A shared practice
Nourishing Your Body With Attention
S
Created bySean Fargo
Part 3 of Sean's sleep series — recorded in his own voice.
In Sean Fargo’s own voice8 min
Read along — the full script
Biologically, sleeping is nourishing for humans. It's a way of recharging our batteries and resting our minds and helping us regain our sense of balance. For many of us, sleeping is a challenge. It can be very difficult to maintain a solid regimen of sleep throughout the night.
Many of us toss and turn or wake up frequently for a wide variety of reasons. This mindfulness exercise of nourishing our bodies with a nourishing body scan can help us befriend sleep again by associating sleep with a sense of nourishment and calm and pleasure. So if you're not lying down already, I invite you to lay down, turning up the volume on your device or putting on earphones as we practice this mindfulness exercise of a nourishing body scan.
So please lay down flat on your back if that's comfortable for you, with both feet outstretched and your hands by your side or folded across your belly with a sense of ease and relaxation. Soften the belly and loosen the muscles of the face and the jaw. Take a couple of big, deep breaths, emphasizing the exhale.
One more. Deep breaths. Now shift your awareness to the bottoms of your feet. Now imagine a warm, soft feeling in your feet, filling your toes and your feet with a warm, soft feeling of spaciousness and ease throughout your feet.
A sense of weightlessness, warmth, softness throughout your feet. Scanning through the feet, up the ankles, feeling a warm, soft, spacious feeling. Moving up the legs slowly and gently. Feeling calm and spacious. Filling the legs with a warm softness.
As you move up the knees and the hamstrings, filling your legs with softness. Moving up through the pelvic region, filling it with a sense of softness and ease and spaciousness. Scanning upwards through the belly and the lower back.
Filling your body with a sense of softness and warmth and ease. Upwards through the chest and the shoulders. Filling the body with soft, nourishing spaciousness. And filling the arms and the elbows and the hands with a feeling of soft ease, warm spaciousness.
Relaxing the body. And moving up through the neck and into the head. Feeling spacious. Feeling soft. With a sense of warm relaxation throughout the body. Feeling nourished from head to toe.
More from Sean Fargo
Make one of your own
This practice was written and narrated with Mindfulness Exercises Pro. Yours takes a few minutes to make.
$0 today · cancel anytime · your work stays yours
Or describe one in the composer — the trial composes it
Just here to listen? You can ask for a practice made for what you’re carrying — a hard week, a racing mind, a night you can’t sleep — and hear it back.
Tell us what you need →Free · no account