Body Scan: Regions Of The Body

This is a 23-minute version of the body scan meditation. This version of the body scan encourages bringing attention to larger regions of the body at once. The recording for this meditation has been taken from January 16th, 2025's Live Mindfulness Practice. In this meditation, the participant is encouraged to bring a high-resolution awareness to each region of the body from the torso outward, which is a way to drop out of the thinking mind and into bodily experience.

Transcript

Hello,

This is Ryan and welcome to this version of the body scan.

This meditation will last a little over 20 minutes and the idea of this meditation is to give an alternative to what we may typically be doing for the body scan.

So in this meditation we'll be holding larger regions of the body in awareness to kind of cultivate this different way of bringing attention to the physical body.

I wish you all the best as you do this practice and you continue your mindfulness practice.

And do take care,

Be well,

And keep practicing.

Let's begin.

So I'd encourage you to choose a posture that's supportive for you.

And for me,

I'm sitting up.

I'm sitting straight and tall,

Using the straightness of my spine,

Of course with a relaxed lower back.

I'm just letting my body sit by its own strength.

And so letting this help keep me wakeful here at 525 AM.

And maybe you would like to choose to lie down.

And so especially if you haven't done mindfulness practice before,

One of the gentlest ways to begin practice is to lie down.

And of course the danger,

And I like to kind of put that in quotes,

The danger of lying down is that you might fall asleep.

So what's the danger of falling asleep is that you're not practicing mindfulness when you're sleeping,

But you are getting rest and maybe you're here today because that's what you want.

You want to practice.

You want to meditate so that you can finally get some well-deserved rest.

And so let's bring our attention to our abdomens,

Feeling the gentle movement of the abdomen with the breath,

Expanding as we breathe in,

Contracting as we breathe out.

And so if you can really focus your attention,

You won't miss a single moment of the feeling of breathing.

And this helps to drop us into our present moment awareness.

And now whenever you're ready,

Releasing attention at the abdomen and guiding the attention down to the left side of the body.

To the left hip,

The left thigh,

The left knee,

The left shin,

The left calf muscle,

The left ankle,

The top of the left foot,

The sole of the left foot,

And noticing the toes of the left foot.

Is it possible to notice each of your toes?

The big toe,

The little toe,

Those other toes that are in between.

So now can you expand your awareness to the entirety of the left leg?

So re-including everything that we've just gone down through.

So the foot includes the ankle and the heel,

The lower leg also besides the shin and the calf.

There are sides.

There's a knee in there.

There are several large muscles that surround the thigh and your entire leg has skin on the surface.

Can you draw your attention fully into the experience of the physical sensations of the left leg?

What is your left leg touching?

What regions of the leg are not touching anything?

And now on your next exhale,

Releasing the left leg from awareness.

Guiding attention to the right leg,

Observing the right thigh,

The right knee,

The right lower leg,

The right ankle,

The right heel,

The top of the right foot,

The sole of the right foot,

And the toes of the right foot.

Big toe,

The little toe,

And all the toes in between.

And so seeing if you can expand,

Dilate that lens of awareness to include the entirety of the right leg,

From hip to toes.

And on your next exhale,

Releasing the right leg from awareness as we guide attention into the trunk of the body,

Starting at the pelvis.

Noticing the pelvic bone.

Noticing the buttocks,

Which are in contact with some supporting surface.

Can you observe that pressure of that contact?

Observing the front side of the pelvis,

The pelvic bowl region,

The genital region,

The anal region,

And slowly finding the tailbone and moving upwards.

Noticing the muscles of the lower back as we continue to climb the spine.

Noticing the mid-back,

Where the ribs begin to appear out of the spine.

The upper back.

Noticing the shoulder blades,

And if you're lying down,

You may notice the contact between the shoulder blades and whatever it is that you're lying on.

And then to the front of the body,

Noticing the abdomen rising and falling again as you breathe.

Feeling maybe your t-shirt on your skin,

Whatever clothing you're wearing moving ever so slightly,

Brushing against the skin as you breathe in and breathe out.

The rib cage,

The chest,

Rising and falling as you breathe.

Noticing the shoulders here as well.

And so can you be aware of the entirety of the trunk of the body from the perineum at the bottom all the way up to the shoulders at the top?

And one thing that might be useful about focusing on the trunk of the body is that it is constantly moving,

Expanding and contracting as you breathe.

Using these physical sensations to drop into present moment awareness.

And on the next exhale,

Releasing the torso,

The trunk of the body from awareness.

Bringing awareness to the left arm,

The upper arm,

The elbow,

The forearm,

The wrist,

The back of the hand,

The palm of the hand,

The thumb,

And each of the fingers of the left hand.

So allowing awareness to dwell there in the left arm.

From the shoulder and the armpit all the way down to the fingers of the left hand.

And on the next exhale,

Releasing the left arm from awareness and shifting attention to the right arm.

Noticing the upper arm,

The right elbow,

The forearm,

The right wrist,

The back of the right hand,

The right thumb,

And each of the fingers of the right hand.

And so expanding that awareness from the tips of the fingers all the way up to the right shoulder and the right armpit.

So everything in between as we focus our attention on the physical sensations in the right arm.

And on the next exhale,

Releasing the right arm from awareness and bringing attention into the neck,

The throat,

The larynx,

Feeling blood vessels,

Moving blood to and from the head.

Noticing the chin,

The jaw,

The lips,

The teeth,

The tongue,

The inside of the mouth,

The nose and the nostrils,

Feeling air moving through the nostrils as you breathe.

The cheeks,

The ears,

The eyes and the muscles around the eyes,

The eyebrows and the forehead,

The temples,

The scalp,

The crown of the head,

The back of the head.

So holding now the entirety of the head and the neck in awareness.

And now let's see if we can expand our awareness to the body as a whole.

So including the trunk of the body and the torso,

The arms,

The legs,

Just experiencing what it's like to be here right now in this physical body.

What does it feel like?

What can you experience?

So congratulations for making it through today's practice.

Maybe take a moment to congratulate yourself for having done this and having made time to nourish yourself in this way.

Knowing that this is a time to really take care of ourselves,

A time to give ourselves some more energy,

To help tune our minds to being more aware in each and every moment and perhaps setting some intention to practice regularly.

So that we are more likely to be more skillful at staying present in each and every experience we have.

And so now I'll close our practice with three rings of the bell.

Reviews

Really love Ryan’s delivery of this meditative body scan and with 3 bells at the end there’s no risk of staying asleep, even if I do drift off! Namaste 🙏

Nice body scan with nice bits of silence. Thank you.

Thank you 🙏 Ryan! This is just beautiful . I appreciate all you do to teach us how to develop a regular practice ☺️ I intend to work this recording into our regular practice schedule for the future 😊 Thanks again 💛