For this body scan you can be sitting,
Standing,
Or lying down.
So just go ahead and settle into whatever posture is comfortable.
Take a moment to feel the support of the earth coming up through whatever you're sitting,
Standing,
Or lying on.
Now we'll invite the mind and the attention into the body with three long,
Deep breaths.
As we begin this body scan we can just hold in mind our intention to engage in this practice with kindness and curiosity.
We'll begin with bringing our attention to the crown of the head,
Feeling into any sensations in the scalp.
You might feel warmth or tingling or a sense of coolness or even numbness.
Whatever you feel is fine.
We let our attention flow down through the scalp and we can imagine it flowing down through the skull and into the brain.
We'll just take a moment here and feel some gratitude for our amazing brain.
We have some sense of what our brain does for us every day and some sense of gratitude for that.
We can imagine our attention flowing down through our face,
Feeling any sensations in the skin and in the muscles.
We can invite the muscles of the face,
Especially around the eyes and in the jaws,
To relax.
We can feel gratitude toward our face,
Our eyes for allowing us to see,
Our nose for allowing us to smell,
Our lips and mouth and tongue for allowing us to speak and taste and kiss and all the things we do with our amazing mouth.
We can thank our ears for allowing us to hear.
Let's take a moment and feel gratitude for the entire head.
And we allow the attention now to flow down through the neck and throat region,
Inviting any tension in the muscles of the neck and throat to relax.
We can feel any sensations along the skin of the neck and throat,
Maybe our clothes against the skin,
Or if there's a slight breeze,
We might feel that.
Or if we just have a sense of warmth or tingling or coolness,
We can feel that as well.
We can feel any sensations along the skin of the neck and throat,
Maybe our clothes against the skin,
Or if there is a slight breeze,
We might feel that.
Or if we just have a sense of warmth or tingling or coolness,
We can feel that as well.
We feel gratitude for our neck for allowing us to bend our head in all directions.
We feel gratitude to our throat for allowing us to speak,
Allowing us to breathe,
Allowing us to swallow.
Now our attention can flow down into our upper chest and our upper back,
Inviting any excess tension in this area to relax.
We can feel into any sensations of the clothes against the skin,
Of heat or coolness or tingling.
We can thank this upper chest and upper back region for everything it does for us,
Allowing our shoulders and our arms to move,
Supporting our posture as we sit.
Just bring a simple sense of gratitude to this region.
Now we bring our attention to the lower chest and the mid back so we can feel our heart beating,
Our lungs expanding and contracting,
Our ribs expanding and contracting with the breath,
The muscles of our mid back.
We can invite the important organs and the muscles of this area to relax.
We can bring some gratitude into this area,
Reflecting on what our heart and our lungs do for us,
Reliably beating and breathing 24 hours a day so that we stay alive.
Now we bring our attention down into the abdomen and the lower back.
We begin by inviting all the muscles and organs of that region to relax.
We can imagine the blood flowing more freely to all the organs of the abdomen as the muscles relax.
We feel into the important organs of this area,
The intestines,
The kidneys,
The liver,
The uterus if you have one,
All the various organs that help us to digest food and to stay alive,
Or in the case of the uterus,
To make new life.
We can have a sense of gratitude for everything that this area and the organs in it do for us.
And our attention flows down now into the pelvic region and the seat area.
We feel into the muscles of this area and we invite them to relax.
We feel any sensations against the skin of this area.
We imagine into the organs of this area,
The lower part of the intestines,
The genitals,
The eliminative organs,
Such an important area for our life.
We can have a sense of gratitude for everything that these amazing parts of our body do for us every day.
And now we widen our attention out to our entire body.
We've just felt our way through the core of the body,
But now we also embrace our arms,
Our hands,
Our legs and feet with our attention,
This entire amazing human body.
We can just have a sense of gratitude to our entire body.
Our body may not be exactly as we'd like it,
Our health may not be perfect,
But just feeling our body,
Feeling it living and breathing,
We can tune into how amazing this body is.
And finally,
We let go of making any effort.
We simply rest,
Present to our own experience.
And now we close the meditation.
