Trans Embodiment - Coming Home To Ourselves

As transgender people, our bodies can feel like unsafe territory. Maybe they don't feel like home. Our bodies contradict who we know ourselves to be. Or maybe because we are told that how we inhabit our bodies is wrong. Through this trauma-informed body scan, we can be gently guided back into our bodies with increased presence and acceptance.

Transcript

The following guided meditation aims to support you in beginning to feel into your body and to explore barriers to embodiment based on gender dysphoria or gender dissonance.

For some people,

It might be overstimulating or overwhelming to start to feel into the body based on how you've learned to protect yourself.

Honor this and go slowly or allow yourself to stop at any time.

So begin by finding a comfortable posture,

Whether sitting on a cushion or a chair or lying down.

And take a moment to just see how it is to be in this posture.

If you're having difficulty finding a fully comfortable position,

Just see if you can notice that without needing to change it.

Simply with an attitude of curiosity.

And notice if any of your discomfort is based on your ideas about gender or what it means to be in a gendered body.

Again,

With just an attitude of curiosity and kindness.

You can even label this thinking as gendering.

Now we'll begin with a few slow deep breaths in order to bring our awareness more fully toward our bodies.

So we'll breathe in through our nose,

Feeling the sensations of air as it comes in through the nostrils and filling the belly.

And again,

Notice if there are any physical or mental limitations to doing this.

For example,

If you're wearing a binder,

Just doing the best you can to draw the breath down into the belly where it can fill.

Really trying to allow ourselves to have a full breath cycle.

And then exhaling out through the nose and noticing where the body softens as the breath comes out.

Maybe a feeling of deflating or relaxing.

And again,

Do this a few times with each inhale,

Breathing a little deeper down into the body.

And with each progressive exhale,

Relaxing and softening the body more and more.

Now we'll begin by feeling into our toes,

Just our big toes to start.

Noticing the sensation of the big toe and the big toenail.

See if you can feel this experientially without thought,

Without thinking about your big toe and just feeling it.

And notice if there's any sense of positive,

Negative or neutral when feeling into your toe.

And we're going to use our big toes as a reference point.

So if at any point in time it feels like the body becomes too overwhelming or overstimulating,

Or you notice yourself starting to dissociate,

There's no problem at all.

Just see if you can bring your awareness back into your big toes.

This is going to be your safety checkpoint or your anchor throughout this meditation.

Now we're going to expand our awareness from the big toes to our second toes.

Then to our middle toes,

Fourth toes and our little pinky toes.

Now see if you can feel all of the toes together,

Including the space between the toes.

Now bring your awareness up to the soles of your feet,

Your heels,

The tops of your feet,

Up into your ankles,

And then to your calves,

The backs of your lower legs.

And then wrap your awareness from the backs of your calves up to the front to include your shins or the front of your lower legs.

Now bring your awareness to your knees,

To the kneecaps,

And to the backs of the knees.

And bring awareness up to the thighs,

Both the front and the sides and the backs of the thighs,

Just feeling it as sensation.

Now we're going to move into an area that can have a lot of charge.

So if needed,

You can either just stay with the lower half of your body or if you're especially having difficulty,

Bringing your awareness back down to your little toes until you feel a little more grounded.

Otherwise,

We'll bring our awareness to our bottoms and into the hips.

There can be a lot of trauma and tension that we keep in the hips,

So just seeing if we can notice the sensation there.

Bring our awareness into the groin.

This is a highly gendered area of the body,

So again,

Just noticing sensation.

If we find ourselves thinking about this area,

Labeling that thinking as simply gendering and coming back to sensation.

Now we're going to come up into the belly,

Feeling into your belly,

Noticing any sensations that are there.

Now coming up into the chest,

Which again is a gendered area or can be.

So if the mind kicks in,

Labeling it gendering and returning back to sensation.

And seeing if we can feel into the heart center,

Noticing any sensations or tension that might be there.

Seeing if we can feel into a sense of openness.

Now we're going to bring our awareness into the lower back,

The middle back,

And the upper back.

Now include sensation of all of the back,

Including the shoulder blades.

Now we're going to bring our awareness up into the shoulders,

Feeling your upper arms,

Down into the elbows and the forearms,

Into the wrists and the tops of the hands.

Around to the palms,

Noticing any sensations or temperature in the palms.

Now into our thumbs,

First fingers,

Middle fingers,

Fourth fingers,

And pinky fingers.

And now all of your fingers and the space in between your fingers.

Now we're going to bring our awareness up into the neck,

Starting with the back of the neck,

Noticing any tension that might be there.

And then to the front of the neck and the throat,

Up into the chin and the jaws.

If you notice yourself clenching or any tension in the jaws,

Just see if you can relax it,

Allowing space into the mouth and between your upper and lower teeth.

Feel into the mouth,

Feeling the tongue,

Feeling the space within the mouth,

Feeling the roof of the mouth and into the gums.

Feel your cheeks and your lips,

The nose,

Eyes and eyelids,

Up to the brow,

The temples and forehead.

And if you notice yourself holding any tension there,

Just allowing that area to relax and soften.

And now try to include all of your head into your awareness.

And finally we're going to see if we can bring our awareness back to the whole body to include everything.

And we'll just rest there for a few minutes.

And gently notice where your attention wanders to,

Whether it's back to thinking,

Or maybe there are certain parts of your body where your awareness tends to go.

And just noticing that without judgment and see if we can slowly bring awareness back to the whole body of just sensing,

Seeing if we can feel into our aliveness.

And if you notice feeling a lot of numbness or neutrality,

That's okay too.

Just feeling that.

And now including awareness of the breath and how the body experiences breathing,

Feeling the whole body breathe.

And whenever the mind wanders,

Just bringing awareness gently back to sensation.

And just feeling the movement of the breath throughout the entire body.

And just allowing ourselves to relax into that sensation,

Into our aliveness.

Seeing if we can begin to feel even just a little bit at home in our bodies.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Reviews

I'm trying to find myself. Thank you for this space

body scans are always difficult but i felt the compassion for my experience from this meditation & that helps a lot

💗💗💗🙏🙏🙏 Thank you Ray. This was so powerful for me today! It’s great to see you on Insight Timer. Keep up the great work with these meditations. ✨

What a beautiful way of honouring my body as a trans person! Thank you!

I have shared this with my transgender daughter who is really struggling in the hopes it may help her. Thank you for this!! 🙏🏻🧘🏼‍♀️❤️

What a gift! Thank you for your work! It’s so important! 🥰🙏🏼🫶🏼

slayed, felt frustrated by my own feelings but this was gentle and kind to my dysphoria

A Trans meditation? Wow, this helped so much. Thank you!!!

I really appreciate this gender-sensitive, healing meditation that helped bring me back to my body when I was feeling dissociation. Thank you so much!!!

I’m a LMFT and I LOVE sharing this resource with my trans clients ❤️❤️❤️

Ray the was one of, if not the best meditations I've gotten the gift of experiencing 🌟 Amazing.

Started to feel out-of-body, felt unfamiliar at first but so peaceful, and I got nervous...
Truly loved it ❤️✌🏻

Thank you for this meditation! I appreciated the opportunity to scan through my body

Lovely, supportive.

Truly relaxing body scan

Great for feeling more alive and at home in your body

Absolutely lovely. 🙏🏻❤️🌈

Thank you for this grounding & supportive meditation! I have been looking for trans somatic support, because transition on a physical level is so real, where you realize how much our movement, shapes our bodies inhabit, the way we sense and relate to the world around us, is all deeply gendered! It’s almost like learning how to move again as a baby. This meditation was very gently supportive of my process and I recommend it to anyone who isn’t cis, especially if you are experiencing transition later in life, with many years of gendered embodiment to unlearn.

Really great! It was an interesting experience. I hadn't expected myself to experience some of the emotions I did about my body. I didn't know I held so much trauma in certain places. Thank you for this meditation.

This is a great meditation to come into your body and feel what's there in Anand judgemental loving way which doesn't cause my body dysphoria thanks for that

I needed that. Thank you.