Full Body Scan For Relaxation & Heightened Awareness

Hello and welcome to this guided body scan meditation.

This is valuable at any point during the day but may be especially useful before sleep because it offers complete relaxation of the body.

It would be beneficial if you could lie down on a mat or on your bed with your arms facing upwards by your side with your head on a small cushion.

This can be on the floor or on a mat or on your mattress.

Now this meditation has two real benefits.

The first is the really valuable tool for complete relaxation and the second is that it enhances your awareness in relation to the constant ebb and flow of your internal experience thus giving nature into impermanence so it's therapeutic in nature.

So just some advice if any thoughts or distractions arise during this practice that's completely fine.

With relaxation merely observe and gently escort your attention back to where you were and if any point you can you feel you can't connect with a specific part of the body then it's helpful to ask yourself the question how do I know it's there?

By asking this this somehow instantaneously aligns us closer with the body part.

So now we're ready let's begin the meditation.

I want you to first spend a few moments settling your mind in the present moment releasing all sensations,

Mental images,

Thoughts and so on by focusing on the effortless natural movements of your breath.

Honing in on the moment now seeing if we can follow the breath cycles as we breathe in and then as we breathe out and if there are any distractions and so forth that's fine simply remind ourselves to release those and focus on our breathing.

So becoming present with the ground,

The contact between your body and the surface,

Really having an overall sense of being here and now.

So whilst maintaining natural and effortless breathing I want to see if you can focus all your attention now in your toes as if your mind takes up sole residence in your toes.

May be helpful to give them a slight wiggle.

Now we're seeing if we can observe any sensations that are occurring here.

Noticing any feelings of warmth or coolness or moisture or dryness in relation to our toes perhaps as they come into contact with our socks or the air.

Seeing if we can simply be with our toes in this moment.

Now gently scan downwards to the ball of your feet,

Merely observing sensations then down towards your instep,

Observing any sensations that are occurring here and it's as if on our out breaths we're relaxing this part of the body so we're breathing in relaxation on our breath.

Moving attention now towards the heels,

Noticing the sensations caused by the contact with our heels and the surface,

Perhaps feelings of warmth or moisture that this pressure is creating.

Then gently move awareness to our lower legs,

First our calves,

These large areas of muscle in which we usually feel and hold attention.

See if we can breathe into this area of the body.

Just picking up on any sensations that occur without labelling pleasurable or displeasureable.

Just simply observing what's there,

Any tingling.

See if we can breathe into this area of the body and perhaps go deeper beneath the surface.

See if we can observe the blood pumping around.

Then as if on the out breath we relax even the bones themselves.

Now moving awareness onto our shins,

The top of our lower legs and gently scanning upwards,

Taking account of every single sensation towards our knees.

Our knees often do so much bending and hold so much tension.

We're gently with compassionate sense just observing our knees and allowing them to relax.

Noticing any sensations that arise here,

Perhaps there's some warmth or coolness.

Perhaps we can notice the surface of our skin coming into contact with our clothes.

And see if we can breathe into our knees allowing them this opportunity to completely relax and heal.

Then you can move your awareness to the back of our thighs as we lay here these huge areas of muscle completely loose and relaxed.

And so we're just picking up on any sensations.

Scanning this whole area of the back of our thighs simultaneously the left and the right leg starting from the bottom gently scanning upwards just observing some areas of warmth in relation to the surface.

Then we move to the front of our thighs,

Top of our legs.

As we exhale breathing into this part of the body,

Perhaps going deeper from the surface of our skin beneath to see if we can observe the blood pumping around our body perhaps even relaxing the bones themselves.

Then we gently move up our thighs towards our hips just noticing how they hang here in this moment in complete relaxation.

And now pay attention,

Special attention,

As if we're putting our whole mind in our lower backs and see if we can with awareness climb our backs all the way up the vertebrae just gently observing any sensations that are occurring here perhaps the way our backs arched the different areas of coolness or dryness or heat Just climbing our vertebrae all the way up to the back of our shoulders.

Now our shoulders usually carry the weight of the world and all our grief so here it's an opportunity to completely breathe out into our shoulders a relaxation a sense of healing and we do so by also noticing what's happening with our shoulders right now.

Any tightness or tension pressure points and we'll see as we observe things change.

Naturally we'll move from one slight sensation to the next to the next to the next.

So now with our shoulders have full tender care and attention now go back down to the stomach observe our stomachs rising and falling with our breathing relaxing the organs and going beneath the surface and scanning awareness up towards our chest my rib cage just gently observing the rise and fall of our lungs but then all the different sensations that that creates the knock-on effects of breathing noticing any warmth so then gently move up back towards our shoulders and this time gently scan down our arms on the top of our arms to our elbows and from our elbows to our hands and then noticing any sensations that occur here usually feelings of moisture or coolness and moving towards our fingers remember to ask yourself the question how do I know this body parts here if you cannot feel anything it's fairly common to notice a tingling sensation in our fingertips we can observe the blood being pumped around this part of the body so now as we're relaxed my body we now move up awareness towards our necks if we have the whole volume of our neck gently going upwards towards our chin and then our jaws our jaw see if we can relax our jaw by simply observing what's occurring here noticing our mouths in the position of our tongue picking up on all the experiences of moisture of heat and relaxing the bottom half of our face then observing the nose and our eyes relaxing our eye sockets allowing our face to be in complete neutral pose relaxing all the facial muscles so now focus back on your breathing we've done a full body scan started with our breathing and now we're back with our breathing but this time get an overall sense of the full body as we lay here as if each in breath were breathing fully with the body as if the air is coming from our feet all the way up and leaving out of the crown of our heads so I'd like you to end the meditation now just acclimatize yourself with the present moment may be helpful to lay on your side and get up slowly with your knees and just taking a few moments to readjust to your surroundings then perhaps with the attitude of taking note of our internal experience throughout the day and seeing if we can capture how our internal experience meets our outer realities or how our outer realities shape our internal experience thanks for listening wish you all a good day