Getting in touch with our bodies

We can be surprisingly out of touch with our bodies.

Our thoughts and feelings often dictate our lives, and sit in the centre of our attention. However, our thoughts and feelings are often mirrored through sensations in our bodies. By bringing more attention to our bodies, we can get more of an insight into how we react to events that surround us, and to the effects of thoughts and feelings on our lives.

By bringing thoughts, feelings and body sensations together in our awareness, we begin to realise how much tension and stress is felt in the body. Often sensations arise in the body before they are reflected in our thoughts and feelings.

The body scan is meant to bring us more in touch with our bodies. It is an exercise in attention, focusing carefully on different parts of the body. However it is also an exercise in awareness, usually bringing into awareness sensations that are routinely hidden by our habit of focusing on thoughts and feelings.

The exercise can be done very quickly, and it is quite common in some meditation practices to do a short body scan at the beginning of the practice, and it can be a useful exercise in calming and settling the mind. In an MBSR course, it is done very slowly with the intention of bringing participants much closer to awareness of sensations in the body.

This exercise can be easily done anywhere you are able to sit or lie still undisturbed for a period, and done at whatever pace the time you have allows.

Throughout the exercise, the intention is to notice the sensations in the body and not to change them. Changes will naturally occur in the sensations, but the object of the exercise is to become aware of what is there rather than striving to change what is there. Sometimes you will hear guidance suggesting that you even embrace uncomfortable sensations.