Body Scan Meditation

A simple way to ground, relax, and connect with your body.

We’ve all heard by now that meditation is good for us. It helps with stress, self awareness, sleep quality, and can even help kickstart an upward spiral. But did you know that different types of meditation cause different outcomes? Kind of like houses in a development - the foundations are the same, but the details make it home.

For example, mindfulness meditations have been shown to increase control of our emotional reactions and decrease self-judgement. As you might expect, observing our own thoughts also increases our awareness of our own minds (hence, mindfulness).

Loving-kindness meditations (also known as Metta meditation) have been shown to increase kindness towards ourselves and others, feelings of connection to others, and decreases in our sense of loneliness compared to other forms of meditation.

Body scan meditations, where you focus on sensations throughout different parts of the body, have been shown to increase our connection to our own bodies and boost self-awareness.

Body Scan & Self Work

Many of us grow up in cultures, communities, and families that teach us to reject and dissociate from our bodies. As we work towards integration and wholeness the body becomes not only an important vehicle for that work, but the vehicle for our lives.

Regular body scan meditation can be a valuable tool for:

• Deepening your connection with your body

• Learning to feel, interpret, and accept signals from the body

• Relaxing held tension in the body

• Accepting your body more completely

There are different types of body scan meditations, but they primarily fall into two categories: interoceptive where one focuses on the sensations in the body and accepting them, and progressive relaxation where one moves from part to part gradually relaxing the body.

Below paid subscribers have access to the first of a series of guided meditations - this one an interoceptive body scan to help deepen your relationship to your body’s sensations, signals, and information.