Practicing body sensing guided meditation is key to living a sensational life. Practice returning to your senses and becoming consiously embodied. Leave the madness of the overthinking mind for the stillness of inner KNOWING.

Without this key life skill, you might live your life as a Mr. Duffy.

Mr. Duffy lived some distance from his body.—From The Dubliners by James Joyce.

Contrast this quote from James Joyce with the experience of the poet W. B. Yeats from his poem Vacillation when he says:-

All a sudden my body blazed and for twenty minutes more or less I was blessed and could bless.—Vacillation IV—W. B. Yeats

This is a genuine experience of embodiment and it only takes twenty minutes more or less for you to know that who you are is a real blessing. It is an experience of heart chakra awakening.

Most of us are more like Mr. Duffy than the one who feels they are blessed and can bless. So before I share with you this body sensing meditation let me share with you a menu related to this article and to the guided meditation itself.

Body Sensing Guided Meditation Menu

• The Meaning of Body Sensing.
• Why Practice Body Sensing.
• When to Practice.
• How to Practice
• Body Scanning Meditation
• Other Resources

I recommend that you read this article in full before you start listening to the guided body sensing meditation.

This is because in doing so I think you will invite a deeper understanding of the invitation from such a practice and why it really is a key life skill foundational to living a Yoga Lifestyle.

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The practice of body sensing has different names. These include:-

• Inner Body Awareness
• Body Scanning.
• Full Body Presence
• Yoga Nidra

Each of these names points toward the same fundamental practice of bringing conscious awareness to the body.

Body sensing is a practice for a given time when you focus your attention on the sensations in the body. These sensations include:-

• Warmth
• Tension.
• Pressure
• Breath
• Heaviness
• Lightness.

This is not an exhaustive list. Each of these sensations are felt rather than analysed. You begin to return to feeling more embodied. This practice is learned through listening to body sensing guided meditations.

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If you find a regular practice of sitting meditation difficult (as I do) then the daily practice of body scanning exercise may well be for you.

This body scanning exercise is more about learning how not to do but how to allow yourself to be in free flow.

I love the practice of body sensing. This is the practice I start my day with. I now wonder how I ever did without it.

The effects later in the day are often profound. I feel delighted for no reason. I am living in the present moment. I am a Mr. Duffy returned home to the experience of living in a body in Full Presence (David Whyte)

Body scanning guided meditation wakes you up.

It is for this writer the foundational practice for cultivating embodied spirituality. It takes you out of one of the key reasons for suffering both personally and collectively. This is your obsession with overthinking.

I use this practice when I need a quick boost of energy. I use it for managing anxiety, especially when I am running workshops. I use this practice because I really love it.

At almost seventy years of age, I am probably one of the fittest people I know (at least my wife is always declaring this to be so). I am growing bolder, not older. Sageing (I hope) rather than aging.

I am not on any medication. I pay attention to my body on a daily basis through body sensing and inner body awareness exercises. I give it the attention it deserves.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

Body sensing exercises teach you how to allow your body to love what it loves. It begins to connect you to that intelligence that is beyond the intellect. The body KNOWS in ways that the intellect cannot know. This is connecting with the foundational energy of the 1st Chakra.

Knowing oneself comes from attending with compassionate curiosity to what is happening within. – Gabor Mate – When the Body Says No – The Cost of Hidden Stress

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To begin with, I recommend that you practice body sensing exercises in the morning before you get out of bed. This is before you tune into the madness of the collective outer world.

Living in the head and experiencing all our thinking there distorts and impoverishes our sense of being and belonging, because when thinking cuts itself off from the body, it encloses itself from our living reality. The body holds the deepest currents of our being and is our bridge to the life of the world around us – the being of the world.  – The Embodiment Manifesto – Philip Shephard

You can start crossing the bridge to being and belonging by listening to the body sensing meditation shared below.

Make this the way you begin your day.

Don’t push for results. Let the practice grow with you and grow in you. The challenge is to take the power from your overthinking personal mind and move it into an experience of trusting your inner voice that is body KNOWING.

I have a friend who has for many years facilitated drumming workshops. She was telling me about that day when she woke up and all the rhythms; she knew in her head had somehow appeared in her body. Her body now knew the rhythms in a way her technical knowledge did not give her.

I practice body sensing while I am gardening. Often, I find myself thinking while I am working with the earth. When I notice this, I am usually in what we call in Hatha Yoga, the pose of the Hero. I am kneeling on the ground either clearing the ground, weeding, or planting.

So I consciously breathe in and out and I sense how I am kneeling, how my hands feel etc. Usually, I sense the stings from the nettles or from the briars.

I have a favorite part of the garden which is in the wood. I plan to create a space there where I can lie down on a camomile lawn (probably only during the Irish summer) and practice body sensing anytime I feel I need an energy boost or just for the sheer fun.

Often I am joined in my gardening endeavors by Felix the cat. Felix loves lying full stretch under the wooden garden seat or while giving himself a dust bath. He is a master of full-body presence. I just so love that cat. He has moved from being a street fighter to be a lover.

I often practice body sensing last thing at night but find I will fall asleep. If falling asleep is an issue for you then I think body sensing will help you a lot. It will take you out of the anxiety you might feel around not being able to sleep. Check out the great practice of Yoga Nidra (Yoga Sleep).

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It is best to practice body sensing guided meditation exercise with clear intention. Energy follows intention. I call this practice of clear intention, “Companioning YOUR Greatness.” (Taken from These are the Clouds by W. B. Yeats).

Let it be your intention that you invite yourself to trust the inner guidance and KNOWING available from embodied intelligence rather than cerebral intelligence. This requires that you create a sense of Sanctuary.

Sanctuary requires:-

• Time
• Focus
• Silence
• Commitment

If, like many people in today’s age of communication, are experiencing F. O. M. O. then you may well find the idea and practice of creating an inner Sanctuary challenging.

The acronym F.O.M.O. stands for:-

• F – Fear.
• O – Off
• M – Missing
• O – Out.

Many people today are addicted to their mobile phones. This is a symptom of how their minds work. There is attachment and there is the inability to turn the off switch on.

Sanctuary is a place you learn to create within yourself.

It is a boundary you create in order to allow for the experience of the Boundless. This is when you might KNOW, as W. B. Yeats knew, that “For twenty minutes more or less, so great my happiness that I was blessed and could bless.”

This happens for no reason because you get out of your head.

Trade logic for bewilderment – Rumi.

Rumi invites you to trade knowledge for not knowing (bewilderment) which is the gateway to inner KNOWING through the body. As the modern mystic Eckhart Tolle writing in The Power of Now – A Guide to Enlightenment says:-

Enlightenment is not away from the body but through the body – Eckhart Tolle Click To Tweet.

I wish so many spiritual seekers would make this statement their embodied mantra rather than the practice of disembodied transcendence.

The challenge of any method of body sensing exercise includes:-

• Patience
• Commitment.
• Discipline

If you only practice body sensing guided meditation irregularly, then don’t expect to get much out of it. It is a singular way of focusing your attention. This practice is part of what it means to follow the spiritual instruction of becoming a little child.

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 18:3 KJV

A little child is totally embodied. They haven’t yet become Mr. Duffy who lives some distance from his body through over-identification with thought. They have as yet not felt the shades of the prison-house that is the sense of the personal ego-self.

They are still a pure flow of sensation and they are as anyone with a heart can recognize sensational beings. You are still that sensation of being but you have forgotten.

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I am exploring writing and recording my version for a body sensing guided mediation. In the meantime, I share with you a guided meditation that I highly recommend and have used myself.

It is shared by Dr. Richard Miller, Founder of the iRest Institute. The iRest Institute is an educational non-profit that provides events, teacher training, and educational content based on the ancient teachings of Yoga Nidra but presented in a form made accessible for modern-day living.

Dr. Richard Miller has had vast experience in inviting you into that sanctuary of inner body awareness, sanctuary of inner body awareness.

So I recommend that you listen to this introduction to body sensing. try to do this while lying down or sitting in a chair. Do not listen while driving.

I also recommend, as does Dr. Millar, that you write a journal to record your thoughts, your emotions, and your various sensations. This helps ground and honor the practice.

It tells your unconscious mind that you are sincere in your commitment to inviting integrity.

So when you are ready you can begin to listen to this body sensing guided meditation.

I hope that you found this invitation to the exercise of body sensing of value.

Remember, like anything, it takes time, patience and disciple to move from someone who has unconscious competence (think learning to drive) to someone who has unconscious competence  think (experienced driver).

This is a challenging process because in reality you are learning to move from doing to non-doing. You are learning how to allow Life to be done through you. You learn what it feels like to experience Flow.

Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person’s skills, it usually beings to be intrinsically rewarding. – Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Again, I hope this article on the foundational practice of body sensing was of value to you.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave such question or comment in the box below. Who knows it may lead to my writing a further article for your interest.