Transcript

Ani
Hello, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast.

Brian
Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Ani.

Ani
How are you today?

Brian
I’m doing well. How are you?

Ani
I’m good, thank you. Feeling good.

Brian
Feeling good? Mm-hmm. Oh, cool. You ready for today’s podcast?

Ani
Yeah. Hey, what episode are we on?

Brian
We’re on 110, I believe.

Ani
Great. Awesome. What are we talking about today?

Brian
I thought we would do a podcast just on fundamental, let’s get back to the basics of somatic coaching, somatic practices, and just ask a question that gets searched quite a lot and gets asked actually quite a bit in our programs. Oh, okay. Is that on Google? Yeah. People ask this question a lot, too. When they’re starting to look for ways to become more relaxed or look for ways to balance their nervous system or all those kinds of things, they start looking at different meditation techniques. And one of the techniques that pops up for a lot of people are body scans.

Ani
They’re very popular. Yeah.

Brian
So really this week we’re talking about how do you do a body scan? Meditation.

Ani
Oh, that’s a great topic. Yeah. I have done so many body scans with so many different practitioners.

Brian
I have, too. And there’s some things I… Personally, they’re all personal. Personal preferences. Personal preferences on how I love to have body scans done and how other ones just don’t work for me as well thing. I’m sure you have the same preferences. Yeah. So I think it’s when you’re doing one for yourself, it’s important to know, Hey, well, first of all, what’s your intention for doing the body scan? That’s a big thing. Then based on your intention for the body scan, you can think a little bit about, well, what guidance and stuff really works for you? We’re going to talk today about the basic ways to do body scans. And then you can also think about body scans as in levels of why you would do body scans and what you can expect to get out of a body scan at different levels as well. So you place yourself on a bit of a hierarchy, if you will. Not that it’s really a hierarchy, actually. It’s just different levels of experience so people can start to think about.

Ani
Great. I’m excited to do this because I think it is one… We have a lot of proprietary things that we do here in our certification programs and with our coaching team. And this is one of those things that a lot of different people do it. So there are a lot questions. Usually when people come in, they’ve had some… Usually, people have had some experience with it.

Brian
Yeah. Body scans are fundamental to any somatic work that you do. They’re really a building block of somatic practice. Again, whether you are learning in yoga or QiGong or any other classic somatic practices, body scans will probably show up in almost every area. If you’re in a somatic either training program or class or something like that, and body scans don’t come up, I would just be curious of why, because they really are a fundamental way to start experiencing mindfulness in a really tangible way.

Ani
If you’re a part of any somatic program, you can expect to see a body scan. If you didn’t, then you might ask what the intention is behind that. Then also you’ll see body scans and other kinds of programs, and you can cue in like, Oh, that’s a somatic part. Actually, it’s funny. I remember doing a program on sleep, and in the promotion of the program, they said something about how there were somatic aspects, and I was really interested to see what that was because that word is thrown around now quite a bit. Very popular. There were body scan meditations. Yeah.

Brian
So oftentimes, you see this thing show up. So let’s just talk about meditation for just a really hot second here, is that there’s lots of different ways to do meditation. Meditation is is a practice of placing your focus on something and then coming back to that focus again and again and again. And then you ask, well, what am I placing my focus on? Well, there’s, again, what’s your intention? What might tell you something about that differently? So some people, when they’re practicing meditations, it’s more of a… I don’t know. How do you want to say this? Let’s just say spiritual experience. Let’s say more like seventh chakra, sixth chakra experience, where the meditation energy or focus is actually taking place in the head area. And you’re going to get a very different effect from that meditation, that meditation, than if the focus of your attention is in your body. So you’re different ends of the spectrum, so to speak. Now, both forms of meditation are good, but you get different reasons.

Ani
Yeah, and there’s all kinds of meditations, right? There’s guided meditation.

Brian
Thousands of different kinds of meditations out there.

Ani
Moving meditations, laying down meditations, setting up meditations, all kinds.

Brian
Yeah. And so a lot of it is based on what’s your intention? I’m trained in teaching meditation, and part of that training I went through, I had to learn hundreds of different meditations. And to understand if someone had a certain thing they were intending to be able to do, then you could actually match up certain meditations to help them be more likely to achieve what it is that they’re intending to achieve. Right. Sort of thing. Which is cool.

Ani
I have a meditation certification as well that did that, and you learned a whole bunch of different kinds. And I think it’s cool because I’ve also studied certain kinds of meditation more in-depth than my life. But there is that thing, too, where you could go study a meditation practice. Yes.

Brian
One meditation practice, sure. I can dive in it. Yeah.

Ani
Okay. Anyway, what were you saying?

Brian
Yeah. So why would you do a body scan meditation? Maybe let’s just talk about that. And maybe, actually, let’s just back up a little bit, what is a body scan meditation? So a body scanning meditation is a form of meditation that focuses on paying attention to body regions and body areas. So you’re always bringing your focus back to what’s happening in your body and also paying attention to the sensations that you’re experiencing in your body. Rather than focusing on a mantra, say, or rather than focusing on a visualization thing, you’re focusing on the sensation in your body. In some ways, body scanning has a lot of mindfulness practice is associated with it. Because a lot of mindfulness is about simply paying attention to what’s going on in your body. Why would you practice a body scan meditation? Well, you could practice really because you wanted to relax, first of all. That could be a… This is actually the first level of body scanning meditation. Why would you practice? It just helps you relax. Helps you start to let go of tension in your body, and it can be really effective for that. On that level, too, oftentimes, if that’s what you’re looking for, as you’re getting a guidance through a body scan, and there’s apps out there where you can get guided body scans or with a teacher, all those kinds of things.

Brian
That first level, oftentimes, as someone is helping you to pay attention to what’s going on in your body, there’s oftentimes either visualization mobilizations or cueing that will go along with that level of practice. A typical thing would be like, my feet feel heavy and relaxed or something like that. You would just pay attention to parts of your body and evoke that mantra about that area of your body. So my feet are feeling heavy and relaxed. My arms are feeling heavy and relaxed. My head… So you just go through your body and just relax your body one part of the time as you go through. Right.

Ani
Yeah. And then there’s the way where you have somebody queue in, but you don’t tell them what to feel. Right.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
And they see what they feel.

Brian
Exactly. Those are the two basic ways. So really, I like the two basic ways that you can do body scans is one way, what we just talked about, is you can go through the body sequentially, region by region. So you can say, Okay, so let’s start at the feet and work our way up to the head, for instance. Let’s pay attention to your feet. Let’s pay attention to your calves. Let’s pay attention to your knees. Pay attention to your thighs and so forth. You’re just working through the body sequentially. The other way is just to just generally notice your body in general and just notice where you feel stuff and where you don’t feel stuff. Where is your attention drawn to and where is your attention not drawn to? Where your attention is drawn to, why is it drawn there? Then once it’s drawn there, then you could, if you wanted to, evoke some type of relaxation mantra about that area, say, for instance. And again, there’s no right or wrong or good or bad for how you do any of these things, but basically, figure out what… By not what works for you, but it might change, too, from day to day.

Brian
Some days it might just be like, I’m just going to do a general noticing. And the other day it might be like, I think I’d like to do a structured sequential body scan process as I go through or be led through. Right. Sort of thing. That’s what you meant with what you were thinking about it, general noticing versus sequentially thing. You can think about that. You might like either one the way that it works. At first is really about just generally getting to a relaxed state. That’s really important just because most people aren’t relaxed.

Ani
Yeah, and most people are so not even cued in with how not relaxed they are. They start to do a little bit of relaxation. Like, wow, I was really jacked up. I didn’t even realize it. Then they can go deeper from there. But most people have no idea how stressed and anxious and stuff they are.

Brian
Yeah, and that’s That’s critically important. Just that step alone. For some people, just staying there for a little while is the best thing that they can do in terms of remembering what it feels like to feel relaxed. Then, again, having an aha moment of like, Oh, my God, I did not realize how much tension I was carrying. Because I’ll even admit, I carry a lot less tension around than I used to carry around in my life. Even now, when I do body scans, I say, Oh, wow, I still had some tension there. I’m still… You were always carrying around more. You’re free of tension. Not free of tension.

Ani
I can’t hang out with you anymore.

Brian
We always carry around more tension than we need to in any given moment. Now, the question is, how much more? That’s like, gradation’s there. So you can figure that out. But most of us are not like… We talk about our cat, Lucky, quite a bit in the podcast here. So when Lucky is not carrying tension, he is… Wet rag. He’s totally not carrying tension. So most of us are not living like cats. It’s like even when we’re sitting down or even when we’re lying down, we still have chronic muscle tension in our bodies, and we feel that in our backs and in our hips and in our necks and those kinds of things.

Ani
It might actually be interesting if you have not done body scans before and you start that some people fall asleep, and that’s okay. Maybe you need to sleep. So that sometimes people I get that question comes up, Oh, I can’t do it without falling asleep. Obviously, it’s great to be able to remain alert and do the meditation, but also check it out. You might need to sleep.

Brian
Yeah, that’s a great point, Ani. That’s a really good point. When we are entering into a meditative state, it’s the same way that we start going into a sleep state. And we’re entering into that state of relaxation, and then we’ll We’ll get to a fork in the road. And if our body is not rested well enough, we’ll always take the sleep fork. Getting frustrated because you’re falling asleep meditation is really, like you said, just an indicator that your body needs more rest.

Ani
I love that fork feeling, I think probably because I’m an experienced meditator, when I go to take a nap, I’m very aware of the fork, and I choose the nap. I love it. Yeah. I’m like, Here I go into the nap now. Not the meditation.

Brian
Yeah, right. So that’s very cool. And if you get to the point where you’re like, Oh, I want to do the meditation, then that’s going to require more awareness, where the sleep go into those theta and delta waves, and you become unaware of what’s going on. Again, not one better than the other, but just know if you’re falling asleep, you probably need more rest, so that’s good. Keep getting rest, keep getting rest, keep getting rest, and eventually, you’re able to take that fork towards paying attention and being aware, thing. Just being relaxed, having that awareness that, Oh, my God, I’m a lot tighter than I thought I was, those are great ahas. What are some of your At that level… Well, maybe let’s talk about the rest of the levels of meditation on it, and then I’ll ask you the question about what your favorite things are. Because if I ask you now, you may actually bust-Oh, your structure. Well, you might actually give away one of these these other levels.

Ani
Don’t want to do that.

Brian
Because you’re pretty high level. Okay. Meditate.

Ani
Sure.

Brian
What’s the next level? That level of relaxation is great. You know what? If that feels good for you, then just hang out there. That’s good. Keep doing that. More of that. That’s awesome. A progression of that level would be to move more into really improving awareness. You’re not just asking your body to keep relaxing. My legs feel heavy to relax, my butt feels heavy to relax, whatever it is, and just getting more relaxed. It’s actually becoming more aware of what you’re actually experiencing internally and then naming those sensations. So it’s a little bit different. That first level is really about just quieting the nervous system down, giving it a break, coming into some deep rest states. The second level isn’t necessarily relaxing.

Ani
That’s right, Brian. That was a good thing you didn’t ask me the question. I would have said that.

Brian
Yeah. I mean, it can be relaxing, but that’s not the point of it.

Ani
Yeah, I don’t find it relaxing, personally.

Brian
Yeah. So that second level is where you’re actually just becoming more aware of the sensations you’re experiencing in your body to begin listening to your body, listening to your body and beginning to understand the language of your body, what your body trying to tell you just through a sensory experience thing. So as you’re scanning through, you’re picking up different sensations and then naming them like, Oh, my feet feel tingly. And then you move on. My calves feel heavy. And then you move on. My thighs feel cold. And then you move on. And we move through in a very non-judgmental way. Of course, you could do that just in the general scan, too. You don’t have to go through sequentially. You just notice your body and go, Okay, what’s my body feeling? And then you can just start naming the sensations in certain areas. Just starts starts to begin building a basic communication framework with your body in the way of just sensory intelligence or somatic intelligence. Intelligence is information, and your body has information to share with you. But if you’re not listening to that information, you really can’t do anything with it. Not going to hear it.

Ani
Not listening.

Brian
That’s the second level. Do you have some thoughts about that second level?

Ani
I just shared them, basically.

Brian
It’s not relaxing?

Ani
No. I have a hard time paying attention in the second level, and I’m very practiced at this stuff. But I find my… First of all, I need to be led. I have a really hard time doing that myself. I’ll pop out into the busyness of whatever’s going on in my head. I can do it a little bit better when I’m led. I can do it better when I’m led. I don’t necessarily love it, but I do like being more masterful at using the information.

Brian
So it’s interesting. Do you feel like… How often do you do just prompt to body scans during the day? Because we do a lot of sensory-based work, sensation-based work, which is always about referencing what you have going on.

Ani
That’s a really interesting question because I thought you were going to say, how How many times a week do you do a body scan? I don’t do a lot of regular body scanning unless I’m working with or on a specific thing. But I will What do you say impromptu? I will impromptu body scan, jeez, 50 times a day. I mean, a lot.

Brian
Let me ask you, do you feel like your capacity capacity or capabilities to do those impromptu body scans have been developed by a past history of doing body? Definitely. Of doing… How do you want to say? Practice? Practiced or planned body scans?

Ani
Definitely. When I started meditating in my 20s, I was doing a lot of body scans.

Brian
Yeah, likewise me. I’ve done I don’t do a lot. Well, let me take that back. In my past, I used to do a lot of just planned body scans. I had an audio. Actually, the very first audio that I ever created for patients was a body scan. If you remember that or not.

Ani
The one you recorded on a DVD? Yeah. With a tie-dye?

Brian
Exactly. Oh, I remember. Because you thought you could do it better than I did. Yeah, it’s a whole thing. It’s a whole story.

Ani
That’s his story.

Brian
Yeah, it’s a whole story.

Ani
Look at us now, Brian. Look at us now.

Brian
Before that, I had a body scan that I would listen to and I would do a lot. I think that, to your point, has given me the capacity to do a lot of just impromptu body scanning now. I just check in really quick to my body and just pinpoint what I’m experiencing and be able to name it and use it and keep going. Totally. But that comes from just doing a lot of practice on focusing on that. But I will also say, I actually do a body scan every single night when I lie down in bed.

Ani
Yeah, I know you do.

Brian
When I lay down in bed, I will just… It’s not like a big hooh-hah. It’s not like a big deal of it. I just feel like I feel my- Now I will do the body scan. Now I will do my body scan. But I just feel my body rest into the bed and I go through my region, start from my feet and work my way up and just notice how my body’s resting down. I notice if I feel anything that doesn’t feel relaxed. Then I do my little, I do a thank you meditation, but I combine that with doing some body scanning as well. It takes 10 minutes or something like that. They had told me to do that. It’s a way I stay connected into that practice. Yeah, sure. That first level, again, so it was relaxation and maybe you like doing that. The second level is just about really improving your sensory awareness and naming what you’re experiencing. Then the next level is where you are now practicing consciously shifting your sensations. You can see we go from being actually more of a relatively passive process- That’s what I was thinking, yeah. At the level one, which is relaxation, more into more of an active process where we’re using tools like dual awareness and sensory magnification.

Brian
This is what we teach our students in our certification program to do with their clients, all three of these levels. Because we talk, again, a lot about here, what you can’t find inside your body, you’re never going to find in the outside outside world. Based on that, tells us that anything you want to find in the outside world, you have to be able to create internally first. And if we’re leaving it up to chance of feeling it internally or creating internally first, then it’s probably not going to happen. But if we can consciously create it, much more likely be able to create what we want on the outside. So that’s that third level.

Ani
What a lot of people want to create is things like freedom, peace, space, joy, stuff like that. It’s one of the reasons why I want to point out where the Somatic Coaching Academy, because from a coaching perspective, we’re helping people to optimize their life, talk about what they want to create. It’s our philosophy, just like Brian said, that you’re not going to be able to create anything externally that you can’t create internally first. That’s not just our opinion. That’s what the ancients say. Worked for We find that it really does work for folks.

Brian
Yeah. That’s actually what the science is saying now, too. The psycho-psychological science is telling us the same thing right now, is that basically the world is a construct of our internal experience. Experience of our internal psychology, of our internal physiology, of our emotionality. We’re literally projecting our internal state out onto the world constantly. If we want to change the outside world, we need to change our inside world first. We start projecting something that we want.

Ani
We do a lot of mindset work with our coaching team, with the clients, and that’s how you start. Because you can’t just mentally manipulate those things that you want to create unless you already have subconscious patterns for that in your life. But for the most part, people want something they don’t already have subconscious patterns The one way you can begin to learning what we call interoceptive literacy, actually, interoception is our internal sensations that come from typically our viscera, our gut, our organ systems.

Brian
We just have to learn the literacy of that. How do we actually start to name, describe what’s going on? Then once we can learn to describe it, it’s like learning the alphabet. The reason we use literacy is like learning the alphabet. That first stage is like, Hey, here’s the letters in the alphabet. The second stage is like, Oh, so how do these letters sound? A, E, I, O, U. We have to understand how they sound. Okay, now that we understand how they sound, how do we put them and make words out of them and then turn those words into sentences, paint those sentences into paragraphs, put the paragraphs into a chapter, whatever it is. It’s the same basic way with interoceptive literacy. You have to first understand what does that actually sound like, in this case, feel like, sound like, sense like. Then once you have that, then you can start to begin moving those sensations around internally in order to write your own internal story if you wanted to. It’s the three levels of how we teach body scans here at the academy. You can work on any of those levels that you want to work on.

Brian
It’s going to be harder to work on the higher levels if you haven’t done those lower levels first, though. I guess maybe it is a hierarchy.

Ani
I think it’s a hierarchy.

Brian
It’s going to be difficult to actually do the dual awareness in the sense of unless you’ve actually gone through the The aware literacy and the relaxation stages first. Take that back. It is a hierarchy. But wherever you are on it, that’s great. Perfectly fine. So far with body scans, we’ve talked about the idea there’s two basic ways to do them. You can just go, Hey, general body awareness, or you can just go sequentially through. Then you have these three levels. You have relaxation, you have sensory awareness, and then you have conscious modification of what you’re experiencing. Before we finish, though, here, we need to talk about trauma-sensitive body scans, idea of trauma sensitivity. Because you’ve probably heard before, if you’ve listened to our podcast for a while, if you’ve done any reading on somatic practices, somatic coaching, somatic anything at all, you might have heard the idea that trauma or emotions get stored in the body. Without dissecting all of that on a physiological level for a second, let’s just say that is The thing is that there are deeply protective patterns that live internally in our physiology that are below our level of awareness.

Brian
We’re navigating through the world in a lot of ways. The reason we go towards some things and away from other things actually is so that we don’t stir up some underlying past hurt, past problem, which It might even be a past trauma that’s in your system someplace that’s actually governing how you perceive the world. But if you’re not paying attention to it, it usually doesn’t want to come up, so it hides. These traumas could be hiding in the system. And by the way, they’re hiding the system. They could be causing other problems in your life. They could be causing physical problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic pain, respiratory problems and that stuff. They could be causing emotional disturbances like chronic depression, chronic anxiety. They could be causing relationship challenges. A lot of times people come to us for those things, and they don’t realize that the thing that’s basically underneath all those things is some hidden trauma. When we start doing body scans with people… Go ahead.

Ani
You can find that out.

Brian
Yeah, you can find that When you start to do body scans with people, you could find that out. When you start to do body scans with people or really other meditations and stuff as well, breathwork is another one.

Ani
Definitely, yes.

Brian
That can stir up and activate. 100%. It’s hidden trauma. We’ve talked about breathwork practices before in earlier podcast. You can check that out.

Ani
People are always really interested in this topic when I do talks about it as soon as we talk about breathwork because it’s like It’s a hip happening thing to do. Some people will be like, Whoa, I did breathwork. Really screwed me up. Will not do it again. That thing. Then other people are like, I thought breathwork was super cool, going to the gym. Why can’t we do it with everybody? We just say, be careful.

Brian
Yeah. So body scans can be a little bit the same way because different people have different responses to body scans. And oftentimes people will say, Hey, I just want to relax. And so they’ll come and do a body scan. And then as they’re going through their body and paying attention to different areas, if there happens to be a trauma pattern that’s living in, existing in a part of a certain body region, then just paying attention to that body region with some level of focus can actually activate, can actually activate that body region and reactivate that trauma for people. We’re big fans of, Hey, let’s just actually treat everybody like there’s something hiding. We do what we call trauma-sensitive body scans. We don’t just do trauma-sensitive body scans for people that we know who have had trauma. Because the stats tell us that- It’s like 90% of people are walking around with traumatized nervous system.

Ani
Yeah, just assume.

Brian
Yeah, so assume that there’s something going on that could be brought to the surface by doing a body scan. That doesn’t mean you don’t want to do body scans. It just means you want to do them in a certain way. What are some trauma sensitive guidelines when we’re doing body scans? Well, one of the first guidelines is you want to make sure that you have what we call safety anchors. What’s a safety anchor? Well, it’s anything that helps you feel regulated. Helps you feel settled, helps you feel safe, helps you feel secure, helps It helps you feel stabilized. For some people, that’s just bringing their awareness back to feeling their body’s contact with the floor.

Ani
Hands on the heart of the belly.

Brian
Hands on the heart of the belly, you’re great.

Ani
Bringing your awareness back to your breath, sometimes a visual, looking at a certain picture or maker.

Brian
Yeah. You’ll want to have a safety anchor available to you before you start the body scan, not trying to look for it when you feel dysregulated. You want to make sure you have an anchor set up ahead of time. It could be, again, something really simple. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be something you know you can come to if for some reason a body region gets activated.

Ani
Since I really like the safety anchor concept is about the own agency and empowerment that it comes along with. Because sometimes when you do certain somatic practices, it can feel a little bit out of control. Not saying that’s supposed to happen or whatever, but it can happen. The safety anchor really does stimulate this sense of agency and my own empowerment to do something and not be like, Somebody help me.

Brian
Yeah, I love that, which actually leads into the second really important part of trauma sense of practice is that idea of choice, which is, I think you’re speaking to that. If you’re in a class, if you’re in a class, a live class and being led through, If the teacher doesn’t overtly say, Listen, you have a choice as we’re going through this body scan to do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself. As we’re going through the body scan, say we’re focusing on your thighs, we get to the thighs part, and that feels activating for you, then you have a choice to go back to your feet or go up to your shoulders. Actually, you can move your attention to a different part of your body that feels more regulating for you. You don’t have to stay in the body area that feels activating just because the teacher is asking you to focus on that area.

Ani
I want to get permission granted that even if the teacher does not give you choice or says that you have to move through it, that you don’t. Because I’ve been in classes where the teacher actually said, Do not stop. You must follow, and My end up puts a lot of pressure.

Brian
Yeah. That is not a trauma-sensitive class or a leader.

Ani
You always have choice.

Brian
Yeah. You might find that that may work for you, or you might find that If you need a more trauma-sensitive type guidance to make sure you ask the instructor, Hey, do you do trauma-sensitive practice? Talk to them about choice, those sorts of things.

Ani
Yeah. You can say that actually before you go to a class It’s just to ask, Is this a trauma-sensive class? And see what the instructor says. If that’s important to you, you can ask that question at a time.

Brian
Now, if you’re listening to an app or something is prerecorded, then that’s on you. We’re just going to be permission. You have choice. Even if the teacher on the app says, Stick with this area, stay with this area for five minutes. You don’t have to. You don’t have to. You can move on for what feels good for you. Now, I also will say, sometimes, and this is better when you’re working with a practitioner, by the way. Let me just say this. When you have a relationship with a practitioner, there is some benefit, and maybe not some, there could be great benefit to actually staying in an area that feels activating and practicing what we call widening your window of tolerance for that area. Because those sensations of activation, if they become really highly charged, then they end up hijacking your nervous system and directing the actions that you’ll take. If those sensations are underneath your awareness, they’re running all the time, even if you don’t realize it, and they could be exactly what’s getting you the results in your life that you want to change. When you work with a sensation-based motivation coach who knows how to help you do this, they can actually help you stay in an area to slowly widen your window of tolerance for those sensations so that then you can change them.

Brian
Do Doing that on your own is really risky because the more a person who’s experienced trauma focuses on a body region that gets activated by trauma, the more likely they are to become retraumatized and dysregulated. You want to make sure you’re doing that and having support with someone who understands how to do a trauma, how to do trauma-sensitive work. Yep, well said. Yeah, so I wanted to just say that. We talked about window of tolerance is the other idea we just talked about. You can either move on or you can say an area, widen your window of tolerance. Those are also working within those levels, too. As we’re having the conversation, as we’re wrapping the conversation here, Ani, you already noted what were some of your favorite things. What are some of your favorite things about body scans? You said before that you don’t always like them, but what are some of your favorite things about body scans?

Ani
I really like being led. I like it when people do body scan sequentially. I’m not a fan of being led through a body scan where people bounce around.

Brian
Okay.

Ani
That just feels really good for me. When somebody’s intention is to lead through a body scan and to relax and they queue well, I really enjoy that a lot. I actually really like doing body scans in a group as a part of stuff. I’ve done that a number of times in my life, and I don’t know. I think it somehow creates connection with the group on a different level. It also then makes whatever practices we’re going to do, it doesn’t matter what it is, just feel more satisfying.

Brian
Yeah. Those are all great things. All great things. How about you? Yeah. Thanks for asking. For me, I would rather not be lead than lead. I like doing my own process. I can relax into that more. If I am lead, however, doing a body scan, I like it to be very vanilla. I do like a sequential body scan, but the way I like it is basically, Okay, pay attention to your feet, and then they don’t say anything else. I just get to pay attention to my feet, and then, Okay, we’re going to your knees. Don’t say anything else.

Ani
I don’t like that.

Brian
Go to her, don’t say anything. That I actually can fill in my own experience. All the person is doing is cueing, timing me through the body scan to keep me moving so I don’t get hung up in one area too long or I don’t drift off. But I’ve been in body scans before where I don’t like the bouncing around thing. I’ve been in body scans where people have bounced around and I’m like, Where are you going next? I’m always thinking about, Where are you going next? It disrupts It stops my ability to actually settle.

Ani
Where are we going next? What did we miss? Have we done the belly? Did we do the head?

Brian
I don’t remember. Yeah, totally. I have the same experience. I like the sequential practice, personally. Then I’ve also been in body scans where people, even if they’re going sequentially through, what they’ll do is they’ll name the body part, and then they’ll bring it a bunch of visualization.

Ani
I’m not a fan of that.

Brian
Then I get lost in visualization. I just drift off. Then it’s literally, I don’t come back to we’re in our arms, and I’m like, What happened? Where was I between the legs and the arms?

Ani
I like visual-led meditations when I know they’re going to be visually led, and that’s what we’re doing. But to me, mixing the two feels like oil and water or whatever. I’m not a fan of that.

Brian
Yeah, that’s what I mean by very vanilla for me. I need to feel like the less talking is a part of it, the better, for me.

Ani
I like a good queue, but I really like it to be the same. I wouldn’t have said vanilla. That makes sense now. I like it to be very routine. We’re going to do, for example, your arms are heavy, your head’s heavy, your legs are heavy. Everything’s heavy. I don’t want different cues. I don’t want to walk through the forest.

Brian
Right. Yeah, it’s the same thing. Not that I don’t like walking through the forest meditations, but I need to know that’s what we’re doing. Exactly. That’s just for me. I don’t know. It sounds like you are similar, but not spot on thing. Yeah. What’s it? Treks.

Ani
Similar, but not completely the same.

Brian
There you go. For you, for listeners, I hope this was a helpful podcast for you. I hope you got an understanding, a little bit understanding about body scans. You can go in general. You can go specifically through. Got these three levels you can work with. You want to make sure you’re doing these things in a trauma-sensitive way to make sure that you’re gaining from them and you’re keeping yourself safe and stable through the and the practice as well. Help yourself feel not only more relaxed, but more sensory literate about what’s going on in your body, which, by the way, is your subconscious mind. Correct.

Ani
Hey, not to put you on the spot, but I’m going Do you have any body scan stuff in the Somatic Coaching Academy library?

Brian
I believe that there is a body scan in the library.

Ani
Okay. I know there’s a bunch of course centering practices, but I’m not remembering all of them right now. So Listeners, if you’re looking for some certainly course centering practices, it sounds like there’s also a body scan. If you’re not in our Somatic Coaching Academy library, what the heck is that? There’s about 150 plus because we stopped counting content pieces in a vault area that anybody can get access to. It’s totally free. You do have to sign up because you need to log in and stuff. You go to our website and you can either click on library or there’s opt-ins basically all over the place. If you certainly can’t find it, just email us, info@ somaticcoachingacademy.com. But there’s just some great lead practices in there, and you can taste test a bunch of this stuff and look for the body scan.

Brian
You got it.

Ani
Hey, thanks. This was great. It’s just a good reminder of the fundamentals. We don’t always talk about them, and I really appreciate it bringing it back to the body.

Brian
Back to basics.

Ani
Back to the basics.

Brian
Bringing it back to the body. Yeah.

Ani
Thanks for joining us, everybody. We look forward to seeing you next week. Have a wonderful week. See you soon. Bye-bye.