Mindfulness for Parents: The Awesomeness of Body Scans
- Barbara L. Ley
- Aug 23, 2017
- 3 min read
After getting into bed last night, I lay on my back, my hands on my belly, and noticed my breath. For the next ten minutes, I brought my attention to my head, face, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, back, chest, belly, hips, legs and feet. I didn’t move except for breathing. Rather, I simply noticed the physical sensations in my body without judging or reacting to them. Then I rolled on my side and went to sleep.
I do this body scan most nights at bedtime—and some mornings as I wake up—as part of my daily mindfulness
routine. As I explained in my earlier post about the benefits of mindfulness for trauma-informed parenting, mindfulness refers to the act of bringing awareness to one’s present experience with nonjudgment and compassion. A growing body of research shows that practicing it regularly, even for only 5 or 10 minutes a day, can have physical, mental, and emotional health benefits. Body scans, which direct your attention to your embodied experience, are a great way for beginners and advanced practitioners to cultivate mindfulness. In my experience as a busy and often overwhelmed adoptive parent, they are also a convenient way to integrate it into my everyday life. Here’s why:
“Me” time: My nightly body scans are “me” time. I can lie there, snuggled under my covers, and give myself and my body the attention and nurture I need after stressful and tiring days. Plus, body scans slow down my mind and help me fall asleep.
Release and Relaxation: Body scans allow me to notice and acknowledge the fatigue, tension, and difficult emotions that have built up in my body throughout the day. For me, simply becoming aware of these feelings and sensations in a nonjudgmental and compassionate way helps to release them and bring calm and relaxation back into my body. Practicing body scans consistently also helps me decrease the build-up of this stress and tension over time.
Increased self-care: Becoming aware of the pent-up feelings and sensations in my body—especially when I start to notice the same ones night after night—encourages me to better understand the everyday stressors that contribute to them. In turn, this understanding helps me to identify the types of self-care that would enhance my well-being. Do I need more sleep, water, or exercise? More breaks during my work day or time with friends? Less Facebook surfing, self-criticism, or sugar? From this perspective, body scans encourage me to practice self-compassion not only as I do them but also in my life more generally.
Convenience: Body scans are a convenient way for me to practice mindfulness, as I can incorporate them into an activity I do every day—sleep. I’m already lying there waiting to fall asleep, so all I have to do is spend a few minutes focusing on how my breath and body feels. Body scans are also a mindfulness practice I can do when lying next my kids as they fall asleep. On mornings when I wake up on my own without a child calling for me, I will sometimes practice a short scan before getting out of bed as a way to center myself before starting my day. But even when I wake up with a kid lying next to me, I can still do a quick scan if they are still asleep or quietly lying as they are waking up.
Of course, you don't have to practice body scans before you go to bed or when you wake up. You can practice them
whenever and wherever you want. But, for me, I have found that doing them in bed has made it easier for me to do them on a consistent basis.
Body scan resources: Most of the time, I lead myself through my body scan, but I’ve also used guided ones, especially when I first started practicing them. Here are a few of my favorite resources to get you started:
Insight Timer, a free mobile app, features hundreds of guided body scans as part of its broader collection of several thousand meditations of various styles of lengths. (See photo for a sampling of Insight Timer body scans)
The UCSD Center for Mindfulness provides numerous online guided body scans (along with other types of guided mindfulness practices), you can download for free.
Tara Brach, author and mindfulness teacher, has links to several of her nurturing body scans in the guided meditation section of her website.
If you only have time for a quick body scan, this article links to a 3-minute and 5-minute guided practice.
Have you ever done body scans or wanted to try them? Do you want to know more about them? Share your experiences and questions about body scans in the comments section below.
Comments