Areas › Your body
Your body
You cannot think your way out of a body that is braced. This area starts there: the breath, the ground under you, moving, eating, resting, and the small physical things that change how the rest of the day lands.
Narrowed down
10 practicesTheme · Feeling from the inside
How long you have
Approach · Mindfulness
When · Any ordinary day
Before inviting anyone to turn attention to their body, ask first. How do you feel about trying this now, and would you like to?
The asking is part of the practice, not the preamble to it. Someone whose body was once not theirs to control needs the choice handed back in small…
A long body practice is a teaching version. In real life, take one small piece: just the feet, just the hands, just a minute of noticing.
Long stretches of inward attention can tip into flooding or into drifting off, and neither leaves you better than you started. A minute done often…
You do not have to close your eyes. If keeping them open, soft and lowered, is what lets you stay in the room, that is the better version for you.
Closing your eyes takes away your ability to check the room, and for anyone whose body is used to watching, that costs more than it gives. Make it an…
Try going into the next few minutes without deciding in advance what will happen in them. Curiosity in place of prediction.
A mind used to danger plans constantly, because planning once kept you safe. Sitting somewhere ordinary and letting the next moment be unknown is…
The body answers in sensations, in pictures, in a mood that turns up without explanation. If no words come when you check in, nothing has gone wrong.
People often decide they are bad at this because they went looking for a sentence and found a tight jaw instead. The tight jaw is the answer. Take…
If a few quiet minutes with your body turn up an ache or a tightness you had not noticed before, the practice has not made things worse. It has shown you something that was already there.
This catches a lot of people out. They sit down hoping to feel calmer, meet a knot in the stomach instead, and decide the whole thing is not for…
If you keep falling asleep whenever you sit quietly, take it as news rather than as a failed attempt. Your body is telling you how tired it is.
Welcome the first few times. Being tired enough to drop off the moment nobody needs anything from you is worth knowing about, and the honest response…
If you are moving attention through the body, start at the feet and work up. Leave the throat, the chest and the face until last.
The far edges of the body carry less charge, so they are a gentle place to find your bearings. Include the back, which people tend to skip: attention…
There is a difference between watching your hand and being in your hand. See whether you can move from looking at a part of your body to living inside it.
Observing keeps a small distance, which is useful early on and can quietly become the whole practice. Inhabiting is the further step: filling the…
Sleeping until the middle of the afternoon, day after day, is usually not rest. It is closer to the body shutting down, and it tends to leave you flatter rather than restored.
The tell is how you feel on waking: real rest gives something back, while shutdown leaves the day already gone and you no better for it. Nudging the…