Body Scan - Guided Meditation

A 10 minute guided meditation focused on deeply connecting to the body.  This meditation is particularly helpful in calming the mind and preparing for sleep.

Barbara Newell is a mindfulness and meditation. For over 12 years, she trained and taught as a Buddhist nun in Plum Village in France under Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. During that time, she not only mastered her skills, but had the opportunity to teach throughout the world as part of ongoing retreats.

Barbara left monastic life and returned to the United States in 2015 with a mission to bring the knowledge and experience she had gained to a wider audience.  Since then, she has worked with numerous other mindfulness experts including Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield.

Barbara brings a unique perspective to mindfulness and meditation, as she was an accomplished lawyer in Washington, DC prior to her monastic life.  She understands the stresses and challenges of modern life and can provide practical advice and guidance on how to successfully integrate techniques of mindfulness into a busy schedule.

Visit barbaranewell.com for more resources.  Also Barbara offers free initial consultations which can be booked here.

Transcript

speaker 0:   0:00
So this is a guided practice of bringing the mind's attention to sensations in various places in the body in the present moment. And as you come into it, you may like to keep in mind that we're not striving to suppress the thinking mind or force it to stay focused on the body. We're also not trying to make these places relax if they're not ready to. We're simply turning the attention toward how it feels in these places of the body. Whenever we become aware that we've drifted off and thought, we simply acknowledge that without judgment and bring your attention back to whatever area of the body this recording is connecting to at that moment. So finding a comfortable position now, mother sitting, standing or lying down, taking some moments to connect with your usual preferred anchor to the present moment. Such a cz, your breath in and out, or perhaps awareness of sounds coming and going. I'm just with a friendly curiosity, now becoming aware of sensations in your two feet, and if in this place or other places in the body you don't notice much or even any sensation, that's okay. It's normal, just turning toward and being open to any sensations that are present in your feet, perhaps sensations of pressure. Where your feet, maybe meeting the floor texture of a sock or a shoe, carpet or hard floor or any other surface they're resting on. Just noticing whether the sensation is neutral, perhaps pleasant or more unpleasant. Just breathing with the sensations, bringing the attention now to the lower legs, taking a few breaths as you open to receive neutral, pleasant or unpleasant sensation in the lower legs, unlike wise with the knees. If there are thoughts coming in, judgments are worries or any other thoughts, just acknowledging them and bringing the attention right back to the sensations in this moment, the thighs. This is just how it is in this moment, the buttocks and sit bones coming into the back body. Now the sacrum at the base of the spine, the lower back, unpleasant, neutral, pleasant, the middle, an upper back, perhaps noticing how the breath in and out effects the sensations here. Expansion, contraction, bringing this kind, interested curiosity to the shoulders and how it is in the shoulders, what it feels like on the skin and inside the shoulders, bringing the attention to the upper arms, the elbows, the forearms and the rests and sensing now into the hands. This is an area where it's often easy to feel sensations if we don't feel much sensation in other places. The skin is often quite sensitive on the hands, noticing the texture of what they're in contact with. Temperature pool Warm perhaps different areas of the hands that are cooler or warmer than other areas and sensing inside the hands. If you notice any tingling or posting if there's pain or discomfort or tension, acknowledging that very simply, or perhaps it's neutral or there's a pleasant sensation inside the hands alive nous softness, pretty thing and coming back through the arms now through the shoulders to the back of the neck. Perhaps you noticed some hair brushing against the neck for Coulier flowing or warm air. The scalp on the head, sensations on the skin of the face, sensations in the eyes in the nose, aware of the air, coming into the nostrils, perhaps a bit cooler and drier as it comes in warmer on the exhale sensations in the jaw and inside of the mouth inside the throat. Sensing now into the breadth of the chest from the center of the sternum, all the way out to the creases where the chest meets the shoulders, just observing the movement of the chest with the in breath on the out breath, feeling it from the inside on, bringing attention now to sensations in the belly area, where we might often be unaware until something's really a problem and causing pain. Taking these moments now to sense into the stomach if it feels heavy with food or perhaps light, empty, even hungry, if it feels tight, are soft sensing now into the pelvic basin and the organs there and threw down to the perineum in the tailbone. Pleasant, neutral, unpleasant greeting the different sensations equally with this friendliness, this allowing and opening now to the field of sensations of the body as a whole as you breathe in. And now you may find that it is enjoyable just to be in touch with the sensations, even the ones that are less president. That sense of connection of wholeness is itself pleasant, unceasing. Now any active exploration and simply enjoying resting in this field of awareness, full presence, mind and body together. Thank you for taking the time to do this practice