A Compassionate Body Scan For Deep Rest And Sleep

This gentle guidance takes you along in an empathic sensing of your body, from head to toe, and invites acceptance and gratitude for all its parts.

Any thoughts, judgments, pain, discomfort, and tension are welcomed, with spacious openness.

I hope you enjoy the relaxation, and find deep rest.

image: Aleksandar Cvetanovic
soundscape: Nature Healing Society

Transcript

And welcome to this compassionate body scan.

So before we begin with the actual scan,

I would invite you to take a few deeper breaths.

Not forcing anything but just allowing the in-breath and out-breath to become a little bit longer,

A little bit deeper.

And maybe with every exhalation in a few cycles of these longer breaths,

With every exhalation,

You can allow any relaxation.

And remember that it's not a doing.

The relaxation is really more of an allowing.

So just at a very gentle pace,

Connecting this way with your breathing.

And if it comes,

You can feel a certain slowing down.

And for this practice I also want to invite you to not be your body.

But can you be the space that your body is in?

Can you be the room,

The space in the room where you are right now,

That includes your body?

And you can even have a sense that this space is not neutral.

It's actually a very compassionate space that you are and that your body is in.

And as we do the body scan,

I would like you to allow any judgments that might come to just be there.

Maybe some body parts come with a certain judgment.

Maybe it comes with a certain pain that creates a judgment in your mind.

Or maybe there's a contraction that you feel or a pain,

Any kind of discomfort.

And then don't try to change anything that you find in this body scan.

But instead allow the compassionate space that you are to embrace it completely with acceptance.

And if there is a resistance to that,

It could be a physical resistance or a mental block that you experience,

Then allow that to be there.

There's no specific way that this body scan has to unfold.

Whatever we encounter,

Here we will accept.

That's the invitation.

And so as we go through the body scan in a minute,

Any contraction,

Pain,

Discomfort,

You can also let it know that you feel it.

That you see it.

And perhaps that you can hear it.

And you can let it know that this part,

This pain or discomfort,

Is not alone.

And that it is completely accepted as it is.

So this is the compassionate space for the body scan.

So let's begin with gently visiting all the parts of our body.

Beginning with our face.

And the invitation is also,

With every visit,

To just allow any relaxation that is available there to happen.

So can you have a general sense of the skin and muscles of your face to just become a little bit softer right now.

We hold a lot of tension in our face.

So it's a good place to begin.

All the expressions that we make during the day.

So there too you can,

If you want to,

You can thank all the muscles in your face for helping you throughout the day to communicate with other humans.

If that happened today.

Maybe you can connect with your ears and the muscles there.

And allow them to relax a bit more.

And then making contact with your eyes.

You can let your eyelids,

If they're closed,

To become even heavier.

Your eyeballs even can sink a bit deeper into their sockets.

Have this pleasant heavy feeling there.

And then maybe your nose,

Your nostrils and the skin around your nose.

Can you let that become softer?

And as you move through the face you can really let the skin rest on the bones beneath it.

Or your cheeks.

Let them become as soft as possible.

The corners of your mouth can relax down.

Let your lips and tongue become very gentle.

And everywhere we go in this body scan you can take the breath with you and breathe in and out of the places that you visit.

Going now to your neck that has carried your head around all day long.

Can you push the pause button on the neck,

Front and back.

And also can you connect to the inner throat and let the tissues there become softer as well.

And all this relaxation might also give rise to thoughts,

Emotions,

Maybe some release will happen.

And whatever comes up remember that you are this compassionate space in which this scan is taking place.

Like an empathic MRI.

And then breathe into your shoulders,

Your shoulder heads.

We often hold tension there as well.

And just allow any relaxation that is available.

Let's not add any stress by trying to do it right or trying to maximize the relaxation.

Just be curious and be open to how much letting go is available right there,

Right now.

And it's a very pleasant help to exhale a bit more in the places that you feel are a bit more tensing.

And then take,

If you want to,

Take a deep lovely full fresh breath into your chest.

Expanding slowly your lungs and then exhaling relaxing your entire chest.

So lovely to breathe deeply.

What a blessing to be able to do that.

So the skin,

The muscles,

The deeper tissues,

The lungs themselves.

Allow them to rest.

And then take the same depth of breath more into your belly.

A long pleasant gentle deep in-breath in your belly and a longer gentle deep exhalation in the belly.

Enjoy any softness that comes.

Then do another one of those deep breaths and then expand more into your sides,

Into your flanks,

Your side ribs.

Let them inhale fully.

Let the intercostal muscles between your ribs feel the air and then exhale and let go and relax there too.

And then we can also visit the spine.

You can go from the beginning,

The bottom of your skull,

Vertebrae by vertebrae,

Down towards your tailbone.

At your own rate just visit.

Maybe thank all the vertebrae that you meet and just see if the tissues around there and inside of your spine can also be seen and relax.

And then we go to the arms.

You can do that one at a time or both simultaneously.

Just at your own pace visit the biceps,

The triceps,

The forearms.

Just visit those muscles,

Visit the skin.

Maybe you can even have a sense of the bones within.

Maybe there's judgments there.

Maybe there's pain or discomfort.

Anything is welcome.

And just breathe this compassionate air into all the parts that you can be aware of.

And if there are parts that are more difficult to sense into,

It's also okay to then imagine a contact or send a message of gratitude and relaxation on a more mental level.

If the feeling level is not available right now,

That's perfectly fine.

And if your mind is very active,

You can even breathe into your mind.

Just imagine that you're giving your mind oxygen and then with an exhalation relaxing even the mind,

The mental faculty.

And with the arms you want to end up with your fingers.

Feel how they can completely relax as well.

They do so many things for us.

Our hands,

Our fingers.

They deserve a deep rest as well.

And then back to the torso.

We're moving more down to the genital area.

Just see if you can breathe relaxation there as well.

Then around the back we go towards the buttocks.

They do a lot of important work as well,

Supporting our back all day long.

So to whatever degree is available,

Feel into your buttocks and release deeply there too.

And you might even connect to your lower back as well.

A deep relaxation in your lower back and in your buttocks.

And then with the same gentle,

Curious,

Visiting intention we move down the legs.

So feel your thighs.

Thighs are big muscles so you can divide them in your exploration.

Your upper thighs,

Your inner thighs.

And then also go around to the back.

The back of your legs,

The hamstrings.

And every time you find something maybe unpleasant,

Maybe mental,

Just remember that we're being the compassionate space wherein everything is completely accepted and welcome.

And then make connection to your knee joints.

And then the inner knees at the back as well.

And then all the complexity of the tendons and muscles and ligaments that make up this unique part of our legs.

Allow that to be seen and to be thanked and to relax as well.

And further down into the shins.

And then the calf muscles on the other side.

And then we have the heel that we can feel and the insteps,

The top of our feet,

The inner feet,

The outer feet,

The soles of the feet.

Very sensitive.

And then lastly you can feel the toes.

Feel them,

Relax them,

Thank them.

And as you have completed the scan of your body with compassion,

I would invite you to take a moment in sensing your body.

If there's any place that you would like to give a bit of extra attention to right now.

Maybe there was a place that went a bit too fast for you or where you feel a bit more sensation or maybe some tension.

And then go to that place and be with it with this beautiful compassion.

This spacious,

Accepting,

Grateful space.

And maybe you want to express gratitude to that part.

Maybe you just want to spend some time there as a silent witness or ask it a question.

It's completely up to you.

So I invite you to do that now for a moment or two and then we will go towards the end of the body scan.

So with that I invite you to find an end.

And if you have some unfinished business with that part that you are at,

You can of course continue that after the meditation is over.

Reviews

Hans, thank you so very much for your beautiful, supportive practice. Your calming and caring voice is heavenly.

Beautiful guidance, resting in myself as compassionate space was so nourishing. The body scan helped me fall sleep, which is exactly what I was hoping for! Thanks Hans!