Body Awareness Meditations for Cultivating Calm and Insight.

Mindfulness of Body is a foundational meditation practice in modern, evidence-based mindfulness programs like MBSR and MBCT, with a history rooted in ancient systems of mental and spiritual development.

Mindfulness of Body helps to disrupt and weaken painful mind states like anger, anxiety, fear, and depression. And within the mental clarity cultivated by Mindfulness of Body, we can begin to see how these painful mental states obtain the momentum to overtake us. With this awareness we can begin to dismantle these states and work with them more skillfully.

Physical restlessness and mental resistance—frustration, for example, and boredom—are common, unpleasant reactions to Mindfulness of Body training. These reactions will weaken over time, but they can be difficult to tolerate in the beginning. This is natural, so please be patient with yourself and with the process, the best you can. Best wishes in your practice. Take heart. You can do it.

Mindfulness of Body Intro: Sensations

Body Scan: Part by Part and Whole Body

Survey: Top to Bottom

Body Awareness: Center Moving Outward

Playing with Body Awareness: Water Imagery

Mindfulness of Body: Periphery to Center

Whole-Body Sponge Breathing

Heart Breathing

Web of Awareness

Broad but Centered Breath Awareness: Candle in the Room

Midline Shining Outward

10-Minute Body Scan

Home Base Meditation

Allowing Experience to Come to You

Drop In

3-Anchor Meditation

3-Anchor Meditation: Extended Practice

3-Anchor Meditation: 10-Minute Practice

Feeling the Face

Sleep Series: Deepening Presence

Sleep Series: Fully Held

Sleep Series: Blanket of Awareness

Relationships: Being Right Vs Being Curious

Sleep Series: Space for Listening

The Listening Space

Finding Ground and Space in Difficult Times

Deanna Burkett, MA, MS

MBSR Teacher & Kripalu Yoga Teacher

I learned that I can’t create a sensation. If I can’t feel it, I shouldn’t force it.

Creating Sensations

I learned that by taking a step back I can calm myself down. I can take myself out of the stressful moment both mentally and physically. This meditation really helped me to calm myself down. And mentally step out of the stressful situation. My mind is fresh, like a breath mint.

Remind Myself to Calm Down

Mindfulness of Body is often taught in terms of "sensation." This Intro to Sensation is a brief Body Scan which describes ways of noticing sensation (ex: contact. temperature, moisture, and others) and offers general guidelines for this type of observation. General guidelines include: 1) not moving the body if possible 2) not trying to create sensation or make something happen in the body 3) the possibility of noticing sensation in "parts" of the body and in the "body as a whole."