Welcome to practice.
My name is Neil Seligman,
Founder of The Conscious Professional.
Thank you for joining me today for this guided mindfulness body scan meditation.
Begin by finding a comfortable posture and by bringing your awareness to the breath.
Take a few moments to let yourself arrive and allow the breath to draw you gently into internal awareness.
Allow the gaze to soften and if appropriate for your circumstances the eyes to close.
As you become more aware of the sensations of the breath also notice the body.
Remember the body.
Discover yourself in this moment as a physical being with weight,
Temperature,
Texture,
Color and energy.
Approaching the body with beginners mind discover yourself in this moment.
Are certain parts of the body calling for attention?
An itch,
A scratch,
A shift of body weight.
Allow yourself to attend to the body's needs until it is quietly resting.
Allow the breath to bring softness to the body.
As the breath drops in awareness drops into.
And just imagining awareness moving through the body like ink dissolving through water.
Leading you to the feet and toes.
Noticing any sensations that are present in the feet and toes.
Breathing through the body all the way down to the feet.
If it's helpful just bringing some gentle movement to the toes and to the sole of the foot.
Gathering,
Noticing and then on the next breath allowing your awareness to move up into the legs,
The shins,
The knees,
The thighs.
Sometimes we find it harder to find information from the legs so just listening quietly feeling allowing awareness to open to the micro sensations that are present in the legs.
In mindfulness there's sometimes nothing and sometimes something both are interesting.
Exploring your own experience and as you notice yourself becoming distracted just gently arriving back with permission and forgiveness and welcoming.
Remembering whenever we are distracted and we notice that most mindful moment is when we realize and then set forth with a new intention to return to practice.
Moving up through the hips into the central core of the body.
Noticing the sexual organs,
The abdomen,
The chest checking in,
Listening,
Being with the body,
The gut,
All of the intelligence that is held within the core of the body.
Welcoming the heart,
All of the vital organs,
The lungs and as we practice on the breath just that sense of appreciation perhaps arising that all of this equipment of life,
This miraculous biology is doing the work of life in every moment.
As we scan with gentle compassionate awareness just noticing is there anywhere in the body that we are holding on?
Where we are tight and just practicing with the intention to let go.
Just 2% more can we let go just 2% more.
Allowing the breath to do the work,
Allowing your curiosity to guide you forward in your own experience.
Bringing your attention to the shoulders,
The arms,
The hands and fingers.
Breathing,
Warming and simply noticing the sensations sometimes pleasant,
Sometimes neutral,
Sometimes unpleasant.
Trying not to add any judgments or commentary to the sensations but just noticing being with,
Practicing gentle acceptance of our own experience just as we are.
On the next breath the awareness moving up towards the head,
Through the neck,
Bringing into awareness the mouth,
The tongue,
The eyes,
The ears,
The nose,
The skin,
The scalp,
The brain,
The skull and just holding it all in awareness.
Nothing to do,
Nowhere to go.
Observing.
And on the next breath setting an intention to breathe with awareness into the whole of the body.
Breathing into body,
Mind,
Heart,
The full aspect of our being and just arriving in the body with a sense of wholeness.
One body breathing,
Connected in community with all others who are practicing.
The body breathing the breath,
The breath breathing the body.
And as we draw the threads of this practice together,
Riding the waves of the breath,
Following the next exhale up and out.
Perhaps setting an intention of how you'd like to take this practice or some aspect of this practice forward into your day and in your very own time allowing the eyes to reopen.
Thank you for joining me in practice today.
