A Short And Grounding Body Scan

I love body scans, and I especially love them on days when it feels like my mind is all over the place because it gives me a very concrete place to rest my attention from moment to moment.

And if that weren't enough, body scan meditations are also very grounding and calming, which I am always interested in experiencing.

So this week's talk and practice will be less intro and more body scan. Take a moment to get yourself settled and into a comfortable position and let's get started!

Transcript

Hey there everybody this is Kristen from Teaching Balance and I am here with you with this week's mindfulness meditation practice.

And we are in our final week of the month around self embodiment.

And we've talked about micro habits,

We've talked about nourishing yourself,

We've explored this idea of letting go of judgment and and developing a more objective awareness when those moments of self-judgment and self-flagellation arise.

And as I was thinking about how to finish out the month it seemed a little crazy to have a month focus on self embodiment and not do a body scan because I just think it's just such a wonderful practice.

Whenever I do in-person workshops or online workshops even if they're only 30 minutes I love bringing in some kind of a body scan because it's of course very relaxing,

Grounding,

Calming and it's also very concrete.

I'm assuming just about everybody has done this before but if you haven't we go through you know resting your attention on various parts of the body and it's just kind of I think a little easier being led throughout the whole 10 minutes to stay present and to rest your attention on from spot to spot.

So it's kind of a win-win if you ask me and just to build a little bit on what we did last week about this whole idea of strengthening our objective awareness I'm gonna make sure that I weave that in as well.

So I'm gonna wait actually to hit my timer because it's gonna go super fast squeezing it all in and it's gonna be fine I won't rush I promise but let's go ahead and just get settled I'm just gonna clear my throat for a moment and here we go 10 minutes of a body scan.

So you can do this body scan either seated or if you choose to you're more than welcome to lie down wherever it may be convenient.

If you want to make that switch you can just pause and then turn this recording back on when you're ready.

As always I'd like to invite you to take three long slow deep breaths.

If you're laying down you can even put your hand on your abdomen and really feel full filling of your lungs from the bottom all the way up to the top and then exhaling it all out from the top all the way down to that little bit of air that's left in the bottom and then allowing your breathing to return its natural rhythm.

So the first area of the body I'm gonna invite you to rest your attention on is your left big toe.

This is really the smallest of all the areas that you'll be invited to focus on depending on how you are seated or lying down that left big toe might be making contact with either the surface beneath you or also perhaps a sock or a shoe or maybe even the air and you might even notice that for this first part of the body that I'm inviting you to be the anchor for your awareness that there actually isn't all that much sensation at least initially so you may have already found yourself giving that left big toe a little wiggle so that you can feel what's going on there.

Of course feeling the pad of the toe,

The top of the left big toe,

The toenail.

What can you feel and what is really not possible to feel without those wiggles and then when you're ready expanding your attention and awareness to include the entire left foot.

So now all five toes,

The delicate webbing between the toes,

The top of the foot,

The bottom,

The ball,

The arch,

The heel,

All the way up into that ankle joint.

Just the left foot continuing to notice some of the external sensation,

The skin,

Also noticing temperature.

Does that left foot feel warm or cool or somewhere in between?

And then allowing your awareness to penetrate within,

Feeling the muscles,

The tendons,

The bones,

The joints,

Whatever might be detectable.

And if you find yourself being drawn to tell yourself a story about why your left foot might feel a certain way now that you're paying such close attention to it,

Just noticing that story and then letting it go and turning your attention back to just exploring any sensations and noticing whatever is noticeable in your left foot.

And then when you're ready,

Releasing your attention on the left foot and shifting it into the left leg.

So from that ankle,

Up the lower leg,

The shin,

The calf,

Into the knee,

The thigh,

The hamstring,

All the way up into that left hip socket.

Noticing the angle that you're holding your left leg at,

Exploring external sensations and internal sensations.

And if for some reason,

Either now or at some other point in this body scan,

You notice areas of discomfort,

I'm gonna invite you to just explore that with that same quality of objectivity,

As though you were a scientist with a clipboard,

Just making notes,

Making note of the perimeter of that area,

Its qualities.

Is that discomfort sharp or dull?

What does it feel like?

And then when you're ready,

Releasing your awareness of the left leg and now we're gonna shift our attention to the right big toe.

We've done this before so you know what it's like.

If you haven't already wiggled it,

See what you can feel before the wiggle.

I'm also gonna invite you to be aware of any qualities and judgments around this pacing.

Is there a quality of impatience,

You're ready for it to move on to the next step or quality of feeling rushed?

And all of those assessments and judgments are just other thoughts and you're just gonna notice them and come back to where we are,

Which right now is your right big toe.

And then when you're ready,

Expanding to include the entire right foot.

Now that you're more experienced with this,

You might find it is even easier to tune in to sensations of the skin,

Muscles,

Areas that you might never have noticed before if something didn't give you a reason to.

If you find yourself drawn into thought,

Remembering that's not a problem,

You just notice it and come back to your right foot.

And when you're ready,

Shifting your awareness into your right leg,

Perhaps noticing if it's interesting to you a comparison of how the right leg feels in comparison to the left.

Noticing if the position is similar or different,

Exploring whatever it is that you can sense and notice.

And then when you're ready,

Releasing your attention on the right leg and shifting into your torso.

So the lower torso,

The pelvic floor,

The abdomen,

The lower back,

The mid-back,

The upper back,

The chest.

So much is going on in our torso.

So many vital organs.

And you can do an exploratory dive into those organs.

Depending on when you've eaten,

There might be a quality of fullness or emptiness in the digestive tract.

Noticing the lungs.

Can you actually feel your heart beating in your chest?

And then when you're ready,

Releasing your attention on the torso and shifting it into both arms,

Both hands,

All the way up into the neck and head.

Neck and head,

Of course,

Is where we spend so much of our time,

You could say,

And our arms and hands often busy with any task at hand.

And just allowing yourself to notice whatever is noticeable,

Whatever is easy,

Your eyes and their sockets,

Your tongue and your mouth.

And then when you're ready,

Shifting your awareness to the very top of the head.

And for the final few moments of this practice,

Allowing your awareness to very gently glide down the body,

All the way down to wherever it's making contact and holding your body in its entirety and your awareness.

So that was a 10-minute body scan.

I like the shorter ones because it feels like it's a little bit more accessible to like kind of squeeze into your day.

You know,

You can kind of go off somewhere for 10 minutes much more easily than 20 minutes or longer.

And I would also invite you to take a look at the body that's actually in the core practices,

Which is in the library.

It's kind of all over my website and actually in the email that I send this out with.

I'll link to some longer ones too.

So if you're feeling like,

Oh that was great,

I wanted even more,

I'll make sure that I put another link in there to connect to something that's a little bit longer,

A little bit more spacious,

A little bit more luxuriously lengthy.

And hopefully you can find that to be supportive and beneficial as well.

So as always,

Thank you so much for taking this time for yourself and thank you for allowing me to accompany you on this journey.

I will see you next week.

Take care.

Bye.