🔼: [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘]] ###### 🧘 Body Scan [[On Tools, Skills, and Practices...]] Type: [[🧘 Mindfulness Meditation]] Use: [[🛠 Self-Soothing]], [[🕯️ Grounding]] [[🔑 Trauma disconnects us from our body]], and it's quite normal for many of us to not have particularly strong [[Proprioception]] – the Body Scan is a [[🧘 Mindfulness Meditation]] technique which helps us get reacquainted. > [!WARNING] > Parts of our [[⭐️ Body|Body]] can be exiled, especially if we've experienced physical [[💡 Trauma|trauma]]. For this reason body scans can be [[💡 Trigger|triggering]] for some of us. Try setting a [[🛠 Pendulation Anchor]] before attempting the practice as a kind of safety net. We can stop if it gets uncomfortable and try another time. There are many [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘]] practices to try – [[🔑 Trust your experience and intuition|🔑 find what works for you]]. > > See: [[🦮 How to Make Mindfulness Trauma-Sensitive]] During the practice we take a [[💡 Meditation Posture|Mediation Posture]] and then begin scanning our body from the crown of the head down to the base of the posture, noticing sensations and felt senses. We can imagine a plane of awareness, about an inch (2-3 cm) thick, that slowly descends when we sense something within the plane. If we don’t sense anything in a space along the way, we pause and stay there until we sense something, anything at all. Then the plane descends. If we scan our whole body and there is time remaining, repeat. We can start with 5 minutes and lengthen or shorten the time as we like. We could include a few [[🕯️ Mindful Moments]] in our day doing a quick Body Scan and note any chances in our perception. It's fascinating what we notice over time. [^1]: