Meditating while lying down? No, it’s not a joke. Known as body scan, this meditation technique invites you to take an introspective meditative journey. A journey through your body, and all its sensations. This may seem a little strange because after all, we have been in our bodies our whole lives. Unfortunately, we often only pay attention to our bodies only after we get sick, or are in a lot of pain.

When we are healthy or when something does not hurt, we do not pay attention to the sensations that occur. They are not that strong. And yet, if we penetrate into these healthy places in the body with our consciousness, there is also something happening there all the time. These places are alive, and we don’t have enough sensitivity to feel them. Meditation can change that. Practice with Yogilab!

The body scan is a wonderful way to come back to your body. You discover the internal sensations of each of our limbs. The breath of life which, with each inhalation, expands the belly, then deflates it with the exhalation. It is even possible to hear, at times, the muffled and regular beating of your own heart that sends blood through every part of the body. And when you turn your attention to your hands, to what is going on inside each of your fingers, what could be more fascinating and mysterious than to feel your own pulse, the beat of the blood circulating in your veins and arteries?

It is then that you feel truly alive, that you fully feel the invisible movement of life, deep inside your body.

When practiced regularly, body scan meditation is associated with many mental and physical health benefits. Research shows that stress management is one of the main functions of this practice. This, in turn, can have physical benefits, including reducing intestinal inflammation, chronic fatigue, and insomnia.

In this way, the body scan meditation helps break the cycle of physical and psychological tension that can feed on itself. It can help you return to and maintain a relaxed state when you are too tense. Bringing awareness to the body through meditation can help you learn and understand what it may and may not need to function.

As strange as it may sound, body scan mindfulness can also reveal a lot about your outer world. As you learn and begin to feel its effects, you can understand how stress and anxiety affect you on a deeper level.

To perform a bodyscan, bring your attention successively to each part of your body, starting with the feet or with the head, as it suits you best. Stay five to ten breaths on each zone of the body to better feel the present sensations, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Listen to the life that rustles in the depths of the organism. And if there are no sensations, simply note the absence of sensations in that place, without artificially forcing yourself to feel them.

Body scan meditation script

Lay down, making sure you are comfortable and warm. Close your eyes, and give up control of your breathing. Allow your body to surrender to gravity. Give up the habit of giving yourself assignments, don’t try to control your mind, but remain attentive.

Give yourself a few minutes to enter a state of relaxation, a state in which you allow yourself to experience all the sensations that arise without judging or naming them.

When you feel that you are relaxed enough to move on – feel your body as a whole. Let go of the memory of the physical appearance of your body and sense how you feel the boundaries of your body, the surface of your skin. Which areas are conscious and which are blind spots? Don’t try to change it, just observe.

It may be that the quality of awareness of the body’s surface changes over time. If that happens, follow these changes with your awareness. Remember not to analyze, interpret or judge your sensations, just be attentive and allow yourself to live the experience. If it is difficult to feel your body, you can start by feeling the parts of your body that are in contact with the floor.

Feel it resting on the floor. Try to feel other parts of the foot, both on the surface of the skin and inside, at the level of soft tissues and bones. You can do this in 3 ways:

Simply try to keep your attention on the foot

Direct awareness to the foot with successive breaths, as in projective pranayama

Maintain mindfulness of the breath, imagine that you are breathing with the foot

Once you choose one of these modalities, stick with it until the end of the exercise. When you feel that you have devoted enough time to the foot, move your attention higher and stay with the next part of the body (e.g., shin and calf). In the next steps, move higher and higher, going to the left side of your body through your legs, pelvis, torso, arm, and the left side of your neck and head. Remember not to focus only on the surface of the skin, but also to go deep into the body.

If any thoughts, emotions, sensory impressions appear during the exercise, let yourself experience them, without judging or naming them. But do not shift your attention to them, be focused on the process of body scanning. When you have scanned the entire left side of the body, stay in a state of relaxation, attentiveness and presence for a while, without moving to the other side yet. Don’t analyze the differences between the right and left sides of your body, allow yourself to experience them.

When you feel ready to start working with the other side, go through the same steps of scanning the body on the right side. Remember not to rush, even if you have limited time. It is better to go deeper into the exercise and go through only a few stages than to rush through the whole thing.

When you have finished scanning both sides of your body, stay in relaxation for a few more minutes.