The Body Scan Meditation

Can a simple body scan meditation transform your connection with yourself? Join me, Don Thompson, as I guide you through a full-body scan meditation inspired by the teachings of Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. This episode promises to enhance your body awareness and bring a compassionate focus to each part of your being. Whether you're new to mindfulness or looking to deepen your practice, this body scan will help you become more attuned to your physical sensations, from the warmth in your left foot to the tingling in your scalp.

Throughout this guided meditation, you'll learn to hold each part of your body in mindful awareness, acknowledging sensations of pain or pleasure with a gentle, compassionate focus. Following traditional Burmese Vipassana techniques and insights from Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction, this practice will ground you in the present moment and foster a deeper connection with your physical self. Find a comfortable position, close your eyes, and embark on this journey with me to explore the profound benefits of body scan meditation.

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:26

Hi, don Thompson, Another podcast for you today, and I'd like to step us through a sort of you might say a fundamental mindfulness practice called a body scan, and I've had other podcasts about this scan and I've had other podcasts about this. But I'm going to step through this body scan meditation technique. It's a little bit different but very similar to the other ones that I've discussed, but it's very useful. A body scan, it's sort of a core mindfulness practice, you might say within the mindfulness community, certainly the way that I was taught mindfulness by my mentors, tara Brock and Jack Kornfield. So I invite you to go ahead and take a comfortable seated position, or you could lie down if you'd like. Either way is fine and sometimes for beginners, lying down might make it easier for you to access all points of your body within this exercise and to imagine them and to work with them. Once you're in a comfortable position and you feel you're in a resting position, you can go ahead and close your eyes and take a few moments to witness the breath. As you inhale, feel an expansion spreading throughout the body and as you exhale, an expansion spreading throughout the body and, as you exhale, explore a kind of a softening of the body. Why don't we do this for five or ten mindful breaths, and I'll just pause for a moment and let you step through those five breaths. Now, after you've finished your breathing, I'd like you to draw your awareness to your left foot, and I invite you to hold your awareness here on your left foot, and become curious about any sensations that might be present in this part of the body. Any sensations that you might observe, including tingling or contraction, any kind of swirling or heat or cold, or even the absence of sensation and numbness can also be noted. Now, after noting whatever is present in the left foot, I invite you to move upwards to continue this witnessing in the left ankle and, as you move through the body, be mindful of what arises in the mind as well, and compassionately note if any thoughts or emotions pull your attention away from the body. So what you want to do is come back to your point of focus, in this case the left ankle. Come back to your point of focus, pull yourself gently back. Now I invite you to continue this process by slowly moving up the entirety of the left leg until you reach the hip and then, once you reach the hip, go ahead and repeat the same process, the same type of body scan on the right leg.

Speaker 2: 4:30

Now, once you finish with your right leg body scan, the next step is to continue upwards throughout the body, noticing whatever's present, even if it's the absence of sensation in any particular area. So you want to continue up through the body to the throat, through the left hand up to the left shoulder, into the throat, followed by the right hand up to the right shoulder, back into your throat and then up to your crown, at the top of your head. And as you're doing this, again, you want to notice sensations in the body or the absence of sensations in the body. You want to hold your entire body in your awareness and you want to note whatever sensations call out to you. And you want to note whatever sensations call out to you, whether pain or pleasure. Just note these sensations. If there is pain, you can practice breathing into these areas, holding them in your open, compassionate awareness, bringing compassion to these painful areas. Now, obviously, this is not a substitute for seeking medical assistance if you need it, but it's simply a way to notice feelings in the body, of deepening our body awareness, as it is safe to do so Now, after holding the entire body in your awareness for a couple of minutes. You can slowly relax your attention as you come back to the natural rhythm of the breath. When you're ready, you can open your eyes to the world around you.

Speaker 2: 7:00

I love this practice because it grounds us in the body. It makes us aware of the body, that we're beings in the body. It makes us aware of the body, that we're beings in a body, and we should notice the feelings in the body. It's important. It's really a variation of a traditional Burmese Vipassana meditation. That's where it really comes from, and another teacher who uses this extensively is Jon Kabat-Zinn, and he uses this body scan and mindfulness-based stress reduction, and there's a variety of yogic traditions such as Yoga Nidra.

Speaker 2: 7:45

It also focuses on this type of body scan, and there are techniques of muscle relaxation that might be a little bit more active, you might say, than a body scan, but you can also explore that on your own Muscle relaxation, progressive muscle relaxation. I enjoyed stepping you through this body scan. I hope you found some benefit in it. Of course, feel free to come back to it at any time and replay this podcast. A body scan is a wonderful mindfulness technique. I can't tell you how good it is for you to feel the sensations in the body, to come back to the body and to respect and have compassion for the body. Thanks a lot and I'll talk to you again soon no-transcript.