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Body scans are an amazing tool for you to use, whenever you need to quickly relax, allow yourself to calm down, and get ready for any kind of visualization and dive, either static or dynamic. In doing a body scan you are dedicating your focus to one area of your body, feeling if there's any tension in that area, and if there is, you can send some relaxation to it. Brandon Reed, a freediving instructor, and visualization coach takes us through his method.
You can go ahead and find a space that is quiet, relaxing, and comfortable, either on a bed, on a yoga mat, on the floor, or on a chair, it's entirely up to you. As long as you will not be disturbed for the next 10 minutes, you are good to go. So at this moment, I want you to relax, you can begin by taking a few breaths into your nose, and out through the mouth, closing your eyes, breathing on your own time, not breathing too quickly or too slowly, just focusing on relaxing, breathing normally. Inhale relaxation, positivity, happiness, and love as you inhale in. As you exhale, exhale any tension, frustration, or any tightness that you might be holding or feeling at this moment. Inhaling positivity and exhaling negativity. Inhaling relaxation and exhaling stress. As you continue to breathe and listen to the sound of my voice, trusting that my purest intentions are to help you relax, to release any tension, and to prepare for any visualizations, dives, or even sleep at this moment.
For now, I want you to bring your awareness down to your toes, either by visualizing them or by noticing the feeling in your body. Bring your awareness to your toes and notice if you're holding any tension there at this moment, starting with your big toes, and moving out towards your pinky toes. If you sense any tension you can relax it away, by taking a breath inhaling relaxation, and exhaling tension. Perhaps instead you can notice a glowing ball of warm energy hovering over your toes, as that warmth that ball of energy hovers over your toes, you notice them just loosen and soften and relax. You can now scan moving that ball of energy up over the walls of your feet, over the arches of your feet and your heels. Again feeling for any tension, any tightness. If you notice any you relax it away, if you don't you move on to the next part of your body.
As you bring your awareness now up over your ankles, you feel that the areas that you've already scanned or been getting to feel slightly tingly or slightly numb, perhaps they're feeling warmer or cooler than the rest of your body, anything that you feel is perfectly okay, just a sign that our relaxation and our body scan is working. And scan now up over your ankles and into your calves, over your knees, and up into your thighs. Once again relaxing tension, relaxing tightness, softening all the muscles. As you continue to scan feeling your ankles, your calves, your knees, and your thighs feel slightly tingly, slightly numb, or something else.
You can move that ball of energy up over your hips, over your glutes, into your abdominals, in your lower back, up now to your diaphragm, the intercostals, and muscles around in between your ribs. Bring that ball of awareness now up to your chest, to your pecs, and then to your shoulders. Relax now, down your arms over your biceps and your triceps, over your elbows, into your forearms, your wrists, and into your hands, and then your fingers. Relax each individual finger until your hands are completely still, completely numb, and completely soft.
You can bring your awareness now back again, shoulders, relaxing the muscles that meet your neck from your back, and go up to your neck, and give some special attention to the base of your skull, and your neck itself is a place that we hold a lot of tension. You can scan over the back of your head, over to your jaw muscles, to the muscles around your eyes, muscles around your mouth, muscles around your face, just relaxing, letting your face feel droopy, almost feeling it being pulled towards the floor.
Finally, you can scan your tongue and your throat, feeling for any tension that you might be holding, any tightness, anywhere that your tongue might be pressed up against, just relax it all away, and take some time now to notice how relaxed you feel, how numb you feel, and when you're ready, you can either begin your breath session, you can begin your dive or your static, or you can just go to bed, it's completely up to you. I hope you enjoyed the session and we'll see you next time.