7-Day New Year's Practice: Day 5 Mindful Body Awareness

Hello and welcome to day five of seven days of guided meditation.

This is Salima and I'm so happy you're here today.

In today's session,

I'm going to take us through a different kind of observing and it is helpful for us when we're practicing this to have some instruction on what to do when the mind gets busy and leaves what we're doing.

So if you haven't listened to day zero,

Which is the instructions,

I would recommend definitely listening to day zero and then coming back and listening to this one.

So to begin,

I'll start off with a little bit of an introduction on what we're doing today.

Humans have been meditating for centuries and centuries and we haven't really graduated away from the idea that when we meditate,

We have to keep our mind still and focused on something.

And so this is a bit of a problem,

Especially in our modern day because our modern society or culture is very busy and we have a lot of things that are calling for our attention all the time.

We're constantly being bombarded with advertising and with sounds coming out of our phones and our computers.

So what happens when we have 10 tabs open on our browser,

We start to shorten our attention span and we start looking for things to keep our mind busy,

Even when we're not really engaged in any kind of activity that requires our attention.

And all of a sudden we have some free time and what happens,

We go to reach for our phone or we go to Google something or we go to keep ourselves busy.

So we don't really value our free time,

Even though we say that we want more.

We often find that we're trying to fill it with busy-minded stuff.

So in this practice,

One of the things to look for is to notice when the mind goes off to think.

And instead of regarding that as a problem,

Let's regard that as a little victory,

An opportunity for us to get to know what this mind is doing.

So in our previous session,

If you listened to the Shocker Clearing at the end of the session,

I mentioned that we're here for a bigger purpose than just to have a happy,

Easygoing life and to be successful at things.

And we found that even when we reach the height of success,

If we've ever accomplished something and we've achieved something that's better than even we could have imagined,

We might still notice that there's a feeling of emptiness up there,

That there's a feeling of still haven't gotten it.

I still need to do more or to experience more or to achieve more or to amass more.

And so trying to acquire things isn't going to help us if we're still just doing what we did before.

We want to do something different.

So this is an opportunity to start observing the mind and seeing the natural movements of the mind while we're practicing observing this body.

With any kind of meditation,

It's important to be observing something internally.

And so this means observing something that's with us all the time.

So what's with us all the time?

Well,

This body's here all the time.

No matter what we do,

We can't really divorce ourselves from this body for any prolonged period of time.

And so this body is an opportunity for us to observe what's going on with us.

So this body is a place for us to observe.

The other thing that's with us all the time is this mind.

This mind or the heart,

We can put them together.

So thoughts and feelings are with us all the time.

We can't really divorce ourselves from those things.

They come up and they feel like they're who we are.

And so what we want to do in any meditation is we want to get really good at observing the things that we believe to be us,

The things that are with us all the time.

And that includes this body and this mind or this heart and mind.

So today we're going to take a look at the body and I'm going to guide us through a very simple and very easy body scan.

And it's not for the purposes of just healing or well-being or calmness,

But it's also for the purposes of generating a more powerful mind,

A mind that's able to observe what it's doing as it's doing it.

So when the mind is with the body scan,

Know that the mind is with the body scan.

If the mind is conjuring an image of a particular body part,

Seeing a picture of an elbow or a head or a chin or a knee or something,

Then we know that the mind is conjuring or creating an image.

If the mind is going into or slipping into a part of the body and feeling that part of the body,

Feeling the foot or really feeling the hand or feeling the left hip,

Then we know that the mind is feeling.

It's feeling that part of the body.

So we know what the mind is doing.

Now if the mind leaves and goes to think about something,

To daydream,

To remember something,

To plan something,

To worry about something,

To enjoy something,

Whatever else it does other than the body scan,

We know that the mind has gone to do that.

So if it goes off to think,

We don't care what it's thinking about,

We just know that it's thinking or that it had a thought.

We're largely not going to be able to know that it's thinking while it's thinking.

We'll know after the thought or in the middle of a story,

We'll wake up to the fact that the mind had gone off to think.

So we just know it.

We don't try and fix it or get involved with it or analyze it or why did my mind do this or I'm not a good meditator.

We don't create a big story out of it.

We just know that that's what the mind did and then we come back to what it is that we're doing in terms of our meditation.

So we call this body scan an object.

It's the object of our observation and we are the subject or the observation,

The observing part of us is the subject and that body is the object.

So to begin,

Allow yourself to be in a position that feels comfortable for you with your torso upright.

Feel free to take a deep breath and lengthen the spine if you feel like you want to.

Bring the shoulders all the way up towards the ears.

And on the exhale,

Release the spine,

Release the shoulders,

Allowing everything to feel at ease.

If you're sitting with your feet flat on the floor,

Just notice that support.

If you're sitting cross-legged,

Notice the support under the seat of the body.

It's taking a moment to become aware of this body.

We might become aware that this body is breathing.

We might become aware that this body is blinking.

So we just know that.

And we'll start our body scan at the top of the head,

Just sensing the top of the head.

We might get a picture,

Just feeling the scalp.

And because we have such busy minds,

We're going to go through our body scan at an appropriate pace for a mind that doesn't want to get sleepy.

So we want to keep our mind alert enough.

And so in order to do that,

We go through this body scan at a pace that feels like an alert pace.

So bringing our awareness to the forehead,

The eyes,

Noticing if there's blinking or if the eyes are closed,

The nose,

The cheeks,

The lips,

The tongue and the mouth.

Notice if it's still or if it's moving.

The ears,

The back of the head,

The back of the neck,

Throat,

Shoulders,

The upper arms,

Elbows,

Forearms,

The wrists,

The hands.

Bringing the awareness to the top of the spine and the back of the neck,

The spine and the upper back between the shoulder blades,

The middle of the back,

The lower back and the tailbone and the back,

The upper chest,

The rib cage,

Noticing any movement in the rib cage,

The belly,

Noticing any movement here.

The hips,

The space between the hips,

The bottom,

The upper legs,

Knees,

The lower legs,

The ankles and the feet.

Feel free to take a deep breath and on your exhale just feel the support of the seat underneath you.

Notice the posture that this body's in.

We're going to go through the body again and we can do it in a more general way.

Starting at the top of the head,

The face,

The whole head,

The neck,

The back and the spine,

The shoulders,

The arms,

The hands,

The chest,

The abdomen,

The hips and pelvis,

The bottom,

The legs and the feet.

Give us a little bit of time to practice a body scan on our own without the voice guiding you.

Just allow whichever way feels comfortable.

If you want to take the body in smaller parts or larger parts,

It's up to you,

But we'll spend about a minute quietly,

Allow yourself to notice when the mind is with the body and when the mind leaves the body.

Later on.

And wherever you are,

Take a deep breath.

Feel this body sitting.

This body scan is important to learn to do on your own,

So feel free to listen to this recording as many times as you wish.

But let it be something that you're tasking yourself with,

Practicing on your own.

If you like this body scan,

Then try and do it on your own without the voice guiding you.

And you'll find that your concentration,

Which means the ability to see what the mind is doing,

Where the attention is going,

Will start to increase.

Okay,

So feel free to,

If you wish,

Bring your hands,

Palms together,

Thumbs up to the chest,

Letting the words just resonate with you as they do.

May we all be happy,

May we all be peaceful,

May we all be free from suffering,

And may all beings be happy.

May all beings be peaceful,

May all beings be free from suffering,

And may all beings near or far,

Large or small,

Seen or unseen,

Known or unknown,

May each and every being share in and benefit from the merits of our meditation together.

Thank you again for joining,

And I hope to have you join again tomorrow for Day 6.

And I wish you a beautiful day.

Namaste.