Mapping The Body
Preparation:
- Print out the My Body's Feeling Tones worksheet or create something similar in your own journal.
- Gather three different colored pencils or crayons to represent each Feeling Tone: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.
- Play the 12-minute Phoenix Rising Body Scan Meditation MP3.
Practice:
Press the play button to stream this audio recording. To download for keeps, click on the three dots to the right of the volume button to download.
Reflection:
1. Shade in each area of your body with a colored pencil or crayon that corresponds to the Feeling Tone of each part of your body on the worksheet or in your journal. Fill in the Color Key with the corresponding color you choose for future reference.
2. In your journal, write down a few ways you can:
- Be kind and nurture the parts of your body that feel unpleasant.
- Celebrate or expand the parts of your body that feel pleasant.
- Pay attention and be curious about the parts of your body that feel neutral.
Grief can feel like an "out of body" experience. Often the emotional pain of loss overshadows the physical pain and tension in your body.
This exercise will help you tune in to the cues that your body is sending you and reconnect with what can be your greatest ally - your body.
Using a meditation technique called the body scan, you will travel through each section of your body and take stock of how you really feel. Whenever you encounter a strong sensation, you mentally label it as pleasurable or unpleasurable. If you do not feel much at all, simply make a note that it is neutral.
These three words - pleasurable, unpleasurable, and neutral - are called feeling tones in classical Buddhism, and can help you describe how you are feeling without getting hijacked by the story of why you are feeling this way. It also frees you from judgment, fear, and uncertainty that can surround physical and emotional pain.
The ultimate goal of this practice is to help you reconnect with your body and start to befriend it, so you can take wise and skillful actions that will help return it - and you - to a state of balance and peace.