Mapping The Neurodivergent Body

A gentle body scan tailored to enhance interoception and self-awareness for those who may struggle with body-mind connection. We use movement and hand-body contact to increase body awareness and to become more familiar with what it feels like to exist in the body.

Transcript

This meditation is called Mapping the Neurodivergent Body. Find yourself in a comfortable position. We'll be here for about 10 or 12 minutes. This practice is a short body scan meditation. It can be good for people who have poor interoception or poor internal sensing of their bodies. We're going to work with the body scan in a way that enhances our perception of the body or knowing what's going on in the body with some specific tools that are geared particularly toward people who have trouble with this. We'll start with the feet and we'll sweep up the body to the top of the head. Take a long slow in-breath and out-breath. Begin by releasing any unnecessary tension you're holding, Maybe in the shoulders, The jaw, The brow. Letting the belly become soft, Releasing any clenching in the hands, In the teeth, In the eyes. Letting your body move with your breath. It might even be helpful to exaggerate the movement slightly when you breathe in to let your whole belly and chest expand to lift you up. When you breathe out to let the air out, Feeling your body collapse back downwards. Finding just a normal steady rhythm, Whatever your breathing may or may not naturally be. Begin by bringing awareness into the feet. Often moving the particular body part we're working with can be a helpful cue to interoception, Internally sensing your body. So wiggle your toes, Clench your feet, And release your feet. Sense if your feet feel anything in particular right now. Do they feel warm? Do they feel dry? You can use your hands on any part of your body that we're working with to gain more awareness of where your feet actually are in your body and how they feel. We'll move up through the ankles into the lower legs. Some parts of the body may have more natural sensation than others, So please don't worry if there's a part of your body you have trouble sensing or that doesn't feel very much at all. From the inside of your legs, See if you can notice the sensation of actually having legs. These legs are here. These legs are part of my body experience. They may feel tight or numb or relaxed. Whatever they feel is okay. And again, You might sweep your hands going up above the knees to the thighs, Tightening the muscles and releasing them to sense contraction, To get blood flow, To stimulate the nerves in this part of the body. We'll go up into the hips now. I like to shift my weight back and forth to sense my hips if I'm in a seated position. You can breathe into all these parts of the body. This brings more expansion and stimulation and awareness. Notice the hips contracting gently and expanding as you breathe. Notice the sensations in different parts of the hips where there's bones and flesh, Contraction of muscles and looseness of muscles. You can try squeezing and tensing different areas of the hips, Shifting them, Noticing, Oh, There's a lot of tension in the hips. This part feels loose and this part feels tight. Noticing the sensation of having hips. And we'll go up through the lower belly, Through the abdomen and the torso. So with this, We can begin just by noticing the softness of the belly. And again, Maybe putting your hand, Holding your hand on the belly here can give you internal cues of where it is and how it feels. Likewise, On the lower back, The back might be contrasting with the softness of the belly. It might be loose or it might have firmer muscles, Tension or tightness. You can sense into the midline of the body and the uprightness of the spine or the strength around the spine, The hardness of the bones of the spine. If you're laying down, You might roll slightly from one side to the next, Just giving yourself pressure to feel the joints in the spine, The different sensations of muscles, Sometimes getting squeezed or tightened or pinched even in one area and then loosening in another. Same thing with seated position. And coming up through the chest, We sense more expansion with the lungs. I like to try and sense my heartbeat, Having my hand on my chest. It's not always an easy thing for me to do, So it may or may not be easy to find your heartbeat with your hand, But you can put your hand to your chest and breathe. What is it like to have a chest? What is it like to have lungs that open and close in expansion and contraction with the breath? Bringing awareness through the shoulders, Down through the arms. You can shrug the shoulders up and down. You can move them in small circles. Whatever movements you're making and attempting to make, Just do them gently. The goal is not to seek out sensation or to stretch. It's just to bring awareness, Stimulate feeling in the body. Ever so slightly, Just enough to know I have arms. These are my arms. They hang off my shoulders. My elbows bend. My tendons and my muscles elongate and shorten. We can move around the wrists and we can contract and release the fingers. Noticing this is a sensation of hands. I have hands. And finally, We'll move upwards through the neck and the head and the face. So again, Breathing here, Letting our awareness be gentle and smooth. Not trying to create any particular sensation. It's okay to feel numbness or plainness or just distance even from the body. These variables can just depend on our nervous systems and how we're wired. I might turn the neck slowly from one side to the next, Tilting the chin up and down. This is how it feels to have a neck. And going up through the head, Through the jaw, Through the brow, Around the whole structure of the skull. You might even feel the eyelashes as they flicker with your blinking. You might feel air come in and out through your nostrils. You might feel air in your mouth or a movement or pressure of your tongue. This is the head. I have a head. This is how it feels to have a head. This is how it feels to have a body. I have a body. Right now, My body feels like this. Expanding your awareness to the whole body. Whatever that means for you in this moment. Whether that's just partial sensing, Noticing one specific thing that's standing out, Or if you have a sense of being in your body, Having legs and feet, Having a spine that's upright, Having a face, Having a brain that's thinking. Taking some slow breaths. There's no end goal to this practice other than embodying yourself just the way you are right now. If you're leaving here with more calmness or clarity, That's lovely. You can smile and enjoy that. If you're not, If you've noticed anything confusing or difficult in this practice, You're also leaving with that, And that's okay. This is information about who you are in this body, Who you are as a person, And there's nothing better or worse for either one of those. Taking one last cleansing breath here, Breathing in and breathing out. We'll end our practice here.