Body Scan Meditation: A Simple Mindfulness Exercise to Relieve Stress and Anxiety

Meditation is an activity that allows a person to quiet the mind. There are different types of meditation practices. However, all practices promote mental well-being, calm the mind, aid in the healing process, and alleviate anxiety.

Mindfulness Meditation:

Mindfulness involves clearing the mind and having attention focused on a single point. It allows the practitioner to be fully present in the moment without being distracted by other things.

The garbage accumulated daily in our home can cause bad odor and diseases if it is not disposed of regularly; garbage in the form of negative thoughts invades a person daily. On average, a human being is bombarded by 60,000 thoughts in 24 hours, most of those thoughts are negative. If the mind is not emptied of all this garbage in the form of negative thoughts on a daily basis, we can end up stressed and generate anxiety and depression. Medical science has also shown that the root cause of most chronic diseases is mental stress.

The benefits of meditation are multiple, some of which are listed below:

• Reduces stress and anxiety

• Improves concentration and focus

• Promote a healthy lifestyle

• Increases self awareness

• Increases happiness (the brain produces feel-good chemicals like serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins)

• Slows down the aging process

• Benefits the cardiovascular and immune system

Body scan meditation:

This type of mindfulness exercise is a simple and effective means of freeing you from unwanted thoughts and bringing you into present moment awareness. It is recommended that the exercise be done daily for 10 to 15 minutes.

The exercise is performed sitting cross-legged with your back against a wall or in an upright position; the head should be relaxed and slightly bowed but not drooping.

Close your eyes and focus your attention on your breathing. Take 3 deep breaths and exhale slowly. Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Make the breath effortless, slow, and deep, completely filling the lower abdomen and chest as if you were filling a balloon with air.

Visualize a beam of white light entering your body with each inhalation and imagine gray smoke leaving your body with each exhalation. The white light symbolizes positive energy entering your body and the gray smoke represents negative energy such as stress and anxiety leaving your body.

After three deep breaths, return to normal breathing and bring your attention to the top of your head. Imagine a wave of awareness entering the crown of your head and moving down your head, forehead, eyes, cheeks, mouth, and jaw. Let this wave of awareness pass through the entire area of ​​your head, relaxing all the muscles and tissues. Bring this awareness to your neck, relaxing all the muscles and ligaments in your neck area as you work your way down. Let this awareness travel up your shoulders to your arms, forearms, hands and fingers, relaxing all parts of the body. This wave of awareness then travels up the spinal cord, relaxing all the muscles and bones as it travels down. It then enters your chest, upper abdomen, and lower abdomen, relaxing all the muscles and ligaments in your upper body.

Visualize this sensation in your hips, down your thighs, calves and feet systematically relaxing all the lower parts of your body.

Now that your whole body is relaxed, the next step is to relax your mind.

To relax your mind, imagine a place of solitude and comfort. It can be a beach, a forest or the top of a mountain. Use all your senses to imagine that place of peace and calm.

If it is a beach, visualize the blue waters of the sea, the pleasant wind that blows, the flight of the seagulls and the sound of the waves breaking against the sand. Make the image as detailed and colorful as possible as if you are reliving that moment.

After you have created that ideal environment in your mind’s eye, stay in that place for a few moments. This will gradually calm your mind and free you from all residual stress and pressure. You can start the activity whenever you feel you have reached the desired state, and then slowly open your eyes and return to normal consciousness.

Practicing this simple yet powerful mindfulness exercise daily releases all the feel-good hormones in your brain that will make you happy and stress-free.