No equipment and no special location are necessary in order to do a body scan.
Start by sitting on a chair or on the floor and quickly assess if there is any tension anywhere in your body; feel how your head sits on your neck and if your shoulders are relaxed or not.
Do not judge or try to explain what you feel, just gather the information your body is offering to you.
Next lie down and start breathing, inhaling and exhaling through the nose. Keep your knees bent or straight, depending on what feels more comfortable for your body. Start feeling that your body is becoming very heavy and allow your muscles to relax.
This is not a relaxation exercise, even though you will feel more relaxed at the end of it. It is a body scan: you are gathering information about how your body feels as a whole and how everything in your body feels as separate entities.
This exercise will allow you to create a partnership between the body and the mind.
Pay attention to the following:
- Are you able to inhale and exhale effortlessly and evenly? Is it harder to inhale or exhale? Keep breathing until you feel more ease and the rhythm of your breath becomes slower and calmer.
- Where do you feel most of the tension? Are you in any kind of pain? Are you uncomfortable in any way?
- Next move your awareness to the neck and head and release any tension that you might feel. Think of gravity working for your benefit this time and acting upon every bone, muscle and structure in your neck, throat, face and head.
- Continue by allowing gravity to take over your rib cage and all the organs inside it.
- Next move your awareness to your abdomen, pelvis and lower back.
- Finish the scan with your hips, shoulders, arms and legs.
The body scan can last from 5 to 15 minutes, depending on how experienced you are at listening to your body. Remain at each step for as long as it feels appropriate.
Remember that your body will guide you in ways that your mind cannot!
Maintain this state of heightened awareness and assess how your body feels and what levels of tension you are still carrying in the body. Gently sit up and pay attention to how you feel compared to the beginning of the body scan.
As you become more aware of the signals coming from the body you will:
– be able to increase the efficiency of all your physical activities
– become less prone to get injured
– be more forgiving towards yourself
– understand yourself better
– know what to do when you feel fear
– experience a renewal of your stamina, due to the integration of your inner knowledge into your everyday life
The integration of the physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual aspects of ourselves is what will lead us towards optimal health and well being. Learning to do a body scan is one important step towards this integration.
During the body scan, you might become aware of certain emotions, feelings, thoughts or memories that you might have blocked before or that you did not know you had. If you do, just notice them and continue your body scan. Later you can write them down and use them as important pieces of information that have been stored in your physical body. This is real knowledge, so TRUST it and make good use of it in the next days to follow.