Sober Synthesis

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction & Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention

Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We feel more alive. We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing.

  ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

“I had an epiphany.”

Guidelines for doing the Body Scan:

• Intention puts us in touch with why we pay attention. It helps us zero in on what is important
• Attention helps us train and stabilize our focus in the present moment.
• Attitude guides how we pay attention – specifically, with kindness and curiosity

~Shauna Shapiro, PhD

Zones of Experience – in Practice and in Life

Guidelines for doing the Body Scan

• Notice if you have ideas about success, failure, perfection, expectations about what the body scan will do for you, or getting somewhere. These thoughts are normal—and they can also get in the way of learning. When practicing the body scan, we are not trying to achieve anything including to become relaxed although this may be one experience we can have. Just this: Not trying to achieve anything in particular–is a radical approach to ANYTHING we might learn or take up. (You might even want to read this outloud each time before you practice as a way to remind yourself.) We are attending to our moment to moment experience, as experienced in the body through the different sensations that arise and are present, training and stabilizing our attention as it is guided systematically through the body. The body scan is not a skill that you are striving to perfect. A wandering mind is normal. As you notice that you’ve become caught up in thinking, guide attention back to the area of the body as guided – with care and kindness.
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• Cultivate as best you can an attitude of open, friendly acknowledgment of what is here, right now. Notice how, when we resist unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or sensations, the striving and aggression against what is actually here in the moment may only add to the unpleasantness of these experiences.
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• It is fine to shift or change positions as you practice. For example, you may begin by lying down and then experience sleepiness, or that your back becomes quite uncomfortable. You may then choose to sit up or even stand. 
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• Sometimes challenging sensations, memories, associations, emotions, and thoughts may arise as you practice. “Powering through” is not the approach to take! Here you can choose how to best respond. You may continue to practice bringing a gentle curiosity to the experience. Another option if your eyes are closed is to open the eyes and let your gaze settle gently on a particular point, allowing attention to anchor in sight. You might shift position – if lying down, sit up. Perhaps shift to a walking meditation feeling the feet as you move with each step. And you may choose to discontinue the practice. Sometimes this can be the most appropriate, wise and kind response.
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• Notice if you have expectations about what the body scan will do for you, and instead allow it to function as a seed that you are planting. This seed will eventually grow to become a life lived with more awareness and freedom to choose appropriate behaviors. In order to cultivate it, you only have to give it the proper conditions: time to devote to yourself, regular and frequent practice, and privacy and quiet.  There’s no need to control the effects of the body scan.
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• The most important guideline is just practice. You don’t have to feel a particular way during or after the practice, nor do you have to “like” the body scan. The most important thing is to simply practice. Acknowledging the commitment you’ve made to care of yourself in this way is by far the most important step.