The left knee.
The left lower leg.
The left ankle.
The left feet.
The right thigh.
The right knee.
The right lower leg.
The right ankle.
The right foot.
Notice the tendency for awareness to sometimes shrink,
And also zone in on the region that you're watching with attention.
But remember the two-fold training.
Attention is stable on a specific object we're choosing.
Awareness is open and clear,
This time including the whole body in all its sensations.
Now let attention go wherever it wants,
But keep being mindful of the full body.
How does it feel now compared to how it felt at the beginning of the sit?
And as I ring the bell to end the sit,
Notice how just the sound can affect the whole body sense.
