2025 04 18 3 2 Scanning the body

Welcome to our first meditation session in this retreat. A reminder that we are starting to explore mindfulness as an experience here and now. Now one of the consistent teachings across meditation traditions is that to come to this moment, it so helps if we're aware of the body and the various types of sensation we experience in the body.

Touch, pressure, temperature and also the breath. So that's where we're going to begin. Just before we start, once again, for the most part, I'm going to be guiding as for closed eyes, but feel free to have your eyes open if that's what you prefer.

Just adjust the guidance where needed. So, come into a comfortable seated position and close your eyes. Let your hands rest in a comfortable place, either on your thighs or in your lap or perhaps arm rests or something like that.

Take a moment to let your hands and fingers relax and let that relaxation in your fingers, your thumbs, the palms of your hands, the backs of your hands, let that restfulness travel into your wrists, your forearms, your elbows, your upper arms and your shoulders. Feel your arms kind of sagging, becoming slack. Great.

Now we'll come to the head. Feel the crown of your head at the very top of the skull, the the middle of the dome of the cranium. Feel that it's floating above your seat.

Just for a moment, imagine that it's like the canopy of a parachute that's catching an updraft. So there's a little light lifting in the top of the head. Allow this to just to minutely elongate your spine.

You don't have to do anything. Let this lift happen like an updraft. Great.

Now let your face go slack and limp. Let all the muscles in the face relax. Let your jaw relax and sink a little bit, a millimeter or two.

Let the back of the neck be a little bit longer. So there's a minor forward tilt of the head. It's very subtle, just a little bit of a tilt forward, enough to open up the back of the neck.

Okay, lovely. And now once again, check the jaw is slack and allow the throat to be soft, shoulders settling down. And let the softness in the throat spread and melt down through the chest, through the middle of the torso, down into the belly and the seat.

And let there be a warm melting softening into the upper legs and knees, the lower legs and ankles, and the feet and the toes and the soles of the feet. And rest for a moment with a sense of the whole body being warm, relaxed, at ease. Let yourself start to feel the breath coming and going gently.

Let the breath do whatever it feels it needs to do. It might go shallower, it might go deeper, might go shorter, might go longer. Let it do what it wants and just become a kind of mute, a equanimous observer of the breath.

And see if the breath wants to become like a gentle stirring, like a gentle stirring within the experience of the body. Letting the breath be a kind of invitation to settle down even more, to relax, to let it be enough just to be present here like this. And know that this calm, easeful state of mind and body is always available.

It may take a little practice to quickly come back to it, but in time we will be able to. And actually it's always here waiting for us. Thanks so much for being part of this journey of the way.