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Tuning Into the Body with Dr Wendy Molefi- Guided Mindfulness
•NHS Practitioner Health•Season 1•Episode 1
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Learn how to tune into your body using mindfulness with Dr Wendy Molefi this #StressAwarenessMonth. Mindfulness can help you notice signs of stress earlier and deal with them better- have a go today!
Dr Wendy Molefi is a highly experienced GP with a specialist interest in women’s health and mental wellbeing. She teaches and supports fellow healthcare professionals on the merits of nurturing their own self-care and wellbeing. She also provides mindfulness courses for members of the public. For more information about Dr Molefi's mindfulness courses and wellbeing workshops, visit www.themindfulgp.com.
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NHS Practitioner Health is a mental health and addiction service for health and care professionals who are unable to access confidential treatment from local services.
This practice is called tuning into the body. It's a practice that allows us to reconnect with the body in stillness. Really, because more often than not we see the body as this object or this vehicle that transports us from A to B without paying much attention to any signals that the body might be communicating with us to alert us even of any disquiet or any disease in the body. So this practice allows us to reconnect with the body and tap into the wisdom of the body. So let us begin. So finding a comfortable posture. You can do this practice sitting on a chair, lying down, or even standing, ensuring that you're safe as always. And if it's comfortable for you, closing your eyes, but again, if it's not, just simply lowering your gaze or softening the gaze your gaze onto the ground in front of you. And perhaps begin by taking three deep breaths into the body and out of the body. Just allowing the breath to ground you in this moment, allowing the breath to reconnect you with the body. Arriving in your body. And when you're ready, bringing your awareness all the way down to your feet, becoming aware of sensations in your feet, whatever they are, just becoming curious about them. And then bringing your awareness up to your ankles, exploring sensations here, and moving up to your calves, your shin area, and up to your knees. Just noticing what you find here. And then expanding your awareness to your thighs, becoming aware of what sensations you find here. Contact with whatever you're lying on or you're sitting on or with clothes. Just exploring, and then moving on to your pelvic region, becoming aware of sensations that you find here. Then moving on to the front of the body, starting with the belly area, noticing sensations of the breath, the in breath expanding the belly, and releasing on the outbreath. And then moving on to your chest area, becoming off aware of the breath in this area, perhaps noticing a heart beating in this area, pumping blood throughout your body. Just noticing what's here. And then moving to your back, starting over your lower back, become your sensations that you find in this region, often an area where we hold a lot of tension in the lower back. Just noticing what's here, perhaps taking a few breaths into the lower back and releasing on the outbreath, moving up to the other back, the upper back, and up to your shoulders. Just noticing what sensations are in the body in this area. And then moving your awareness all the way down, both hands, all the way down to your fingers, your hands, your wrist, coming up to your lower arms, your shoulders, your upper arms, and back up to the shoulders again. Just scanning this whole part of your body and noticing sensations that you find here. Not changing anything. There might be a bit of discomfort, there might be itching, or you might not notice anything. That's also normal. And then moving up to the neck, noticing sensations that are here. Moving up to the head, to the face, to the lips, your cheeks, your nose, your eyeballs, your eye sockets, your eyebrows, the space between the eyebrows, moving up to your forehead, another area that can be strained on a day-to-day basis, taking in information or feeling the impact of stress, just noticing what you find here, moving over to your scalp, to your hair, back of the head. And then just scanning the whole body sitting here or standing here. Perhaps playing with the idea of breathing into the body from the top of the head all the way down to the bottom of your feet, and breathing out of the body from the bottom of your feet all the way up to the top of your head. Just playing with this idea of a wave of breath coming from the top, going all the way down to the to your feet, from your feet going coming all the way up to the top. Just scanning the whole body sitting here or lying here, as if the whole body is breathing. And as we come to the end of this practice, again perhaps just acknowledging your body, thanking your body for what it does on a day-to-day basis, supporting you, sustaining you, and taking the sense of appreciation to the next moments of your day. And when you're ready, opening your eyes. And just taking a few moments to check in again to notice what you find here. To notice how you feel, how the body feels.
