Hello,
My name is Matt Albury.
The following meditation is a body scan to help promote the sense of stillness in the body.
So we will be focusing on different parts of the body and bringing the intention of setting stillness to those parts of the body.
So eventually we end up in that sense of presence and stillness in our whole physical body.
This is also a very useful practice for helping you to bed into your other meditation practices,
Because by bringing stillness to the body,
Often stillness of the mind follows too.
So there will be no bell at the end of this practice to enable you to continue with your own practice after this.
So if you need to actually be getting on with something as soon as you've done this practice,
Please set an alarm so that you know your practice is finished.
So to start our practice,
Bring your awareness to your feet on the floor.
Just notice the sensation of the floor underneath your feet.
And then bring your awareness up to the chair or the cushion that you're sat on and notice the physical sensation of being supported by that chair or that cushion.
Have a bit of a wriggle around to get nice and comfortable.
And then allow your awareness then to go out to all the sounds you can hear around you where you are.
We do this in meditation so we bring that sense of acceptance to whatever is going on around us.
We bring it into our practice.
So notice the sounds outside of the room first.
And then take your awareness to the sounds inside of the room where you are.
And then take your awareness then to your breath.
Just notice a moment,
Just your breath as it is coming and going.
Gentle movement in the body.
This beautiful rhythm of breath that comes in.
Just moves all these subtle movements throughout our body.
And then it just rolls back out.
And then just bring the awareness to the breath coming in through the nose and sighing out through the mouth.
Just allow those lovely long deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Just letting yourself settle for a moment.
And then we'll bring our body scan into our practice.
So take your awareness to the bottom of the feet.
Flowing your awareness up onto the toes and the tops of the feet and the ankles.
Just bring stillness to your feet.
And then take your awareness up through the ankles,
Up through the lower legs and the knees,
The thighs,
The backside and the hips.
And just bring the intention of stillness in your legs.
And then flow your awareness then up through the hips,
Up through the pelvis and the lower back,
Onto the lower belly,
The upper back and the chest.
Taking the awareness up onto the shoulder muscles and the shoulder joints.
And just bring the intention of stillness to this part of our body.
And then flow your awareness then down from the shoulder joints with the upper arms,
The elbows,
The forearms,
The wrists,
The backs of the hands and then the little palms of your hands,
The little dish that forms there in your palm.
And then take your awareness out onto your thumbs and your first fingers,
Second fingers,
Third fingers and fourth.
And then gently flow from the tips of the fingers all the way back up through your arms,
Bringing stillness.
Setting that intention of stillness to the arm on the right and on the left.
And then we bring awareness to the throat and the back of the neck,
Bringing stillness.
And then we bring stillness to the jaw as we flow our awareness from the jaw up onto the mouth and the nose,
The eyes,
The forehead,
Flowing the awareness over the crown and down over the back of the head,
Around onto our ears,
Flowing the awareness down to the base of the skull and the muscles of the skull,
Where our skull sits on the top of our spine.
Just allow stillness to come to the whole of the head.
And then firstly drop your awareness down to your heart centre.
And just as a beautiful golden light was coming out from your heart centre,
Allow this golden light to flood through your body,
Filling every part of your body with this golden light.
So allow it to flow all the way down through your torso,
Down through the legs,
Down through the arms,
All the way to the fingers,
Allowing this golden light to flood all the way back up through the neck and back up into our head.
And as we do this we bring stillness,
The intention of stillness in the body.
And as we do this we bring awareness to our presence,
Awareness to the stillness in the body as we sit here on our cushion or our chair.
Feeling the stillness in every part of the body.
And no matter how busy our mind is,
Just allow yourself just to drop into that stillness,
As if you were a free diver,
Just dropping from the surface of the water down into the beautiful still deep waters.
Bringing awareness to the presence of stillness in your body.
Just allowing yourself just to soften and settle into the stillness.
Every time we get distracted we just come back to the stillness.
The stillness we set in our body.
Now if you want to continue with this practice please do.
But if you want to now as we approach the ten minute mark,
Just allow yourself to bring your awareness then back to everything that's around you.
So with our eyes closed listen now to all the sounds.
Notice in the physicalness of the chair or the cushion.
Notice in the floor under our feet.
We set an intention to bring the sense of stillness into our next activity.
So as we do this,
Begin to riddle your toes.
Take some lovely breaths in through your nose and sigh out through your mouth.
And ever so gently just start to move your body if you are coming out of the practice.
Just roll in your shoulders.
Gently roll in your hips.
And then open your eyes ever so gently.
Just take a look around you where you are.
What do you hear?
What do you see?
And then when you're ready just allow yourself to move very gently into whatever you need to be doing next.
