5 Reasons why the Bodyscan Meditation can improve your Health and Wellbeing
Kat H 
The bodyscan is one of the fundamental meditations in mindfulness. It is also found in many other practices for health and wellbeing including movement practices such as Feldenkrais, somatics and Yoga, practices designed to support physical and mental health.
Connecting with our body can guide us towards increased health and wellbeing and yet, for a long time, the bodyscan was my least favourite mindfulness meditation. Don’t get me wrong: I am very aware of my body but the bodyscan meditation? I just didn’t get it!
I fell asleep, lay there restlessly with my mind wandering off, got annoyed with myself, or even scanned my body with a critical attitude: why was one of my feet turned out more than the other, why was there always tension in my hands.... I was like a police officer, scanning my body as if it was a criminal.
For years, I tried to avoid the bodyscan and just focused on all the other meditations.
These days, however, I have come to really appreciate it! These are the 5 reasons why I have come to love the bodyscan and why it is so important in mindfulness:
1. The Bodyscan is a great way of learning to concentrate.
Many people find it hard to concentrate. A busy life, stress, trauma, changes in our life or hormones, say in teenagers or after menopause or andropause, can make it hard to concentrate. The bodyscan can help us to relearn this skill.
The bodyscan helps us to improve both narrow-focus attention, say when we focus on our big toe, as well as wide-focus attention, say when we focus on the whole leg or even the whole body.
These skills are not just important in the bodyscan but help us in daily life where we also need to be able to focus on a single task or manage situations where our attention has to take in a lot of information, say when we manage traffic or are in a large group.
But mindfulness is not just about being able to concentrate. Mindfulness is about being aware of the present moment.
2. The bodyscan helps us to be present in the here-and-now.
You see, our body – unlike our mind – is always in the present moment. Our mind may be in another country, even another planet or time, but our body is in the here-and-now. Bringing our attention to the body and its sensation, therefore is one of the most effective ways of becoming fully present.
When we guide our attention to our body, we may notice tension, discomfort or pain in one area, a sensation of comfort or pleasure in another, maybe we notice the temperature of the incoming or outgoing breath around the nostrils or small movements as we breathe or from the beating heart. All these can anchor us in the present moment experience.
But there is more: the Buddha said “be mindful of the body in the body” and modern psychology has confirmed that the physical body is closely linked to our emotional body and that our physical body can hold memories of the past, including upheavals and trauma.
3. The body scan can reveal a lot about our attitude towards ourselves.
As we bring our attention to the body we may notice how we view the reality of what we find: we may feel let down by our body, say when we can’t run as fast as we’d like, when we have an injury, pain or even a disease or when we don’t like the look of an area of our body.
Alternatively, we may notice an attachment, a tendency to cling: we may overidentify with the way we look or how our body performs in exercise or sport, we may be unable to accept that our body is changing. So when we do the body scan, we don’t do it with an attitude of curiosity and kind attention, we may not even manage to just notice our body with a neutral attitude. Instead we scan our body with judgement, like a policeman looking out for signs of crimes.
There is a lovely paragraph in Tim Parks book Teach us to Sit Still* about the body scan:
“this is not the movement of the schoolboy’s eye over diagrams of anatomy. It is not the movement of looking. Rather it is like a man wandering through the rooms of a house, in the dark, knocking on this door and that, perhaps after a long absence, checking if anyone is home, if anyone wants to talk, or gripe, or rejoice, or simply turn on a light for him.
For a while, perhaps, there will be no response. The doors are closed, perhaps locked. You must be patient. Nobody has passed this way for a long time, and it would be impolite of you to start rattling the handles. This is not a police raid.”
4. The bodyscan can reveal and even shift our emotional state.
Think of the last time you felt nervous or anxious. Don’t think of the situation in which this happened but instead focus on the sensation in your body. Maybe you recall a sensation of butterflies in your stomach or the racing of your heart, maybe you started to sweat slightly. Or think of when you last felt sad – or happy…. Can you recall any sensations? What if you think of the face of a loved one, a child or a puppy walking in a clumsy way that makes you laugh? Can you feel the response in your face or chest maybe?
So our body can reveal a lot about our emotions. Once we know that, we actually have the power to move on from an emotion that seems stuck. Now, we may not be able to change the situation that has caused this emotion but we can change our response to it. When you feel overwhelmed by an emotion, it can be very helpful to just bring your awareness to your body as described in this poem "What would happen...." by Jeff Foster:
What would happen
If we removed the word ‘anxious’
And just paid attention
To these flickering sensations in the belly?
What would happen
If we took away the concept ‘lonely’
And simply became fascinated with this heavy feeling in the heart area?
What would happen
If we deleted the labels ‘sick’,
Or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’
And just got curious about
The tightness in the throat
The pressure in the head
The ache in the shoulders?
What would happen
If we stopped looking for solutions
And checked to see
If there was actually a problem here?
Let’s come out of the exhausting storyline.
It’s not true. It was never true.
Commit sacred awareness to a single living moment.
Come closer to yourself, Now.
Bring warmth to the tender places.
Infuse sensation with the light of attention.
It’s never as bad
As we think.
And always,
Always more alive.
And finally another reason for practicing the bodyscan:
5. The bodyscan shows us the impermanence, the ebb and flow, of our experience.
In all mindfulness meditations, not just the bodyscan, we experience how our thoughts and emotions come and go, just like the clouds in the sky or the waves in the sea. We become familiar with patterns of thinking and feeling and yet, at the same time, we notice how they fluctuate from moment to moment.
Best of all, mindfulness also gives us the resources we need to handle these ups-and-downs in our emotions, thoughts and even the turbulences that life throws at us. This allows us to live a full life; become more present, enjoy the fullness of life's experiences, supports relationships and promotes self-care and even our health.
After practicing mindfulness regularly for just a few weeks, we may find that we develop an inner sense of heightened wellbeing, strength or calmness. We may develop increased resilience, cope better with life's upheavals and the constant stream of bad news. We increase our ability to self-care and follow a healthy lifestyle. We feel better. After the second session of the eight week mindfulness course, the session in which we practice the bodyscan, one of my students told me that mindfulness practice "feels like balm" to her.
These days, I certainly would agree: the bodyscan feels like balm to me too!
If you are curious to experience the bodyscan and other meditations and be guided towards a deeper, more mindful life, why not sign up to a transformative eight week mindfulness course with me. Courses are online. If you have any questions, contact me via this link and/or, if you are just looking to be contacted whenever a new course is starting, join the mailing list via this link
Kat is a fully qualified Mindfulness Teacher with the Mindfulness Association and has a Post-Graduate Certificate in Mindfulness from the University of Aberdeen. She is also a movement teacher (Yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Somatics), an intimate health practitioner and has a degree in herbal medicine.
*Please note that I get a small referral fee if you buy the book from Amazon via the above link
Categories: : mindfulness