Welcome to session six,
Body scan for sleep.
We are gonna try a slightly different technique in this session today.
This is a particularly good one to do before bed.
It can make you feel tired and make you feel like you're ready to drop off to sleep.
So it's best practice lying down in bed ideally,
But some people also like to use the body scan as their primary source of meditation and if you really enjoy today's session feel free to practice this technique for your daily practice.
All you would need to change is that you would need to do it sitting up rather than lying down in bed.
So to begin with ideally lying down,
Get comfortable,
Gently close your eyes,
Notice any sounds that might be present at the moment.
Feel the heaviness of your body,
The sensation of gravity pressing you into your bed and then we're gently going to scan through our bodies starting at the top of the head and working our way down to our toes.
When you're scanning through each part of the body it doesn't matter what sensation you feel there,
It could be heat,
Pressure,
Tightness,
A feeling of vibration,
Whatever it is that's absolutely fine.
The key thing is just to accept and acknowledge it and then move on to the next part of the body.
So start by scanning the top of your skull and move on to your ears,
See if there's any sensations present in your forehead,
In your brow,
Your eye sockets,
Your nose,
Focus on scanning the sensations at the mouth,
In the tongue,
The jaw and scan down through the neck,
Working your way out to both of your shoulders and then from the top of your shoulders scanning through your upper arm down towards the elbows,
Seeing what sensations are present there and then from the elbows work your way through the forearms to your hands and then work your way through your fingers one at a time,
Starting at the thumbs and then working your way to your little finger and see if you can really see how precisely you can feel any sensations that may or may not be present in each of the fingers before working your way up to the shoulders and then we're going to go down through the torso,
So scanning down through the upper chest,
Stomach,
The lower abdominal region down to the base of the body and working your way through your thighs until you reach your knees and from your knees scanning down through your calves,
Your ankles until you reach the balls of your feet and then scanning your way down towards your toes and again like each of the fingers here do each of your toes one by one and then just take a second to check in with your body as a whole,
See if you can feel it as one unified entity once again and now we're gonna scan back up towards the head from our toes scanning for any sensations like we did on the way down,
However this time when you scan through each part of the body give them permission to switch off,
It's as if you're turning off each of the muscles as you scan through each section of the body,
So starting at your toes one by one scanning through giving each permission to just switch off and then scan through the foot the balls of the feet and then from the balls of the feet work your way through the ankles switching off your calves so you reach your knees and then from the knees working your way up through your thighs switching off the muscles in your thighs as you scan through them and then starting at the base of your body scanning up through your lower abdominal region switching off the muscles there through your stomach to your upper chest switching them off as you go till you reach your shoulders and then start working your way down from your shoulders through your upper arm till you reach your elbows giving your forearms permission to switch off as you scan through to the hands and switching off the hands and switching off each of the fingers as you scan through them one by one and then return to the neck scanning up through to the jaw relaxing all the muscles in your jaw switching off the mouth and the tongue switching off the eye sockets and scanning through your forehead completely relaxing it scanning your ears the back of your head and then reaching the top of your head and taking a moment to feel the body as a unified entity once again see how it feels just giving it permission to completely relax and completely switch off at this stage you might feel drowsy and if that's the case it would be a good time to finish the meditation however you can continue doing this indefinitely scanning down from the head to the toes and back again and till you feel relaxed enough to drop off to sleep it's certainly one that I enjoy most nights before I go to bed so with that sleep well or enjoy your day
