Mindfulness for Health: Guided mindfulness meditations

Chapters

Introduction - Bodyscan - Mindfulness of Breathing - Positive Emotion

 

The Bodyscan

The Bodyscan practice is simply to learn to inhabit our bodies more fully, to come ‘home’ to our physical experience (and emotions — as these are also visceral and physical). These practices are very simple. You do not need to know anything about meditation, or to have ever done it before. All you need is a quiet space, where you are unlikely to be disturbed for the duration of the practice — about 40 minutes including the introduction. The Bodyscan practice itself is a little under 30 minutes long. The meditations are fully led, and the introduction gives more information and instructions.

“Everything is there in the body; but we do no realize it. For that it is very important to reach a quiet state, to relax. But one cannot directly try to relax. If I remember my inner aim to be present to myself, then I become aware of my tensions. Then something lets go in a fundamental way.”
Jeanne de Salzmann (Gurdjieff teacher)

 

Audio-visual Resources

 

There are many Bodyscan guided meditations (many available are on You Tube) including guided mindfulness meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn (the founder and original developer of the Bodyscan). These are from the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic at The University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

However, one of my favourite Bodyscan meditations is by Vidyamala Burch (the founder of Breathworks). You can find this to download as an audio file, if you go CALM (Computer Assisted Learning for the Mind - Guided meditations), University of Auckland. Scroll down the page until you find:

Body Scanning by Vidyamala (Breathworks)

This guided meditation practice helps us to develop habits of greater ease and awareness of the body. Adopting a comfortable posture, lying down or sitting, we scan through the whole body with our awareness, using the breath to let go of areas of pain and tension.

Download the audio file: 43:22 minutes (19.9 MB)

 

For more on this please see -  Breathworks approach to Mindfulness and Health

Please note, that Breathworks is UK based.  In the UK there are many Breathworks Courses available (and a limited number of Breathworks Courses in Australia and NZ.  Although Breathworks is UK based, they offer online courses also.

Please note -  that although I trained in Breathworks -  I am not registered as a Breathworks trainer.  This allows more flexibility, primarily in that the course I (usually) offer is a 4 weeks 'Mindfulness for Health' course (rather than the 8 week Breathworks course) and will be far more affordable for many people.  Breathworks courses are rarely, if ever, run as evening courses - each session being two and a half hours long.  My 'Mindfulness for Health' (with two hour sessions) runs in the evening, currently 6pm - 8pm. 

There may be some similarity in approach between my 'Mindfulness for Health' course and the 'Breathworks Course' (e.g. Bodyscan, Mindfulness of Breathing, and Kindness meditation) but my own course will cover much less (at best something around half) of what may be covered in the 8 weeks Breathworks course.  But I try to cover the basics, and provide a solid foundation for mindfulness practice with benefits for health and stress-management.  Please contact Risingholme in Opawa, Christchurch for the next available course.

If you can find the 8 weeks Breathworks counrse available where you live (e.g. Auckland, Sydney, or the UK) I would strongly encourage you to do this.  Alternatively, you can register with an online Breathworks course from the UK (the time difference may be possible: e.g. 10am UK time = 10pm NZ time).

 

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