Body Scan To Build Gentle Awareness

This is a simple and relaxing body scan practice to bring you into awareness of your body, in this moment. This is a highly calming, therapeutic and gentle practice. It is ideal to break up a busy day or to wind down after a stressful or long work day.

Transcript

Today we're going to just do a simple body scan meditation.

So to start with,

Bring yourself to a comfortable position,

Whether you're sitting or standing or lying down,

Whatever works for you.

And just lining up your joints.

So if you're sitting in a chair,

Your knees over your ankles,

Your hips back,

Wherever you are,

Your spine long and your neck long.

Go ahead and just bring your chin gently down to your chest,

Letting your shoulders relax and feeling a stretch in the back of your neck.

Breathe into that stretch.

And then gently bring your chin towards your right shoulder.

Making sure to keep your left shoulder down,

Breathing into this stretch,

Whether you feel it on the left side of your neck,

Your left shoulder,

Or down the muscles of your back.

And then slowly rotate the chin along your chest,

Bringing it over towards your left shoulder,

Relaxing both shoulders down and breathing.

Bring the chin back to center and then bring it back up,

Facing forward.

And then a couple of shoulder rolls.

So just taking your shoulders up,

Back,

And down.

Make them open as big or as small as you like.

Up,

Back,

Down.

And then one more time,

Bringing your shoulders back behind you,

Snuggling your shoulder blades together a little bit,

Letting your chest open up just gently.

Don't strain or force anything.

And now that we've done all that,

A deep breath in,

Sigh it out.

Let go of whatever you've brought with you.

Let go of any tension that's loosened up in your body from those little stretches.

One more if you like.

And then we'll start by bringing our attention to our right foot.

So just noticing your foot,

Noticing each one of your toes,

The ball in the arch of your foot,

The top of your foot,

And your heel,

The whole right foot.

And then bring your attention to your right ankle,

Your right shin,

And your right calf.

Breathing any pockets of tension,

Breathing in and letting them go.

Noticing your right knee and then your right thigh,

Inner thigh,

Your outer thigh,

The front and back of your thigh.

Feeling the weight of the bones and the muscles in your thigh.

Bringing your attention to your right hip,

Your right butt cheek,

And your pelvis.

Breathing there,

Softening anything you encounter that's tight.

And noticing the whole right leg,

The whole right leg,

All as a unit.

And then traveling your awareness down to your left foot.

Noticing all your toes,

The big toe,

The pointer toe,

The middle toe,

Ring,

And pinky toe.

Feeling the top of the foot,

The ball,

The arch,

The heel,

And then the whole foot as a unit.

And if I'm going more quickly or more slowly than you,

That's okay.

You notice what you notice in your own time.

Your left ankle,

The left shin,

The left calf.

Becoming aware here of any difference from the left to the right.

And it's okay if there's no difference.

The left knee and then the left thigh.

Again,

Noticing all angles of the thigh,

Noticing the bones and the muscles.

A lot of big,

Strong muscles in your thigh and big,

Heavy bones.

Let those soften and sink down into whatever surface you're resting on.

Notice your left hip and your left butt cheek.

I always feel like I clench my butt when I'm doing these kind of relaxations and a big sigh of relief when I lift those muscles go.

And then notice again the front of your pelvis.

And then the whole left leg.

The whole left leg,

All as one unit.

Feeling again the right leg,

Noticing the left leg.

And then the whole lower body,

Both legs together.

Feeling again any difference between the two.

And there will be differences.

Both sides of our body are not equal.

That doesn't mean that one's better than the other.

And now we'll bring our awareness to our belly.

So first,

Notice if you're holding your belly in so much of the time we're walking around sucking in our stomachs,

Trying to fit into our jeans.

We're just not breathing into our bellies.

So notice if there's anything you can let go in your stomach.

Let it relax.

No one's looking at you.

You can puff it out as much as you want.

And then bring your awareness to your solar plexus between your belly button and your rib cage.

Notice your right rib cage,

Your right lung,

And the left rib cage,

And the left lung.

The chest muscles on the right and on the left.

Your right collarbone and your left collarbone.

Right side waist,

Left side waist.

Press up your awareness around your back body,

Noticing the muscles all the way up the left side,

All the way up the right side,

And then all the way up the spine.

See if you can sense each of your vertebrae all the way up your neck.

And then travel your awareness down to your right shoulder,

Your right armpit,

The upper arm,

The elbow,

The lower arm,

The wrist,

And the hand.

Notice your palm,

Your back of your hand,

And all your fingers.

And then become aware of the whole right arm as a unit.

And then travel your awareness over to your left,

Noticing the shoulder and the armpit,

The upper arm,

The elbow,

Lower arm,

Wrist,

And hand.

All the fingers.

And the left arm,

All as a unit.

Again being aware of any differences between the two sides.

If you're right-handed,

You may notice that the muscles,

Especially in your lower arm,

Your mousing off muscles,

I like to think of them as,

Might be a lot stiffer,

Tighter.

Again,

There's nothing wrong with that.

It's just the difference that you can notice.

Travel your awareness to your neck and your throat,

The back of your head,

Your left ear and left temple,

The crown of your head.

See if you can soften the crown of your head.

Almost like it's melting,

Which sounds icky,

But if you can picture it,

It feels kind of nice.

It's a hard place to relax.

Notice your right temple and your right ear,

Your forehead,

Left eye,

Right eye,

The nose and each of the nostrils.

Left cheekbone,

Right cheekbone.

Your whole jaw and mouth,

Maybe move that around,

Work out any of the kinks.

Those are muscles that we use a lot and that we don't really pay a lot of attention to stretching and opening.

And then notice the whole right side of your body,

All the way up your leg,

All the way up your torso and your arm and your face.

And then notice the left side of your body,

All the way from the tips of the toes to the top of your head.

Notice the front of your body and then the back.

And then notice your whole body as one complete unit,

All the pieces interlocking,

Working together,

Connected.

Scan through your body one more time.

If you feel any little last lingering pockets of tension,

Breathe into those.

And then notice the surface that your body is resting on,

The floor beneath your feet,

Whenever your back is up against,

Wherever your hands or arms are resting.

And then notice the air on your skin.

And then notice any sounds or smells around you,

Anything close by,

Maybe it's your own perfume or your own breath.

Maybe it's the light buzzing in your room,

Your computer,

Maybe the static on the phone.

I can hear that here.

I hope you can't hear it too badly.

And then things outside of the room.

Any sounds from traffic or people walking by.

And then if your eyes are closed,

Notice any light that's peeking in through your eyelids,

Around the edges,

Through the lids themselves,

Where the skin is so thin and fine.

And then taking a deep breath,

Wiggle your fingers and your toes.

If your eyes are closed,

Gently open them.

And take a moment here to just come fully back into awareness.

Thank you so much for joining me.

May you have peace in your thoughts.

May you have strength in your words.

May you have joy in your heart.

Have a wonderful day.

Namaste.

Reviews

Very nice and relaxing scan. Loved the stretches to start and her calm voice. I was almost asleep by the end.

When you just want a short med/body scan, this is perfect 👍

real great - just a very good and friendly body scan

Very Grounding!

Very relaxing... I like her friendly style...

Very pleasant. Soft, calming voice and spirit.

Beautiful and thorough body scan. Nice medium length.

I really enjoyed the brief stretches at the start of this and will be incorporating something simple and easy into my own guided body scans. Your use of language was great and I especially enjoyed noticing my right ribcage and lung and my left ribcage and lung. This was a lovely 15 minute body scan.

Really enjoyed this. Very comforting and calming voice. Easy to follow, thank you 💕💕

Wonderful body scan!🙏😊

Slowly but steadily it took me too a state from where I didn’t want to return! Thank you! 🙂

I like her casual, natural style - not robotically scripted like some.

Nice thorough and relaxing body scan. Thank you!