As a wellness coach and yoga teacher, there's one simple and effective practice that I always share with my clients and students. This technique...
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- can take as little as a few minutes
- helps you release body tension
- brings more focus to you mind
- causes you to feel more relaxed and at ease
- helps you fall asleep!
What's this awesome technique? It's body scanning!
When we do a body scan, we bring our awareness to key parts of our body while also taking smooth, slow, full breaths into that part of the body.
Now you may have heard that terminology before in yoga classes. We yoga teachers will often instruct students to "breathe into" a part of the body.
We can experience this concept of "breathing into the body" in different ways.
If you're a visual person, you could create some imagery for your breath and then visualize it flowing into a particular area of your body You may even imagine that on your exhalations, that area of your body softens, eases, relaxes.
If you're not a visual person, you could simply feel the flow of your inhale and exhale while you focus your attention to a particular part of the body....
OR you could pick a word like "relax", "ease", "soften" and silently say the word as you focus your attention to a particular part of the body. Focus on feeling the word in each part of the body as if you are coaxing it to "relax", to "ease" or to "soften".
As far as where to begin with your body scan... I'd suggest either starting from the top of your head and scan downward or begin at your toes and scan upward... whichever feels best to you.
You can talk yourself through a body scan any time in order to feel more grounded, centered and relaxed. If you have less time, don't go through as many body parts. For example, you may simply focus on the face, the shoulders, chest and legs. This will help you to quickly get centered "in the moment".
Whereas if you're going to sleep, you may get very detailed and go through as many specific parts of the body as you can identify (toes, ankles, shins, calves, knees, thighs, etc...) You can choose how detailed or general to make your body scan depending on what you'd like to experience at any given time.
So let's have a body scanning experience! Click on the link below and enjoy a guided body scan (again, you could easily do on your own!) HAPPY SCANNING! 🙂