The Body Scan

This body scan meditation is an invitation to bring awareness to the whole body and discover the many ways it communicates to facilitate healing. Rest deeply, welcoming curiosity and relaxation into the body.

Transcript

Welcome to this journey through the body.

The tipping point between feeling lost in an overwhelming sea of water.

And becoming the immense body of water,

Rippling and carrying you home.

To become the body of water,

You are invited to release and surrender into the depth of your being.

The meeting point of all parts of your physical and non-physical body.

During this body scan,

See if you can embody the visceral structure of you.

Feeling into the ways in which it supports and shows up for you,

Provides and sustains you,

Protects and enables you.

This body of yours.

This body has a brain all of its own.

There is wisdom here to be permeated into,

Felt and expressed.

This body of yours.

As you find yourself in a comfortable,

Preferably laying down,

Or if needed,

Seated position.

Follow your body's cues to regulate and adjust to its natural position for comfort and rest.

This may be a sigh of exhalation.

Unwinding the feet and ankles,

A yawn or anything else your body intuits.

If this feels unfamiliar or difficult,

Do not worry.

This is the very thing we will be exploring today.

And you can come back to this meditation as often as needed to discover and fine tune your relationship.

You may find new openings,

Neural pathways and brain mapping occurring during this process.

Notice these fine sensory responses and see if you can be witness to your body conversing with your brain on a wholly united plane.

There is no right or wrong,

You are at will in this process and hope is for you to find your inner being in this unfurling of everything that you are.

Support starts with the structures that hold us up and encompass our spirit.

Our posture,

Whether standing or laying,

Is a beautiful architecture designed for an optimal and enlivening experience of life.

As you feel your body on the surface beneath,

Follow a rising inhale.

Curl downwards along the soft soles of your feet and along the back of your body to your head.

Feel it ride along the form of your back body.

As you exhale,

Begin the journey back down the front side of the body as if a cool mist was hovering over your form like a mass of land rooted deep into the earth.

Steady,

Unshakable and belonging.

We'll begin at the beginning of it all by drawing your awareness to the pelvis,

Directing your focus to the pubis,

The joining center point of the two sides of the pelvis.

Widen down and out to the sides to locate your left and right sit bones,

The metaphoric feet of the pelvis.

You'll venture diagonally upwards,

Encountering the acetabulums,

The concave dwellings of your hip joints.

Continue up and out following the shape of the two iliac crests,

The large butterfly-like bones that create the supportive surround of the pelvic bowl.

As you travel closer towards the spine,

There is a small downward curve connecting into the sacrum.

Feel the broad structure of this touchstone,

A point of connection and immense strength.

You trace this almost triangular bone down until it transforms into the intricate parts of the tailbone.

Now envisage an energetic thread of light between the pubis and the tailbone,

Between the two sit bones,

And now triangulate and connect an energetic light thread,

Starting from the right side of the pubis to the right sit bone,

To the right side of the tailbone,

Left side of the tailbone,

To the left sit bone,

Gathering back to the left side of the pubis.

These light threads forming an illuminated diamond-like shape,

Creating a supple yet strong force field within the base of the pelvis.

Now feel all parts of the pelvis light up in your awareness.

Feel the touchstone of your sacrum anchor you to the earth.

You may feel the tailbone instinctively lengthening to the heels to facilitate this.

As a wave-like micro adjustment firmly plants sacrum to earth to allow for an unraveling throughout the whole spinal column.

You may even feel the light thread assisting this conversation between pelvis and spine.

We'll come back to the spine later on.

As the subtle reorganization of the pelvis settles,

Draw awareness to the right and left thigh bones,

Specifically upwards to the L-shape femoral heads that become the balls to the sockets of the hip joints.

The grounding of the neutral pelvis sets your hips up for your perfect alignment.

Like Cinderella's glass slipper,

You feel your hip joints snug,

Yielding and releasing of what's holding you back.

The synovial fluid buffering you in all the right places.

This buoyancy translates down into the knees,

Where any tension or stubbornness subsides,

And you regain a sense of agency as the knees soften into balance.

This adjustment continues into the ankles,

Allowing for a strengthening to occur.

Any sense of weakness is replaced with a reassurance that you are fully supported by your ankles.

Sensation moves into the feet,

Extending into the toes,

Feeling that sense of safety in the softness of the soles of the feet.

There is a sensitivity here.

Where are you wanting to step forward in your life?

What is the next step you are wishing to take?

Travel along the light thread,

Back up through the feet,

Ankles,

Lower legs,

Knees,

Thighs,

Through the hips and pelvis,

Meeting back at the touchstone of the sacrum.

This meeting point of energetic forces is where we gather ourselves,

Build our sense of safety,

And resource the energy needed to thrive and move forward.

We will now travel up into the soft curve of the lumbar spine.

Five kidney-shaped vertebrae,

To be exact.

Pause here and open up an upward channel for clear communication into the spine.

Notice how stable this feels.

Where are you overdoing it,

Giving in,

Or giving your power away?

Now feel the next 12 vertebrae,

Heart-shaped in structure,

Outwardly curve around the back of your heart space,

Connecting your ribs here,

Channeling protection,

A container for grief and joy to be expressed and moved through.

Can you allow any residue of hurt or guarding to exit into the space behind you?

As you move from the outward curve of the thoracic spine into the inward cervical curve of the neck,

Seven vertebrae,

More delicate and finessed in shape,

Continuing this highway of communication between body and brain.

Feel the fullness of your expression here articulate upwards through the neck.

The rearranging of this channel removes any fear or obligations,

Preventing you from feeling free and supported.

A further adjustment draws the throat downwards to the earth,

Facilitating space to breathe between the atlas and the ossiput,

Where the neck connects to the base of your skull.

Feel that space widen with relief.

A flow of light streams into the head.

The whole skull softens,

Becoming warm and gentle.

The light thread travels of the whole alignment of spine to head.

From the neck,

Spread sensation across into the shoulders.

The wings like scapula buffering up to the back of the heart.

Instead of feeling that familiar impression of being pushed,

As you feel into these metaphorical wings,

There is a protection of your freedom radiating from the shoulder blades.

They've got your back.

This radiates into the reach of the shoulders,

The bridging of your heart into the arms.

What is your heart reaching for?

Can you release any burdens stopping your heart from carrying you forward?

Radiance moves into the elbows,

Lowering their defenses.

What patterns are you running?

What behaviors are you forcing?

Can you be at peace here?

Radiance fills into the wrists,

Warming and softening.

Your vulnerability shows you where you are needing more support.

Release your control and open up to the support you are waving in,

No longer gripping or holding on to things.

Fingers and palms of the hands surrender,

Allowing the radiant messages from the heart to flood into the hands,

To be released and received into the world.

The light thread follows from shoulders to fingers.

You sense this light threading throughout your whole body now.

The whole body illuminated with light.

The whole body.

Whole body.

What is the message you wish for this light thread to spread?

What is your body communicating to you today?

Allow any messages to be carried throughout your whole body now,

Welcoming all parts of you.

Welcoming all parts of you home.

When you're ready,

You may ride your next breath,

Inhale into the whole of your body,

Allowing the breath to enter all parts of you.

Feeling that inhale expand within you,

Filling you up.

An exhale will allow for a deep and long release of breath,

Emptying all the way out.

Ride a few more breaths like this,

Feeling the fullness of your body.

Stay with these conscious breaths for as long as you need.

Slowly transitioning yourself back into the space around you,

Welcoming any further movements through the joints to assist in a peaceful awakening.

When you feel ready to open your eyes,

Take a moment to gaze around the space you're in.

Orient yourself.

Be kind to yourself.

And then carry on with the rest of your day.

Reviews

Thank you for your session I find your meditation very 😌 relaxing and help with my day and epilepsy condition..

Amazing and different body scan. I look forward to returning to this again.✨🙏🏼💜💜💜✨

I loved this. Nourishing and enlightening. A wonderful practice for equinox today 🙏

Relaxing attunement to the body. Left me feeling the fluidity and vitatlity of my physical form as it works in unison.

Lovely practice, thank you!
What I like here is that it’s not one those worn-out versions of scripts used in mbsr/mbct/basic mindfulness courses (that get old quite soon, not to say boring as you get to know them better), yet quite the opposite of those, yours for me felt as a breeze of fresh air, as vital watery essence in a landscape that so often seems barren and dried out. Yeah to all kinds of new-style bodyscans from any personal, authentic voice out there, especially hours (encore!).
Another delight I found immediately in your opening couple of minutes, which on me had a really strong, effective force to draw me in immediately on what I call a ‘soul’-level (just my way of referencing to that centered part within, similar to ‘bodymind’ or energy body, which links both mind and matter, and as such is more healing than any single one of either other pole). Just as when I focus on sensing my breath, i then cannot help being pulled into bodily awareness, so too there are some things which have a similar effect on that soul-awareness for. Imagination and music being 2 especially powerful ones among those… And already from the very start of this practice I could sense their pull (too which I admit I gladly surrendered: such great background track, and that imagery wherin my body gets to be an ocean or any other body of water or to be the earth itself, underneath a layer of fog laying over kit, hovering - i suppose I’m just a sucker for that stuff, and suspect lots of others will enjoy it)…
Another final thing I like to mention, is your start at root centre and pelvic floor. Not only was this a welcome change for me (from nidras starting with right thumb and modern body scans working up from left toe), what I found even more interesting in a way is that you didn’t really refer to ‘chakra’ as such but did mention vertebrae, nerves, muscles and bones. In doing so you put your finger right on a sort of hiatus tthat feel is missing in chakra theory. What I mean is the simple fact that (unlike other vertrebrea S, L, T, Ce) the joined vertebrea that form the root, don’t actually have any nerves in them -which is most problematic when chakras get associated only with the nervous system (whilst of course an energy centre really doesn’t need nerves imho). My own way around this I have always found in tension release exercises (TRE, used in PTSD mostly) or in Kundalini yoga. In short, the deeply tucked away source of the most intense energy in us (worse when traumatised, but strong either way) lies bottled up in our psoas major but especially minor muscle. I have no idea if are aware of that factand therefor did it intentionally, but in your opening 5 minutes you almost drew a perfect outline of these muscles (especially where you get energy/focus to flow from hips and ties in front to tailbone and upwards). And just as in kundaline that’s is a particularly strong energetic point to start from and to (without calling it so) sublimate.
So I have found a beautiful new gem to add to my bodyscan playlist in this more traditional, yet most contemporary body scan I’ve ever come across myself (i even picked up on a hint about neuroplasticity even, no?).
So, Rachel, 🙏 namaste 🙏!