15-Minute Body Scan For First Responders

15-minute body scan meditation designed for first responders and military members, and available to all who want to practice. This is a short body scan as these practices go, and a nice way to step into training somatic awareness.

Transcript

Welcome to this 15 minute body scan meditation.

Let's begin by finding a comfortable place to lie on the floor,

Lie on a comfortable platform like a bed,

Or even if you choose,

Sit in a chair.

And take a moment or two to take a few nice deep in-breaths and out-breaths,

And bringing your awareness to the sensation of breathing.

Feeling the rise and fall of the belly as you breathe in and out.

Even feeling into the expansion and contraction of the chest with each breath.

And noticing your posture,

Noticing how you've landed,

Maybe feeling into the weight of your body,

However you're positioned.

Perhaps also noticing the pressure points.

If you're seated in a chair,

Maybe noticing the sit bones,

The glutes,

The bottoms of the feet,

And how those parts of your body are making contact with the floor or the chair.

If you're lying down,

Noticing your shoulder blades,

The back of your head,

Your upper back,

Your lower back,

Your hips,

Your pelvic bowl,

Your glutes,

Your legs,

And your feet.

Maybe feeling into the weight of your body,

Sinking into a nice,

Grounded,

Centered,

Stable platform from which to continue our practice.

Now remembering our qualities of mindfulness,

This open curiosity,

This acceptance of what we discover.

Non-judgment,

Which doesn't mean judgment won't emerge,

It just simply means that we recognize it and we have a little compassion when it emerges.

And let's bring that open curiosity,

That trained observer,

And let's bring the focus of our awareness to the toes on our right foot.

It might seem a little silly,

And without visualizing,

Using our tactile sensation of touch,

Can we feel that big toe on the right foot?

Can you know it's there because you feel it?

Not because you know it's there,

Not because you've mapped it,

Not because you've previously experienced it,

But in this moment,

Can you bring your attention so granularly,

So precisely that you can feel your big toe?

And it's pretty common not to be able to do that.

And just sort of scanning from the big toe on that right foot down to all the other toes on that right foot.

Can you feel those toes?

Maybe even wiggle them a little.

Can you feel the sensation in the toes on your foot?

And now shifting our awareness over to the big toe on the left foot.

And very similarly,

Feeling into the sensation of touch and using that tactile sensation to find those toes.

Can you feel those toes on the left foot?

Scanning down from the toes on both feet,

Left and right,

To the bottoms of your feet,

The pads,

The arches,

The heels.

And noticing what part of your foot is open and exposed to the air,

What part of your foot is making contact with the floor,

Or even what part of your foot is wrapped in a sock or wrapped in a shoe box.

We're just searching for sensation using this sense of touch.

Seeing the foot,

Noticing what's there.

Bringing your attention to your ankles,

Both left and right.

And remember,

As we move through this practice,

This is an attention practice.

Remember our mindful awareness cycle of focused attention,

Getting distracted regularly by all kinds of things,

And then just bringing our attention gently back.

And we'll be doing that through this entire experience.

Scanning the body using our sense of physical touch and noticing what we observe and noticing what emerges in distraction.

It's from ankles,

Left and right.

Let's scan up the lower leg,

Scanning up the shin bones to the knee,

And maybe returning to those ankles and scanning up the calf muscles.

Scanning toward knees,

Both left and right,

And feeling into the knee.

Maybe there's an old injury or a current injury or just stiffness,

Soreness.

And from the knees,

Both left and right,

Scanning up the upper legs,

Maybe up the hamstrings,

Up to the glutes,

To the pelvic bowl,

To the sit bones.

Just noticing the sensation of your mid-body,

Your pelvis,

Your groin,

Your lower abdominal area.

Maybe returning to the knees,

Both left and right,

And then scanning upward,

Up the tops of those upper legs,

Up those quads,

Into your hip flexors,

Back to that pelvic bowl,

Back to that lower abdominal,

The groin,

Even the genitals.

Noticing what sensations are emerging in this midsection of your body.

Can you bring your attention to the tactile sensation of this scan of the body?

And can you skillfully work with distraction?

And from our lower abdomen,

Scanning around both sides,

Left and right,

To our lower back,

To the small of the back.

Noticing if the small of the back is making contact with the chair or with the floor.

And then scanning up the lower back,

Scanning up to the mid-back,

To our upper back,

To the shoulder blades.

Noticing how the shoulder blades might be making contact with either the back of the chair or the floor.

Is there symmetry there?

Scanning up to our shoulders,

Both left and right,

To our outer shoulders.

And then scanning down those arms,

Scanning down the upper arm to the elbow.

Just noticing,

Can we feel this joint,

The tendons,

The ligaments?

And from those joints,

From the elbow,

Left and right,

Scanning down the upper arm to the wrist and to the hands.

And bringing our attention to the palm of our hands.

Is the palm open?

Is it exposed to the air?

Is the palm making contact with the floor or with our body or with the chair?

We notice the difference in tactile sensation between the palms of our hands,

Both left and right,

Comparing left and right,

And also the back sides of our hands.

And scanning down all fingers on both hands,

Left and right,

To the very tips of our fingers.

And without creating a mental model,

Can you use your attention,

Your sense of touch,

With precision to know where the very tips of your fingers end and the space around them begin?

And taking a nice deep breath and scanning our attention back up our arms,

Past the wrists,

Both left and right,

Up past the elbows,

Up to the shoulders,

Both left and right.

And then bring your attention to the base of your neck.

Scaling up your neck,

Scanning to the back side of your head,

To the back side of your skull,

Noticing if you're lying on the floor or some other surface,

Noticing how your head is resting.

If you're seated,

Just notice also how your head is resting.

Notice the sensation of the open air making contact with both your hair and your skin.

And if you're lying down,

Feeling the warmth or coolness or moisture or dryness of that surface beneath you.

Now scanning up to the top of the scalp and can we feel what's happening at the edges of our body called our scalp?

And then scanning our attention to the skin on our face,

To our forehead,

Relaxing the muscles around our eyes and relaxing our jaw,

Really feeling the skin,

Feeling the warmth or coolness or the moisture or the dryness and bringing our attention to the skin on our cheeks,

Can we feel movement of air,

However subtle,

In the space that we're in?

Can we feel the heat from inside our body leave our body through our skin?

And scanning down to our chin,

Noticing the position of the head,

Noticing the posture of the chin and the neck and then scanning down that neck,

Scanning to our chest and now bringing our attention to the physical sensation of the in-breath and the out-breath,

The movement of this muscular skeletal region of our chest as we breathe,

Feeling the entire body now,

Noticing the sensations in the wake of this attention scan from toe to head and now to our chest.

Taking a nice deep breath or maybe two and acknowledging with gratitude what our body provides us and affirming for ourselves that whatever this experience was like,

It's normal.

So thank you.

Reviews

Totally relaxed my body when I was feeling anxious and uncomfortable in my own skin.

Very relaxing. Thanks. 😊

It was light and funny without it being a distraction. I really enjoyed it

Thanks for this body scan. I liked the tone and cadence of your voice. After 35 years service as a volunteer firefighter and now retired…there are lots of old aches that need attention 🙏✌️namaste.

Easy to follow, enjoyed and appreciated being in the moment.

Really enjoyed this mindful body scan! Bell at end was so faint though, if could do three chimes would be even better.

One of the best body scans I’ve ever experienced! Thank you!

Very powerful, allowed me to shift to full body awareness, and leaving me a grounded sense of focus. Sometimes meditation can be an esoteric experience for me, lacking tangible results in the material/real world. This technique represents the other 1/2 of the Mind/Body connection for me in experiencing balanced day. 👍🏻