Body Scan - An Internal Experience

Let's close our eyes.

Our everyday life seems to be quite rushed.

We are always on the clock,

There's always somewhere to get to,

Something to do,

A meeting,

A commitment.

It's like a sped up YouTube video,

Not moving at the speed of 1x but maybe at 1.

5 or 2 or 2.

5 for some of us.

Like many of the things that we are are so matter of fact and they're taught in such a speed that we don't pause and question or even understand or dig deep to understand what the real meaning of what we are being taught is.

We will explore one such topic today and the only metric we have is our current experience.

The only way to experiment,

Investigate,

Find the truth is to jettison everything that we know as memory,

As knowledge and just rely on the current observation.

It's not that we are throwing away what we know,

We're just pausing the use of what we know to see what now has in store for us.

Become aware of your body,

Whatever that means for you and try to see that there are two aspects in play here.

One is how we think our body is,

How we have perceived our body over the years by looking at the mirror or at photographs or studying anatomy.

So when I say become aware of your body,

You might be tempted to visualize in your mind what your body is looking like.

Maybe you're on a chair,

Maybe on the floor,

Maybe you'll see that your legs are crossed or they're going down from the chair,

The way your shoulders are,

The way your spine is,

The way your head is,

Your back,

Your belly or maybe you're visualizing the whole thing at one go.

So that is one aspect that could be at play here and then there is the felt sense of our body,

That is how we feel our body from the inside so to speak.

The visualization is more an external view of our body but the felt sense is the internal sense of our body and the internal sense is comprised of sensations.

For example,

Whether you're on the floor or the chair,

Your feet are touching the chair or the ground in some way and when I'm using different body parts,

They are only for communication perspective.

The moment you hear them,

They should not trigger any visualization,

They are only to guide your attention so that I can communicate.

So when we are exploring the internal sense,

The external visualization should be paused.

So let's come back to our feet.

I'm sure you can sense your feet,

Maybe your attention is toggling back and forth between your right foot and the left foot.

I don't think there's a way to focus or to become aware of both the feet at the same time.

That's how narrow our field of focus is.

So pick a foot and feel that foot and feel the sensations more than the foot.

There's some movement,

There's something as if a light pin is very lightly being touched to our skin so as to not cause any pain but just to accentuate the sensations.

So right now because we are focusing on our sensations in a particular part that those sensations are accentuated.

That's a sensation,

That's the bodily sensations,

That's how we feel from inside,

That's how we feel our body or a part of our body from the inside.

And notice if you notice any difference in the first aspect and the second aspect,

That is,

The external view of your foot that is more HD quality,

Very sharp image.

This is what a foot is.

There are toes depending on which foot you are visualizing.

The big toe is on the right or the left.

If you were to draw your foot,

That's how you would draw,

Sharp,

Precise.

And now pause this aspect and let's go back to how we feel our foot from the inside.

Is there a sharp image or is it just a cloud that is moving around depending on what particular part of the foot you're focused on?

Maybe the big toe,

Maybe the arch of your foot,

Maybe the heel or maybe the whole foot in a more zoomed out fashion.

And the more you are zoomed out,

The bigger the cloud of these sensations get.

And it's like a cloud,

The more anyone looks at it,

They try to find a pattern and everyone's pattern of recognition is different.

So we are not interested in the contour,

We are not interested in what this cloud looks like,

We don't want to encapsulate it in a shape,

We want to distinguish between what our felt sense is and feels like versus what we are accustomed to.

And to be honest,

What matters to us more is how we feel,

That is the internal sense of our body.

If we are in pain,

Maybe we have a toothache or a knee pain,

The external appearance looks just like any other external appearance of our knee,

But the pain is an internal experience and that's what captures our attention.

It becomes evident in times of pain that what matters to us is the internal experience of our body more than the external.

Although when we are healthy and pain-free,

We pretend to care more about the external experience than the internal experience.

Like if you are having a tummy ache or you feel bloated,

You may try to find something that looks bigger in your belly,

But nothing can capture the way you feel inside.

And this observation is completely available to us at all times.

That is the distinction between the external appearance and the internal appearance or the superimposition of the external appearance on our internal experience.

As if they go hand in hand.

Right now,

With your eyes closed,

There is no hand in hand to go.

There is only the internal experience.

And the more we stay with our internal,

Which is a truer and a more relevant and more close to heart experience for us,

We may realize that we might be holding on to a lot of tightness,

Not that we need to do anything about our tightness.

It's just like what I said earlier,

The moment you focus your attention on the sensations,

They become accentuated and that observation by itself takes care of any tension that might be residing in the body.

And this memory is deeply instilled in us.

When we go into deep sleep,

We let go of all the tensions automatically.

That's why our body craves deep sleep,

Because it craves for that freeness,

The relaxedness.

And it's always tending to reaching there.

So we don't have to do anything to reach there.

We just have to observe it.

We have to facilitate it by removing the superimposition.

And this superimposition is very subconscious.

It's very unconscious too,

Because we never had to sit down and feel our body from the inside.

Nobody ever taught us to feel the body from inside.

It's out of force of habit.

If I asked you to take your attention to your left shoulder,

We might visualize it.

We might find the sensation and then overlay the visualization,

Just to make sure we are at the right spot,

As if we need to familiarize ourselves with our left shoulder that we have lived with all our lives.

And the reason the whole exploration is important is all the most important things.

For example,

How we feel about a certain person,

How we feel about what we are working on,

How we feel about the food we are about to eat,

How we feel about an important purchase we are going to make,

How we feel about the work we are doing,

How we feel or how someone else is feeling in our presence,

Is felt by us as an internal experience,

The gut feel,

Intuition.

And the more we are in the external appearance,

The more out of tune we are with our internal experience.

And we miss many cues and signs that our body is giving us,

Or nature is giving us through our body,

Not to mention the hints about well-being or dis-ease in the body is also communicated through this internal experience.

Whether we are full while eating or not,

Whether we should eat some or not,

Whether we should drink our water or not.

All these are cues that our body is providing as internal experience.

But we are in a rush.

That's what society has taught us to not,

I don't think it has taught us to not pause,

It has only taught us to rush.

That doesn't mean we can't pause.

And this pausing is not for someone else.

There's something called mirroring neurons,

Through which our neurons mirror what other neurons are going through.

So when we are interacting with someone,

And if they are in pain,

We can feel their pain through our mirroring neurons.

But we don't feel them in our minds,

We feel them in our body as sensations.

We can connect to them,

Connect with them at a deeper level,

If we are in tune.

Even when we are at work,

What we should do and what we should not do while solving a problem,

What is needed,

What is not needed.

The clarity comes as sensations,

As feelings,

And not the surface level feelings.

I'm talking about these visceral feelings that demonstrate clarity,

Or concern,

Or lack of clarity.

It's like a dance.

Nature as the leader is nudging us as followers in a particular direction.

It's like nature is holding our hands and just faintly tugging,

Taking us in a different direction,

If we can feel that tug.

Thank you.