Body Scan Meditation
Ten minutes, feet to head, noticing what is there. You are not trying to relax, though you might.
Level 3 · Body
Body scan
10 min · Feet to head, noticing
Scan slowly from feet to head. After a week or two you could try level 4, Notice. Levels are only a suggestion.
Not therapy. Open your eyes, move, or stop if you feel panicky, numb or flooded. With trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional. SourcesTerms
Your session
How this works: Method, 10 sources, Checked against 1 worked example,
How this works
Method
Every session is a script we wrote, following the order of the MBSR and MBCT courses (settling and the breath first, then the body, noting, kindness and open awareness). The voice is Kokoro, an open speech model, rendered once into a single audio file per session with its bells and pauses; each sentence is checked by a speech recogniser and a quality score before it is kept. Minutes are counted from what actually played, and stay in your browser.
Sources
- Kabat-Zinn, An outpatient program in behavioral medicine for chronic pain patients based on the practice of mindfulness meditation, General Hospital Psychiatry (1982)
- NCCIH, Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety
- Kokoro-82M, an open speech model (Apache-2.0) (v1.0)
- Goyal et al., Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis, JAMA Internal Medicine (2014)
- Galante et al., Mindfulness-based programmes for mental health promotion in adults in nonclinical settings, PLOS Medicine (2021)
- Basso et al., Brief, daily meditation enhances attention, memory, mood, and emotional regulation in non-experienced meditators, Behavioural Brain Research (2019)
- Rusch et al., The effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2019)
- Zeng et al., The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review, Frontiers in Psychology (2015)
- Farias et al., Adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies: a systematic review, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (2020)
- Britton et al., Defining and measuring meditation-related adverse effects in mindfulness-based programs, Clinical Psychological Science (2021)
How it’s tested
One worked example for this page is checked by automated tests before every release: given the inputs, the tool must show the expected answer.
Limits
Not therapy. Open your eyes, move, or stop if you feel panicky, numb or flooded. With trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional.
Changes
- First version: six levels from 3 to 20 minutes, a sleep body scan that fades out, a bells-only timer, two voices, six scenes and offline listening.
What the 10 minutes are like
You start by feeling your whole body resting, then move your attention slowly from the toes up through the legs, hips, belly and back, the hands and arms, the shoulders, neck and face, with quiet time at each stop. At the end you widen out and feel the whole body breathing at once.
Of its 10:00, about 4 minutes 5 seconds is the voice speaking and the rest is quiet. The longest quiet stretch is 27 seconds, starting at 2:13.
The session, minute by minute
Each line the voice says, when it starts, and how long the quiet after it lasts (in the Nicole voice).
| At | You hear | Then quiet for |
|---|---|---|
| 0:06 | Hello. | 3 s |
| 0:25 | You can do this lying down, or sitting. | 3 s |
| 0:41 | Close your eyes, if that feels right for you. | 4 s |
| 0:49 | You're not trying to relax, though you might. | 4 s |
| 1:17 | If any part of your body is painful, or brings up hard memories, you can skip it, and stay with your breath or your hands instead. | 5 s |
| 1:39 | Start by feeling your whole body resting, and the places where it touches the floor or the chair. | 8 s |
| 1:55 | Now bring your attention down to your feet. | 27 s |
| 2:40 | Move up into the ankles, and the lower legs. | 18 s |
| 3:08 | The knees. | 18 s |
| 3:35 | Now the hips, and the pelvis. | 18 s |
Show all 22 rowsShow fewer
| 4:00 | Move into the belly. | 18 s |
| 4:26 | The lower back. | 18 s |
| 4:53 | The chest. | 18 s |
| 5:19 | Now the hands. | 27 s |
| 6:01 | The shoulders. | 18 s |
| 6:29 | The neck, and the throat. | 18 s |
| 6:49 | The face. | 27 s |
| 7:38 | The back of the head, and the top of the head. | 18 s |
| 7:59 | Now widen out, and feel the whole body at once, breathing, from the feet to the head. | 27 s |
| 8:35 | When the mind wanders, and it will, notice where it went. | 27 s |
| 9:16 | Getting ready to finish. | 6 s |
| 9:33 | When you hear the bell, open your eyes, and take a moment before you get up. | 20 s |
Read every word of the scriptThe script
Hello. This is a body scan. We'll move our attention slowly through the body, from the feet up to the head, and notice what's there.
You can do this lying down, or sitting. Get comfortable, and let your arms rest by your sides or in your lap.
Close your eyes, if that feels right for you.
You're not trying to relax, though you might. The aim is just to notice. Warmth, or coolness. Tingling, or pressure. Or no feeling at all. Finding nothing counts as noticing too.
If any part of your body is painful, or brings up hard memories, you can skip it, and stay with your breath or your hands instead. You're in charge here.
Start by feeling your whole body resting, and the places where it touches the floor or the chair.
Now bring your attention down to your feet. The toes. The soles. The heels. Notice what you find, without changing anything.
Move up into the ankles, and the lower legs. The shins. The calves.
The knees. Then the thighs, front and back, and the weight of your legs.
Now the hips, and the pelvis. The places where you're sitting or lying.
Move into the belly. Notice it rising and falling as you breathe.
The lower back. Then the upper back, all along the spine, and the shoulder blades.
The chest. Maybe you can feel your heartbeat here. Maybe not.
Now the hands. The fingers, the palms, the backs of the hands. Then the wrists, the forearms, the elbows, and the upper arms.
The shoulders. Notice if they're holding on. If they want to let go, let them.
The neck, and the throat.
The face. The jaw, which is often tight without us noticing. The lips. The cheeks. The eyes, and the small muscles around them. The forehead.
The back of the head, and the top of the head.
Now widen out, and feel the whole body at once, breathing, from the feet to the head.
When the mind wanders, and it will, notice where it went. Then come back to wherever you were in the body, or to the body as a whole.
Getting ready to finish. Wiggle your fingers and your toes. Take a deeper breath.
When you hear the bell, open your eyes, and take a moment before you get up.
Where the body scan comes from
The body scan comes from the hospital programme that became Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The first report on that programme, in 1982, described 10 weeks of mindfulness practice for 51 people with chronic pain who had not improved with usual medical care. The body scan has been part of mindfulness courses ever since, MBCT included.
Course recordings are usually much longer. This version takes 10 minutes so it fits into a day. Once that feels easy, you can stay longer at each part of the body with the bells-only timer.
Noticing, not relaxing
The instruction is to notice, not to change anything. You might find warmth, coolness, tingling, pressure, an itch or an ache. You might find nothing at all, and that counts as noticing too. If you relax, fine; if you don’t, the practice still worked.
Over time this builds a habit of checking in with your body, which many people find useful when stress shows up first as tight shoulders, a clenched jaw or a knot in the stomach.
If some parts are hard to attend to
Pain, illness, or difficult memories can make some parts of the body hard to stay with. You can skip any part, keep your attention on your hands or the breath instead, or open your eyes. You are in charge of where your attention goes.
If you want the body scan to help you fall asleep, use the sleep version instead: it goes more slowly, asks each part to get heavier, and fades out without a bell.
If it doesn’t feel right
Meditation isn’t therapy, and it isn’t for every moment. If you feel panicky, numb or flooded, open your eyes, move, look around the room and name a few things you see, or stop. You can rest your attention on your hands, your feet or the sounds around you instead of the breath, and closing your eyes is always optional. With trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says not to use meditation to replace care from a health professional.
If you are in crisis or thinking about suicide, talk to someone now: in the US call or text 988, in the UK and Ireland call Samaritans on 116 123, and elsewhere findahelpline.com lists free, confidential lines.
More guided meditations
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I do the body scan lying down or sitting?
Either. Lying down is traditional, but if you tend to fall asleep, sit in a chair with your feet on the floor.
What if I feel nothing in a part of my body?
That is common, and it counts. Notice that there is no clear feeling there, and move on when the voice does.
How is the body scan different from progressive muscle relaxation?
Progressive muscle relaxation has you tense and release each muscle group. In a body scan you don’t do anything to the body; you only pay attention to it.