Everyday Practices
Letting the Body Let Go
For Releasing Tension
US$6 3 practices · 6 tracks · listen or download
Get the pack · US$6We carry a lot in the body. Shoulders up near our ears, a jaw that’s been clenched all afternoon. Often we don’t notice it until we stop, and then we realise how long we’ve been holding on.
That holding is the body in Protection Mode, braced for whatever might come next. It makes sense that it does this. And when we bring our attention out of the head and down into the body, it can start to let go. The more we notice the body, the less in our heads we are.
In one of these practices you tense and release each muscle group in turn, from your toes up to your eyebrows. In another you move through the body, part by part, noticing what’s there. The third is a set of small experiments, like noticing how your clothes feel against your skin, or the parts of you that are completely still.
There are three practices here. Two of them also come in shorter versions. The longest, Mindfulness of the Body, is just under half an hour, for when you have time to go slowly.
What’s inside
Soothe Now: Progressive Muscle Relaxation
3 versions
Full version · 16 minShorter version · 10 minMicro version · 6 min
For when tension has settled into your muscles. After a moment of thanks to your body and a few out-breaths, I explain how it works. From your toes up to your eyebrows, you tense each muscle group for around five seconds and let it go, noticing what relaxing feels like. It ends with the breath and gravity. The shorter version starts straight with the explanation. The micro version stops at the fists, leaving out the head and face.
Mindfulness of the Body
28 min
This is a classic body scan, for when you have time. You move your attention through the body part by part, from the left foot up to the forehead, resting in the body as a whole now and then. At the stomach there’s a moment to notice what you’re feeling, and to let any thoughts about it be thoughts. A line comes back a few times: ‘There are my thoughts, and here I am.’ It ends with each in-breath filling the whole body, and a moment to thank yourself.
Out of Your Head, Into Your Body
2 versions
Full version · 21 minShorter version · 12 min
For when you’re stuck in your head. Everything here is treated as a small experiment. You notice how your clothes touch your skin and how gravity holds you. Then the parts of your body that are absolutely still, ‘just like a statue’, and the one part that moves with the breath. It ends with the words ‘thank you’. The shorter version leaves out the later part, where you follow the breath inside the body and rest with your anchor.