JKZ - Body Scan

 From the Covid mitigation retreat video #15

let's take a few moments to just settle

into things exactly as they are for you now, wherever you are in the world.

And I'd like to invite you to actually bring your awareness into your body. And we'll do a relatively brief by my standards body scan.

The first foundation of mindfulness in the classical tradition is uh is the body. And we've been emphasizing over

the course of these three weeks how important it is to tune back into the body because all of our emotional re reactivity and all of our thoughts are

really in response to feelings in the body to sensations in the body that actually make us contract or when we're

fearful or in one way or another um release certain kinds of thoughts and

emotions that can imprison us. Uh and as we've been using the metaphor,

have us in some sense lose our minds when just at the moment where we most need to collect and ground ourselves and stabilize things.

So um just tuning into the whole body sitting here breathing. And if you want to do

this lying down or stretched out in a certain way on bed or on a couch or wherever you're sitting, you're welcome to do that. I'm going to stay sitting.

Um but uh as you know usually we do the body scans lying down in what's called

the you know the shivasana uh in the yoga tradition

and it's all about um waking up in the present moment.

So although it's called the corpse pose in yoga, it's not about dying

so much as it is about liberating ourselves from the past and from the future and thus truly

connecting as if for the first time and for this moment. Of course, it always is the first time uh with the present moment and the body

is the premier place to connect because the body is only in the present moment.

Just like the trees and the you know uh all the plant life out outside

is only here in this moment. of now.

So let's feel the whole body whether it's day or night in your time zone and just get a sense of

the whole body sitting here or lying here including the envelope of the skin

and including the breath as it comes into the body and out from the body.

and dropping into awareness.

And now let's see if we can um tune our attention or direct our attention

to the to our feet and feature them center stage in the field of awareness for the for the moment.

We did this uh maybe a week or so ago, not as part of an extended body scan,

but to just see if we could put our minds in our feet when we wake up in the morning or in our hands. So, for now, just

tuning into the feet. And we'll do both feet together and seeing if you can actually without

wiggling them feel your your big toes and all of your toes,

whatever sensations might be present. And if you can't feel anything, then simply be aware of

not feeling anything or dullness or numbness or it's all okay because it's not about the toes. It's about awareness.

And then see if you can let that awareness spill out from your toes until it includes the uh the whole of the

soul, the soles of your feet, the bottoms of your feet and the heels

and just feeling whatever sensations are here to be felt or no sensations or dullness or it's all

okay. We have to welcome that out for whatever experience brings to us.

And we're not hunting or searching for anything. We're just letting the sensations come to us and register in our own awareness.

And now just allow the awareness to holding

the ankles, both feet. As I do it, I can feel a whole universe of different sensations, vibrations,

including, of course, the fact that my feet are in contact with the floor. So that's part of it.

And then let's just continue to uh breathe with the feet.

Breathing into the feet. Breathing out from the feet through your nose if at all possible

with your mouth closed and just letting the breath do itself.

So you're not forcing or pushing or pulling or deep breathing or anything like that, but just you're breathing with the sensations

of both of your feet and ankles in awareness.

And when you're ready, then let's intentionally take a slower, deeper breath in

and breathe it down into the feet as if you could just direct the breath right into your feet.

And then on the outbreath, just letting go of your feet in your mind's eye.

Just let them be as they are as we redirect or move our attention into the lower legs.

And just feeling whatever is here to be felt in the lower legs.

and breathing with whatever is here to be found,

including dullness, numbness, a difference between the the two legs

doesn't matter. We're just holding it in awareness as it is without judging any of it.

But being really intimate with the sensations after all, it's your body.

These these regions of the body that we will be visiting are all important.

And when you're ready on an outreath, why don't you just invite this region of

your body to dissolve as well in your mind's eye to just be as it is

as we move into the region of the knees and just feeling whatever is here to be

felt in this in these amazing joints.

And of course there are thousands of us together doing this. So everybody's body's different.

10 minutesYou may have uh had multiple surgeries.

You may have implants of knees or hips or and you may have had all sorts of uh

losses of one kind or another in the body.

And this practice is one that just invites us to hold the whole of it in awareness with tremendous appreciation for the body that we have.

The body that is as it is right now and to whatever degree possible making

friends with it no matter what it's been through, no matter what its condition.

Some of you may be pregnant and in that sense I mean it's a whole other dimension of adventuring in the body skin

and so each one of us is basically connecting in the deepest of ways with our own body as it is.

So when you're ready let's take a deep slow deep more intentional breath into the knees.

Feeling whatever is here to be felt. And then letting go of the knees in our

mind's eye and moving into the the thighs, the the upper legs.

and experiencing the whole universe of sensations between the knees and the and the hips and the groin

on the surface deep right down to the femurss, the longest bones in the body.

And just experiencing whatever is here to be felt now, however it is with your body.

breathing into it, breathing out from it.

And when you're ready on an out breath, just watching as this region of your body dissolves in your mind's eye

as we move our attention into the pelvis

and bringing awareness to the entirety of the pelvic basin, the hips,

the groin, the genitals, the buttocks,

the entirety of the uh bottom of the uh torso.

And here we may even feel the breath in a more vivid way bottoming out in the pelvic basin.

And just resting in awareness of whatever is arising in the form of sensations

that may always as with the body and as with everything on occasion be pleasant on occasion be unpleasant.

you know h high degree of discomfort sometimes we experience in the body and often we

don't notice it at all. So it's neither pleasant nor unpleasant. And in this moment just resting in the pelvic basin

with full awareness as we find it as it is.

And then on an out breath here too, just letting it go, letting it be

as we move now into the region of the uh lower back and uh the belly. So, we'll just come up

through the entire thickness of the torso and just experiencing the um the the the

lower back and the belly and the entirey of your uh abdomen and

the sides and all of the organ systems that uh are

housed here in the lower torso below the diaphragm and just breathing with whatever

sensations are here or lack of sensation or dullness and resting in awareness. Riding on the

waves of each inb breath and out breath, letting the breath just do itself except

for those deeper breaths right before we leave this region.

So this is the center of gravity of your body. And martial artists and opera singers and uh

musicians who play uh wind instruments develop a tremendous

um intimacy with this region of the body.

Because so much energy can make its way out of this region of

the body when we cultivate that kind of intimacy with what our lower torso, our abdomen and lower back are capable of when working together.

And so when you're ready, here too.

Breathing in a little bit more intentionally and deeply and feeling the abdomen expand, the belly just balloon

out in all directions, not just towards the front. And let it reach its maximum.

And maybe just resting here for a moment with the inb breath at its maximum.

And then on an upra just letting it go

as we let go of this region of the body and move into the region of the upper

back and the rib cage, the upper torso, everything above the diaphragm,

including uh the shoulder blades and back hanging off the rib cage.

And uh the musculature of the chest and the breasts,

the collar bones right up to the shoulders.

and just embracing the entirety of your upper torso, chest, and upper back in

full awareness and listening, attending very very carefully.

Maybe you can even feel the the heart beating.

But simply feeling whatever it is that you do feel any and all sensations from wherever in

this region of the uh rib cage housing the heart and the lungs and the great vessels

including the u way the rib cage itself expands on the inb breast and uh contracts a little on nicha.

And then when you're ready here too, let's take a slow, deep, more intentional breath in now and really fill up the lungs and fill up the rib

cage. Let it become as big as it wants to be. Not just in front, but in the sides and in back.

And when you're ready, slowly letting it just wash out.

And as we do that, let's bring our attention into our hands

and fingers and feeling the uh tips of the thumbs

and the thumbs and the tips of the fingers and the fingers and the spaces in between the fingers and thumbs.

Again, any and all sensations and noticing if the sensations in the hands are uh a little bit more vivid

perhaps than the sensations in u your belly or the small of your back

because the uh nerve endings in the in the hands, the sensory nerve endings are

like extremely um numerous for obvious reasons. reason so

we can touch the world and be touched by the world through our hands in ways that have very high sensitivity.

So feeling what's here to be felt in the fingers and thumbs

and then also the palms of the hands and the backs of the hands and the wrists.

And maybe here too in the wrist picking up on the pulsations in the radial arteries

directly from the heart beats and allowing our awareness to expand out

into the um forearms, the elbows, the upper arms, the armpits.

And once again the shoulders and just embracing the entirety of both

arms in awareness and the beauty of your hands, the miracle of your hands such as they

And when you're ready, let's take a slow, deep, more intentional breath in right down

uh into the uh arms and all the way out to the tips of the fing. fingers and

thumbs right through the hands and wrists and forearms.

And then on an outreath just once again letting go of both hands, both arms,

shoulders, resting, resting, resting in awareness.

And then bringing our attention into the region of the neck and the cervical vertebrae

holding up the head and and the the whole of the neck including the u

the larynx the the voice box the trachea and the esophagus that

descend. and through the neck and just breathing with whatever sens

sensations are here to be felt in this region.

Often have a lot of stress and tension in the neck and the neck muscles.

We're not trying to get rid of anything but to just experience whatever it is that we're here without here that we're feeling.

And also to marvel at the fact that we can actually move air across the the voice box across the larynx from the

lungs and as I'm doing right now with my mouth and my tongue moving the air across the larynx in ways that actually

create speech along with the tongue and the lips and the mouth.

I mean that is surely totally miraculous.

And so holding the entirety of your neck in awareness at the moment, any and all sensations.

And when you're ready, letting go here too. Just letting the neck be as it is.

And we've moved now all the way from the bottoms of the feet and and also from the fingers and thumbs and the arms all the way up to uh the head.

And so let's bring awareness to the the entirety of the head for a moment.

Sitting here lying here.

And let's begin by focusing in on the jaw, the lower jaw and the chin. And just picking up on whatever sensations

or lack of sensations are available for us to recognize, experience,

and feeling any and all sensations in the lower jaw

and then in the um in the lips.

And here too enormous number of sensory nerve endings in the lips as well as in the mouth and the tongue.

Experiencing whatever sensations are here in the mouth, the roof of the mouth all the way back into the throat.

And then uh the region above the uh upper lip and below the nose.

And maybe feeling the air moving in and out of the nostrils

and experiencing the nose and whatever smells or aromomas might be available at the present moment.

including maybe if you're in the northern

hemisphere, a sort of sense of spring being in the air that we're breathing in. And if you're in the southern

hemisphere, maybe a sense of fall being in the air, as we say.

And if you're in the equatorial region, then just uh however it is with the air depending on the time of day

and just letting our awareness expand around the nose uh to include the uh the

cheeks and the eyes.

If your eyes are closed, the the eye lids being closed and the eyebrows

and the temples experiencing any and all sensations in this region of the face.

And then let's also include the sense of hearing as we've seen at other moments like we

don't shut out shut down our ears. So sounds are always coming to our ears.

Can we receive them now?

Whatever they are, however subtle, however challenging.

28 minutesAnd now including as well the forehead and the entirety of the face.

If your eyes are open, then experiencing whatever you're experiencing coming through the sense of sight.

And then let's let the awareness just include the entirety of uh the top of our head and the back of our head,

the whole of the of the head and the face as it is.

holding it all in awareness and all of the various sensations that are associated with

uh the the head itself and the face. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue,

seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, the lips, touching,

and just breathing with the entirety of your head and face in this moment. Feeling whatever is here to be felt.

And maybe sensing Your original and unique beauty

that's always here, never not present.

Your face at home with itself in this moment

to whatever degree that might be the case for you.

When we stop thinking and judging and criticizing and just feel what's here to be felt

and know what's here to be known in awareness

at home in our bodies.

Fully alive in this moment and to whatever degree possible fully awake in this moment.

with for now no place to go, nothing to do, and nothing to attain.

Now, if you care to, you can just on an outreath let letting let go of the entirety of your

face and head and rest in awareness.

allowing the body to be exactly as it is.

Experiencing awareness exactly as it is.

And noticing perhaps that your awareness is on a scale that is completely

uh beyond the body.

that the awareness itself as we sit here or lie here maybe observing that there is no limit to it. There's no boundary

to it like we have a boundary to the body.

the sense of the envelope of the skin of the skin and there's no center to it either.

Our awareness is everywhere,

including in the body.

And so when you're ready, you might want to try wiggling your toes and maybe your fingers and

maybe taking a few or few deep breaths in and out. More intentional breaths in and out.

Maybe beginning to move your hands and wiggle your feet and flap your feet and

stretch a little bit in whatever directions you care to.

And again in the spirit of uh the meditation practice just keeping up a seamless continuity and

awareness so that in a sense there's no end to uh this meditation.

We've been inhabiting the field of awareness in the body from the very beginning and we're still

here in the body and in awareness

of course an occupational hazard of the body scan as many of you know from having been through an MBSR uh program

is that although the whole idea of all meditation practices including the body

scan is to fall awake so to speak it's an occupational hazard that in the body scan especially lying down the corpse

pose especially if you're doing it in bed we'll fall asleep but with practice we can really train

ourselves to fall awake and that's one of the things I'm encouraging you to do from the moment you wake up in the morning

and maybe not doing a full body scan like this, but just putting your attention in your hands, breathing with them for a few minutes,

and then putting your attention in your feet and breathing with them. And do it as playfully as possible. You could try

left hand and left foot, right hand and right foot. And just remind yourself that when you wake up

and you get out of bed, you have the option to be fully awake, fully embodied, mindful,

aware, and then you can carry that into the bathroom.

If you take a shower, as you know, I like to say check and see if you're in the shower because a lot of time you may

not be in the shower. You may be your mind may be off anywhere else but not feeling the water

on the skin or planning your day or lost in thought.