Hello and welcome to this meditation.
In this meditation,
We'll be doing a body scan technique,
But rather than scanning the entire body,
We'll focus on directing our attention to our feet.
Anecdotally,
For many people,
The hands and feet are areas in which they're able to feel sensations a lot easier than other parts of the body.
So for this practice,
We'll focus on bringing our attention to our feet.
For this meditation,
It's advisable to take your shoes and socks off and have your bare feet on the ground if possible.
This will help you connect with the sensations of the feet a bit easier.
To get started,
Find a comfortable and upright posture with your feet firmly planted on the ground.
And take a moment to close your eyes and draw your attention inwards.
Begin to bring your spotlight of attention down to the feet and begin to notice the parts of your feet that come into contact with the ground beneath you.
If you're having a hard time feeling your feet,
One helpful question to ask yourself in your mind is,
Without looking at my feet,
How exactly do I know that I have feet?
When you ask yourself this question,
You may start to feel sensations in the feet,
Such as a feeling of warmth or a tingling sensation that reminds you that you have feet.
This inner warmth will be the gateway point for our meditation,
So start to bring more attention to the inner sensations of the feet.
Then start to draw your attention now to the heels,
Observing any sensations that may occur in both of your heels.
Start to move your attention up to feel the arches of your feet.
Again,
You may experience a warmth or a tingling or vibratory sensation occur on the bottom of your feet or your arches.
If you tend to be a bit more flat-footed,
You may experience the sensations of the floor against your feet in addition to the other sensations found in the arch.
Bring your attention now to the balls of the feet.
You can also feel the temperature of the floor or ground against the balls of your feet.
If you find that your attention has wandered away and your attention is getting stuck in different thought loops,
Simply just observe that your mind has wandered and ground yourself back down by bringing your attention back to the feet once more.
By bringing more of our focus back down to the feet,
As opposed to the head area,
Where sometimes we may feel our thoughts coming from,
We will start to ground ourselves and feel more calm and at the same time more concentrated.
Bring your attention now to the toes,
First feeling the big toes of your left foot and right foot against the ground.
In addition to feeling the bottom side of your toe,
Bring your attention up to the toenail of the big toes.
Make sure to also include the sides of the toe as well.
Now feel the entirety of the big toe,
Feeling the bottom part of the big toe,
The sides and the top.
Bring your attention over now to the second toe.
For all of the toes,
Except for the big toe,
I find it very helpful to do a scan from the base of the toe to the top part of the toe,
Where the toenail is.
And when you do these very quick scans,
You'll find that more of your attention will start to center and settle in to the toe,
Making you more able to feel the sensations here.
Once again,
Make sure to feel not only the bottom part of the second toe,
But also the sides and the top part as well.
Move your attention to the third toe.
Once again,
Not only feeling the bottom part of the toe as the toe presses against the floor,
But also the sides of your toe and the top part of your toe.
Move your attention over to the fourth toe.
Once again,
Feeling for sensations by bringing your attention down to the fourth toe in both your left and right feet.
Remember to feel all sides of your fourth toe,
The bottom,
The sides,
And the top.
Lastly,
Bring your attention to the pinky toes,
Feeling for sensations here.
Now zoom your attention out to feel the entire left foot,
All the way from the heel of the foot up to the toes.
Keep your attention more open,
Rather than fixated on a particular spot.
Doing a quick scan,
As we did when we were scanning the toes,
Can be useful to feel the entirety of the foot in this moment.
Now bring your attention to the right foot,
Feeling for sensations from the heel all the way up to the tip of the toes.
Once again,
Scanning up from the heel to the toes in a quick fashion,
If you find that helpful.
Now feel both feet planted firmly on the ground,
And feel for sensations at the same time in both feet.
Don't worry about feeling strong sensations,
But if you do feel any kind of sensations,
This will be good enough.
As we approach the end of this meditation,
Just know that as you go about your day today,
You can always come back to check in with the sensations of your feet,
And this will allow you to experience moments of mindfulness and concentration.
The great part of this technique is that no one will exactly know that you're focusing on your feet,
But you.
This can be a wonderful way to center yourself throughout your day.
Take a moment now to open your eyes,
And begin to stretch your feet out,
Wiggling your toes.
And even make circles with your feet here,
And then place your feet back down to the ground.
Take a moment and thank yourself for taking the time to practice meditation today.
Namaste
