TuneIn
The body is our home. It carries us through our days and nights, collecting information along the way. Many of us find that the body carries the story of past pleasure and pain, and the felt trace of our thoughts and emotions. Offering the body our tender, caring presence may help make this home a more comfortable place.
In this guided meditation with Sean Fargo, we’re invited to stand, sit or lie down with the body, to explore the sensation that is present and offer it our supportive, loving attention. There is no specific end goal. We practice accepting and being with what is here.
Please listen in a safe, quiet place where you can be relatively free from distraction. Find a posture that balances comfort with alertness. May this meditation be of benefit to you in your practice.
Sponsored by our Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification: MindfulnessExercises.com/Certification
It is the body and its senses which make possible our experience of this world. The body is home to our heart and mind, and many people find it carries its own intelligence. It’s no wonder that practicing presence with the body is the first of the four foundations of mindfulness. To be present at all necessitates being embodied.
The body, however, may not always feel like a safe place. Our bodies can carry painful information, such as past injury, pain or the felt weight of uncomfortable emotions. In an effort to ease our suffering, many of us have become disconnected from the body. In mindfulness teaching, this disconnection, while perhaps the best we could do at the time, is not considered the most skillful way of releasing discomfort and pain. Reconnecting to the body and welcoming reality as it is, is a central task of the practice.
Practicing mindfulness of the body, however, is not always easy. It helps to bring a sense of gentleness, ease and care to our meditation. By tending to the body in a kind and loving manner, opening to what is, and learning to be with sensation without needing to change it, we nurture both the body and ourselves.
Approaching the body with an open heart allows us to maintain an open mind. We become more accepting of what is arising in the body, whether pleasant or unpleasant. We meditate not to arrive at any particular pleasant sensation, or no sensation, but to increase our capacity to remain present with how the body feels now.
When we become free from needing the body to feel any particular way, we create more room for ease and a more friendly relationship to the body. We offer space for sensation to change as it is ready to.
To practice bringing awareness to the body with more tenderness, less judgment and less of an agenda can be a way of bringing this same non-judgmental, caring awareness into our daily experience.
Explore a gentle awareness of the body with these additional free mindfulness resources:
- Podcast: Using the Body to Identify Emotions, with Sean Fargo
- Podcast: A Deeper Mindful Body Scan with Sean Fargo
- Guided Meditation: Elemental Body Awareness Meditation with Sean Fargo
- Guided Meditation: Anchoring In Breath And Body: Meditation With Sean Fargo
- Guided Meditation: Finding Refuge in the Body, a Meditation with Sean Fargo
- Meditation Script: Notice and Accept Your Body in the Present Moment
- Mindfulness Worksheet: Witnessing the Body
- Blog: Body Scan Meditation: A Complete Guide
- Blog: Six Ways to Deepen Awareness with Mindfulness Body Scans
About Sean Fargo:
Sean Fargo is a former Buddhist monk who founded Mindfulness Exercises and leads the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification.
