Self-Compassion On The Body | 20 Minute Guided Meditation

This is a 20 minute guided meditation aimed to cultivate a feeling of self-compassion toward our body. Some of us may carry insecurities or shame when it comes to our bodies so it's important to practice self-compassion to transform these qualities and change the way we see ourselves.

Transcript

Hello and welcome. My name is Ish and I'll be guiding you through a journey in which we offer self-compassion for our bodies. So it's quite unfortunate that many of us experience hardship when it comes to our bodies. So we may have self-criticism or negative thoughts towards our physical bodies and our intention for this practice is to uproot those self-criticisms by cultivating compassion towards ourselves. And through this meditation you may experience unkind thoughts and if it does arise simply just notice it and acknowledge it and let it go. So this practice may not change us overnight but by consistently doing this practice you give yourself a great benefit of uprooting these hidden defilements and self-criticism and over time we can actually learn to accept and love our bodies just the way it is. So to get started settle into a comfortable and alert posture. So this meditation can either be done sitting up or lying down but make sure that your mind is alert in this meditation and whichever posture you're currently in start by noticing the surface beneath you allowing the ground to support you and also let your eyes close if that feels very comfortable for you. Begin to notice if there's any kind of resistance or muscular tension while focusing on being supported. So you may be forcibly tensing up or trying to hold yourself up and see for the next couple minutes if you can just let that go and allow yourself to be held by the earth and allow yourself to be supported by gravity. Then start to draw your attention towards your feet and as you rest your attention onto your feet see if you notice any particular sensations start to arise whether it might be relaxation and calm or discomfort or even no sensation at all. Simply just bring your attention there and see what arises. Regardless of what is occurring sensation-wise can you allow yourself self-compassion to flow down into your feet and actually start to thank your feet for supporting you in your life. Not only does the feet support your posture but also allows you to walk and carry about your daily activities and if you do happen to have any kind of resistance or criticism towards your feet can you simply allow that to pass and pay more attention to the gratitude you feel as your feet have supported you in your life and start to feel compassion and warmth flowing into your feet. And gradually start to draw your attention upwards into your legs and once again as you do this notice if there's any kind of resistance or tension in any parts of your legs. This may be especially true if you've had any kind of prior injuries or any problems in the past and if the mind starts to generate different thoughts in regards to your legs whether they be positive or negative simply just observe see if you can gently soften both the muscles and the thoughts as well having a very peaceful mind and see if you can once again allow a feeling of compassion warmth and even gratitude to flow into your legs and really feeling thanks towards your legs as it has supported you and been with you for all these years. Begin to draw your attention and focus upwards gradually moving your attention to the stomach digestive organs reproductive organs and this your seat as well and see if you notice anything start to rise whether it be thoughts or any kind of muscular tension see if you can once again let that go both relaxing any kind of tension in the area and softening the thoughts by simply just allowing it and letting it go without any kind of following or attachment and for some of us the abdomen and the physical shape of the abdomen tends to bring up feelings of shame or insecurity and if you find that this happens to be true for you you can place a hand or two on your belly and see if you can extend these feelings of unconditional love and compassionate feelings towards yourself and your abdomen and if you find that this is particularly difficult to do then one thing to consider to yourself is how would you feel towards these parts of your body such as abdomen if you thought of them as friends would you still say unkind thoughts towards them and how would you receive them if they were having a hard time say with different issues such as digestion can you cultivate the same feeling of gentleness and warmth in this area of your body as you did for the other parts such as your legs you may even start to offer some affirmations by saying i appreciate everything you do or thank you for being able to digest food and take care of my physical needs as well and notice what it feels like simply just rest your attention here feeling the kindness and compassion that you have generated towards yourself now start to take these feelings of warmth and bring them up towards your chest area once again relaxing any kind of tightness or tension in this area and begin to notice how it feels in your lungs to invite compassion and acceptance you may even imagine breathing in breathing in compassion and love into your lungs allowing it to fill with this energy it is said that the lungs and the different cells within it cover over a thousand square feet so clearly an expansive size and you bring this gratitude softness and kindness to all these cells and the lungs in general that really help you and support you to breathe in and out really feeling this sense of gratitude and as these feelings start to emanate and grow in your lungs area start to extend it out into your chest including the heart and offer your heart kindness it beats every day without your acknowledgement and it supports you always trying to do its best the heart chakra area may hold tension due to suppressing various emotions related to connection and love or it may be overactive one of the cases see if you can soften into this area and if there's any kind of self-critical thoughts that may arise due to a blockage in this area then you may start to let it go and soften once again spreading compassion and love into this area in your chest you may even use an affirmation to help strengthen these feelings by saying thank you for doing what you do every day and keeping me alive and as you feel these sensations start to grow begin to expand them into your shoulders into the upper arms forearms the wrists and hands we use our arms quite often and without realizing it we may hold on to add attention back a lot of exercise actually tenses these areas up so if you do know any kind of physical tension see again if you can relax your muscles likewise if there are any thoughts that are self-critical towards your arms such as you know i wish my arms were more fit or whatever the case is then simply just once again notice and observe the thoughts and offer yourself compassion and kindness and gratitude for having arms and being able to do the daily tasks that you do every single day and now slowly start to bring your awareness up and let this feeling of compassion rise to your neck your jaw your cheeks your ears your nose your forehead and at the top of your head so in these areas we may tend to tense up quite often may grit her jaw and her teeth without even realizing it or may for our brows see if you can relax any tension in the head area many of us also experience thoughts coming from the head area although that's not actually true we may seem like our thoughts are coming from this area so see if you can relax into this as well so our thoughts may be a bit stronger or louder in volume when we focus on the head area so can you offer yourself the same compassion and kindness and softening that you did in the lower parts of your body as you would in your head and we are allowing this compassion to permeate every cell every muscle in our face in our head and even in every tooth would it be possible to visualize this and send these sensations to every single area of your face and head and one thing you can do to strengthen these feelings is to put on a very soft smile which will actually uplift the mind and a very powerful realization is that in this moment you're experiencing this inner joy there is nothing for you to do or nothing about you that needs to change in order for you to feel these feelings of self-compassion love and gratitude this type of feeling can be accessed in any time and is accessible at any time so if we ever thought that we were never enough we can simply recognize that this is a learned thought pattern that we have repeated over and over again and in the same manner what's very positive about this is that if we learn that we are enough and we are worthy of our own compassion kindness we can retrain ourself to have very compassionate feelings towards ourselves and we override our habitual ways of thinking towards our body and in a moment we'll end this meditation just know that we can always come back to this area of our body at any point during our day or our formal meditation practice to come back to the house of our body and from this point in which we nourish our bodies with kindness and gentleness that we change the relationships to our bodies and ultimately that change the relationships that we have with ourselves and others as well so take a last few moments to thank your body for being here right now and being exactly the way it is may all beings be happy may all beings be peaceful and may all beings be free from suffering thank you