Scan your body from head to toe to observe sensations and cultivate non-judgmental awareness.

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Health & Happiness

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Mindfulness Meditation

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Mindfulness

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Observation of sensation is one of several techniques we practice daily @2:50 pm. Watching sensations is a simple effective practice available to anyone anywhere at any time. For this reason, we return to it again as foundational to our daily practice.

@2:50 - Ten-Minute Mindfulness - Observing The Body

 Hello everyone and thank you for joining today's at 250. It's so good to have you here if you're joining with us live then welcome and if you're joining the recording I'm happy to have you here as well. At 250 is a 10 minute daily mindfulness mini retreat and we meet every single day at 250 p.m. in a few different time zones across the world so check a time zone that's convenient for you at the website or join at a time that works for you. We meet every day at 250 p.m. For today's at 250 we're going to be reviewing the practice of body scanning so throughout the 10 minutes today I'll be on the microphone and be guiding us through a couple of ways that you can use to scan the body as a way to practice mindfulness. For now sit back and see that you have a comfortable seat and you might like to notice where the body is sitting on your seat or if you're reclined or lying down where the body is touching the fabric or the ground that you're lying on. And for today for the body scanning practice we're just going to move from the top of the body to the bottom and from the bottom of the body back to the top. I'll keep us moving slowly through the body maybe with a few pauses of quiet time in between. So I'd like to invite you to either have your eyes opened or your eyes closed at your preference. And let's begin. So to start out you might like to start at the very crown of the head. Just move your attention to the crown of the head and notice what's going on there. If there's any sensation happening. By sensation this could be anything. This could be warmth or coolness. It could be pulsing or an itching or any kind of sensation. It doesn't really matter. Just notice there if you have any sensation at the top of the body at the crown of the head. And as you bring your attention there then let's just start to circularly make our way down the body. So bring your attention in a circular fashion down the scalp, slowly moving down maybe around the ears and the eyebrows as you work your way down across the forehead. Maybe now down onto the cheekbones and the bridge of the nose. Circling down the body very carefully and quietly as you observe the sensations picking out and watching what's going on minute by minute. And as we continue to move down the body maybe down into the neck and the jawline. Notice any sensations you might have along the jaw or the lips or even inside the mouth at the back of the throat. And our job here today is not really to draw any judgment or make any claims but just to observe what's going on there as we move through the portions of the body. And now as we move down into the shoulders, down into the collarbone, as we expand our spiral out to meet the width of the body and move our attention slowly down across the top of the chest and the top of the arms, top of the back. Seeing sensation all the way along the way. And then for a moment here let's just move down one arm. Maybe it's the right side. Just move down the right arm, past the elbow into the forearm, down into the fingers. And then scanning back up the arm, back up to the shoulder and we'll move across the body to the other arm, the left arm. Just scan down the body, past the elbow, into the forearm, the wrist, the hand and the fingertips. And then we'll move back up that arm towards the torso as we bring our attention down into the chest, the middle back, the sternum, down along the ribs. You might notice here that the breath is rising and falling. Chest cavity is expanding and contracting. And following the attention down through the low back, the hips and the front of the tummy. Noticing now as we scan down through the bottom of the torso, perineum and down to where the legs meet the torso. Scanning around the body, down into your seat and then into the hamstrings and the quadricep muscles of the leg. And just noticing what sensations are happening there, what's going on. Watching down, we're going to move down through both legs at the same time. So just wrap your attention around the legs in a nice easy spiral, moving your point of view down along the body towards the knees, down towards the calves. Keep scanning down, down toward the ankles and then the toes. And then we'll start to move the attention back up the body, noticing every sensation along the way that we might feel up through the soles of the feet, the tops of the feet. Noticing what's going on on the tops of the ankles and the back of the ankles, and then rising the attention up to the lower calves, up into the calf muscles and the shin and spiraling back up past the knee, moving into the thighs, drawing the attention back up to the buttocks and the groin, moving through the hips and slowly bringing the attention back to the stomach, the diaphragm, up through the lower chest to the rib cage, around the heart and back up to the chest, always moving the attention slowly around the body. Let's take both arms at once now, spiraling your attention across the body, starting at both fingertips and just moving back up through the thumb, the joints of the hands, the wrists, up through the forearms and the elbows and the tops of the arms into the shoulders and then unifying your attention where the shoulders meet the torso, back at the collarbone, breast bone, shoulder blades where they meet across the back and notice the sensations that you're experiencing there as you move up into the next space, spiraling your attention across the body up into the base of the skull and then moving your attention from the bottom of the jaw up through the face and the ears and spiraling along the top of the head, back up to the crown where we began and spiraling the attention back to that point at the top of the crown and just noticing what sensations are going on up there. Thank you everyone for joining today's At 250. This concludes our 10 minutes together. So we are at the top of the hour. I really appreciate everybody joining today and I hope that this instruction was helpful and I would look forward to seeing you on any future 250 at 250 p.m. Hope to see you there. Please enjoy.