Welcome to Your Sensing Ground Resources

What is a Body Scan?

The body scan is literally noticing any and all sensations from your head to your toes in any order. The less the instructions the better because it is a spontaneous and personal inquiry. If I give heavy instructions the beauty of your inner inquiry is lost and you give your power over to me. You begin to follow me, not yourself.

Three ways of body scanning examples. I can build an audio for this.

There are three ways to explore stories within your body:

• The first is that you body scan and observe your sensations from head to toe, noticing what random sensations attach to thoughts and stories arise as you do this. Observe all eight senses consciously taking in taste, smell, touch, sight (inner vision), sound (inner sounds), orientation, movement, emotions and internal body cues. Scan your full experience and see what arises and captures your attention.
• The second is that you intentionally body scan on a pain point inside of your body (for example, an ache in your left shoulder blade), and you observe the story attached to that particular location of pain, tension, rigidity, or contraction. 
• The third is that you take a story that you aren’t sure about—perhaps someone said to you, I think you need to try harder to meet this deadline—and you body scan this story to see if you contract or expand.

Once your capture the story in that moment that is most salient to you, you choose whether you keep the story, or rewrite it. If the story feels nourishing and pleasurable for you, keep it and marinate in it—enjoy it. If the story feels icky, off and contracts—empty and rewrite it. Attach a new story to those sensations and create an inner world of expansion and pleasure, one story at a time.

NOTE: It is common to feel lost and hopeless when you begin attempting your body scans. You may seek external guidance or want to click play on a mediation app or search for yoga nidra classes on youtube. I invite you to acknowledge that discomfort and feel it fully—taste and smell it. Locate that feeling in your body. Notice the stories that you hold in your body about body scanning or placing your attention on your sensations. 

Practice staying with your body scan even when it feels awkward or hard. You are learning to give yourself your own attention rather than follow somebody else’s instructions. It does not matter how you body scan or whether you start at your feet or your head, or anywhere in between. Start wherever you feel your body call your attention. Give yourself loving kindness and feel whatever you feel, then keep scanning to all the corners of your physical body. There are basic instructions in chapter one of your Sensing Ground book and if you would like to use an audio guide to get you started try this audio.

The practice of consciously soaking in the goodness of the present moment. Marinating in the pleasure of what is here, now.