The body scan

The teaching

As the Burmese sweep of U Ba Khin and S. N. Goenka, and the clinic body scan teaches it.

Mindfulness of the body

The oldest teaching of attention to the body is the first foundation in the Buddha's discourse on the foundations of mindfulness. It gives six ways in: the breath; the four postures of walking, standing, sitting and lying, each known as it is held; clear knowing in every ordinary act, looking, bending, dressing, eating, falling asleep and waking; a review of the body's parts, up from the soles of the feet and down from the crown of the head; the body seen as the four elements of earth, water, fire and air; and the contemplations of the charnel ground, which compare one's own body with a corpse in its stages of decay. The last are for monks under a teacher and are not a reader's practice.

The review of the parts gives the picture that every body scan since has followed. It is like a bag with an opening at each end, full of mixed grain, which a man with good eyes opens and looks through: this is hill rice, this is red rice, these are beans, these are peas. The body is gone through in order, place by place, and what is there is seen plainly, with nothing added.

Sensation, the field of the scan

The Burmese teachers who made the scan a method rest it on a second foundation, feeling, which the Pali calls vedana. Whatever touches the body is felt as pleasant, unpleasant or neither. The meditator's work is to feel each sensation exactly as it is, warmth, coolness, pressure, tingling, itching, throbbing, heaviness, lightness, an ache or nothing at all, and to meet each with the same even mind: not reaching for the pleasant, not pushing away the unpleasant, not bored by the neutral.

That even mind is equanimity, and in Goenka's teaching it is the whole point. Every sensation arises and passes away. Meeting it with craving or aversion lays down a new habit of reaction, which the Pali calls a sankhara; watching it rise and pass without reacting lets old reactions surface and fade. The word the teacher repeats is anicca, impermanence: this too changes.

The sweep, from head to feet

In the ten-day courses the scan follows three and a half days of attention to the breath at the nostrils and the small area above the upper lip, so that the mind is already sharp. Then the attention begins at the top of the head and moves down, part by part: the face, the back of the head, the neck, each shoulder and arm to the fingertips, the front and back of the trunk, the hips, and each leg down to the toes. Then it travels back up from the feet to the head. Each part is held for a moment, long enough to feel what is there.

Where a part seems blank, the meditator waits there calmly for about a minute; if nothing is felt, they move on, and on a later round a sensation will often have appeared. Later, when the sensations grow fine and even, the attention may pass through the body in one flowing movement. Goenka warns against craving that flow: whenever coarse or blank places appear again, the scan goes back to part by part. The full method is given only in those courses, and what follows is the shorter scan that anyone can try at home.

The clinic scan, from feet to crown

The hospital course made the sweep a practice done lying down and reversed its direction. Lying on the back, arms by the sides, the person first feels the whole body resting on the floor and the belly rising and falling. Then the attention goes to the toes of the left foot, the sole, the heel, the top of the foot and the ankle, and climbs the left leg; then it goes down to the toes of the right foot and climbs the right leg; then the pelvis and hips, the lower back and belly, the upper back and chest, both hands and arms together, the shoulders, the neck and throat, the face and the back of the head, and at last the crown.

At each place the breath is used as a carrier. The person imagines breathing in to that place and out from it, stays a few breaths, and then, on an out-breath, lets that place go and moves to the next. At the end the whole body is felt at once, breathing as one, before the eyes open.

The attitudes of the scan

Kabat-Zinn's course names seven attitudes to bring to it: not judging, patience, a beginner's mind, trust, not striving, acceptance and letting go. Not striving matters most here. The scan has no goal. A place does not have to relax, warm up or tingle; if it feels like nothing, then nothing is what is noticed. Relaxation often comes and is welcome, but it is not the aim. The aim is to be present to each part as it is.

The mind will leave the body many times. When it does, the person notices where it went, and comes back to the last place remembered, gently, as often as needed.

Pain and hard places

A part that holds pain can be met as sensation: its edges, its pulse, whether it is hot or sharp or dull, how it changes from one breath to the next. Equally, it can be passed over and come back to on another day, because the scan never requires anyone to stay with what is too much. The same holds for places that carry a hard memory. The scan only notices. It finds nothing right or wrong in the body, and a pain that worries a person is a matter for a doctor.

People who carry old trauma often do better with the eyes open, sitting up, with short scans of the hands and feet only, or with the attention resting where the body meets the chair and the floor. If unease rises, stop, open the eyes, sit up and look around the room.

Sleep, length and ending

Falling asleep is common and does no harm. When the aim is to practise rather than to rest, scanning with the eyes open, or sitting up, helps; some people use the scan in bed on purpose, as a way into sleep, and that is a different use of the same steps.

The clinic scan lasts about forty-five minutes. A beginner at home starts with ten: the feet, the legs, the trunk, the arms and hands, the neck and head, a few breaths at each. At the end, move the fingers and toes, stretch, roll to one side and sit up slowly.