Mindfulness Of Body

This is a Mindfulness of the Body guided meditation. Mindfulness of the Body is one of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness from the Vipassana Buddhist tradition. This meditation helps you to grow a healthier relationship with your body, aiding you in healing eating disorders (or compulsions) as well as other body based addictions like sex or sensuality addictions. It helps you to become the master instead of the slave of your body - to stop fighting against it, and start working with it.

Transcript

So hello and welcome to this meditation on mindfulness of the body.

So I've already recorded one meditation in this series.

So this is a series on the four foundations of mindfulness that comes from the vipassana tradition from Buddhism.

So vipassana means insight and this vipassana practice really is about helping you to develop insight into the real nature of a human being and of human life.

So insight into the reality of what it's like to live in a body,

To experience thoughts,

Sensations,

Feelings,

Beliefs and how to really navigate this experience so that you can be free or as free as possible.

So the four foundations of mindfulness are really foundational teachings of vipassana or insight meditation and they are mindfulness of the body,

Mindfulness of mind,

So that's of the thinking mind,

Mindfulness of feeling or emotions and mindfulness of dharmas which translates from the Pali to truth or phenomenon.

So the truth of the nature of how life works.

So this one today is mindfulness of the body.

So this meditation is really designed to help you to overcome cravings,

Bodily induced cravings,

So sensation based cravings such as desire for food,

Drink or sex or sensual pleasures that might be harmful or damaging for you if those desires are just given free rein.

So that's one of the benefits of this practice.

Another benefit is really just slowly learning a different relationship with your body so that you're less identified with it as this is me.

So that you are able to then take a step away from identification with your body as me and then this helps you to actually be less subject to being pulled in different directions by your own bodily sensations and physical desire.

So this helps you to become more of a master of your body rather than the slave of your own sensations and this of course gives you greater freedom and agency in your life.

So this is a really fun teaching from Buddhism.

I remember at a few different retreats that I've been to,

Traditional vipassana retreats,

This teaching has been given by monks who teach it in a really traditional ancient Buddhist way which describes the body parts as in detail,

Listing all the different body parts and describing the human body as a sack of skin or a skin sack full of X Y and Z.

So it's quite confronting at first to hear this,

Hear your own body described in this way but it's really a very powerful and interesting way to reframe your relationship with your body and especially in our modern world which is so identified with the body and so identified and stuck on a culture of youth and beauty as things that we should be somehow constantly aspiring to rather than recognizing that the body is our tool,

It's the house that we live in,

We need to keep it as healthy and well as possible but we don't want to be fighting against our body by trying to become younger and more beautiful thus creating a really dysfunctional and striving and painful relationship with our own body.

So finding your comfortable position for this mindfulness of body meditation.

So I suggest if you can to sit in your meditation position so it might be cross-legged,

Might be in the Lotus position,

Might be your legs folded beneath you sitting on a cushion or sitting in a chair with a straight back ideally not leaning back against the chair.

So finding your comfortable position coming to just drop in to your body right now feeling in to where you're at right now and before we start let's just inhale and scrunch the shoulders up to just below the ears,

Hold one,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five and exhale release.

One more time inhale scrunch the shoulders up to just below the ears and hold one,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Exhale release.

One more time inhale scrunch the shoulders up,

Hold the breath and exhale release and then just placing your hands in your lap,

Left palm and right facing up if you're sitting on the floor,

If you're sitting on a chair you want to just place your palms facing down on your knees.

So starting by just becoming the observer of your breath,

Your natural breathing at right at the point just below your nostrils so really noticing the in-breath,

Sensations,

The warmth or coolness of the air and the out-breath,

In-breath and the out-breath and coming just to notice also what it feels like to be in your body today right now.

Noticing the sensations of the air on your skin,

Is there any soft breeze,

What does that feel like?

Noticing heat or coolness,

Noticing the touch of your clothes with your skin,

How does that feel?

Are your clothes tight or loose?

Noticing perhaps if you have shoes on,

How your shoes feel,

Are they tight on your feet or loose or just right?

Noticing your sitting bones,

Your pelvis,

Your hips,

Seeing if you can relax that area,

Sending your in-breath down to that area,

Imagining an expansion there and then slowly out-breath.

Noticing the sensation in your hands,

In your feet,

In your arms,

In your legs,

In the core of your body,

In your heart,

In your lungs,

In your neck,

In your shoulders,

In your throat,

In your head,

What does it feel like in all these areas?

What's it like to be living in the house of your body today?

So let's start out this meditation by just asking the question,

Is this body me?

Just letting that question be,

Am I this body?

Is perhaps this body my house,

My vehicle for this human life?

Is perhaps this body a gift given to me for traveling through this human life?

So let's start our contemplation on the body with just looking at what the body is made up of.

So looking at our different body parts.

So starting with our torso,

Feeling in,

Being present in our torso,

The core of our body.

If you like for the house metaphor,

This is really the main room of our house.

Moving from the core of the body to our right leg,

Left leg,

Right foot and left foot.

Our legs which carry the house of our body around wherever we wish to go.

And then moving into our arms,

Right arm,

Right hand,

Left arm,

Left hand.

Expressive elements can really help us to relate with others,

Express ourselves and act and create in the world.

Moving up to our neck,

Shoulders and head.

And our eyes,

Mouth,

Nose.

So the eyes really,

The windows of the house of our body where we look out on the world.

And we can break down the components of our body into more parts,

Smaller parts.

And I find it helpful to contemplate these elements of our body as like the elements present in the outer world.

So just the same as the outer world is composed of the five elements,

Earth,

Air,

Water,

Fire and space.

Our body is also composed of these elements.

We are made up of these elements.

So starting with the earth element,

We contemplate on our body hair.

So the hair on our heads,

The hair on our skin,

Largely made up of calcium,

Minerals,

The earth element.

We also contemplate our nails,

So our toenails,

Our fingernails made up of the same components as hair.

We contemplate our teeth,

Also made up of very similar components to hair and nails,

But presenting in a very different way.

So contemplating on our teeth,

The hardness of our teeth,

Strength of our teeth,

Wonderful things that our teeth can do for us,

Chewing our food,

Helping us to be able to easily digest whatever we take in.

Moving on to our skin,

So our skin which holds all of our organs together,

The biggest organ in the body,

Holding us together,

Keeping us,

Keeping our body all one and protecting us from the outer elements,

From heat,

From coldness,

From water,

Fire,

Making sure none of those elements actually enter into our body in ways which are not helpful.

Moving to tendons,

Connecting our muscles to our bones,

And then the bones themselves,

Very much the structure of our house,

Keeping us upright,

Supporting our movement in so many amazing ways.

Inside of our bones,

We have our bone marrow,

Keeping our bones healthy and this is where our blood is created.

New fresh blood constantly being made in this part of our body.

We contemplate on our kidneys,

Doing the amazing job of processing all of the different food elements that come down and detoxifying,

Separating out the useful food from the toxic,

Contemplating on our hearts,

This incredible central organ of the house of our body,

Pumping our blood constantly day and night.

Moving down to our liver and our spleen,

Very important organs for detoxifying the blood,

Also metabolizing any drugs or chemicals that come into our body.

Then we also have in this digestive system,

Unprocessed food,

Also pertaining to the earth element,

We have fat,

Fats in our body and we have faeces,

Also very much the earth element.

So contemplating on all of these body parts,

Seeing them for what they are,

Neither beautiful or ugly,

Neither desired or undesired,

Just amazingly functional parts of our body which support our human life.

And just as we are not normally trying to make our internal organs more beautiful or younger,

We're not striving to create the most sexy young tendons,

We can also see this from the external perspective.

This can help us detach from this striving desire,

Detach from any striving to be more beautiful or younger on the outside.

Moving to the air element we contemplate on the lungs,

So the lungs oxygenating the body constantly 24 hours a day,

Filling with air,

Bringing in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide,

Sending our oxygen into the bloodstream.

From air element we move to contemplate the element of fire,

So the intestines,

Large intestine and small intestine,

Which really do the major work of digesting and breaking down our food into manageable parts,

Needing the heat of the fire element to do this job.

Also associated with the element fire we can contemplate on the bloodstream,

The warmth of the blood which is flowing constantly in our body,

Keeping us at our optimal temperature of around 36 to 37 degrees.

Moving from our intestines into the water elements of the body,

So contemplating on bile which is stored in a gallbladder and helps to break fats down into fatty acids,

Aiding in digestion.

So also in the water elements we have phlegm,

That's mucus that protects and lubricates all of our organs and also traps things like dust,

Insects from the outside that might hinder our body function.

We also have pus,

Blood,

Sweat,

Tears,

Saliva,

Fluid in our joints that helps our joints stay flexible and moving,

And urine,

All of these relating to the water element.

And then as well we have the space element in our body,

Just the space between the atoms and molecules within our body,

Just as there's space outside of us there's also space within.

So contemplating on the body parts in this way can help us to be less enslaved by our bodily desires,

So our cravings for food,

Our cravings for sensual desire,

Sexual desires.

We can slowly learn to just see the body for what it is,

Take a step back,

Not be completely identified with it,

Ideally recognizing that this is the house that I live in but it is not me.

And this can then help in working to slowly lessen compulsive behaviors which can be unhelpful such as overeating or under eating,

And such as becoming a slave to our sensual desires so that we may do things which later we may regret and are not in our best interest.

So slowly we become the master of our body,

The master of our sensations instead of the slave and thus access greater freedom and liberation in this human life.

So coming back to the breath,

That air element connecting with the in-breath directly under the nostrils,

Feeling the in-breath,

The sensations of the air entering and in the out-breath,

In-breath,

Out-breath.

Slowly coming to the end of this meditation on mindfulness of the body can end by just being grateful for our body,

For all of the amazing things it does for us,

For all of these amazing organs that just function by themselves without us really having to do anything.

And for the health that rests in our physical body and supports our life.

Really this body is a miracle.

Your heart just keeps pumping,

Our lungs keep breathing without us having to consciously think about it.

Slowly coming to the end of our meditation,

You want to bring your hands to heart center and just rub the palms together creating some heat and then placing your palms over your eyes,

Resting in the darkness,

Resting in inner space and then releasing the hands.

Bring your hands to heart center.

Thank you for listening.

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Morning or evening wherever you are.

Many blessings.

You you

Reviews

Very different to my usual Vipassana but it totally works. Thank you!

What an enlightening experience!

Thank you! This was just what I was looking for