Whether you’ve been reading a book, following an app or using online sessions, you may have noticed that some meditation sessions are titled ‘body scan’, or ‘full-body scan’. You may have even tried the body scan yourself.

In most cases, the sessions will start at the top of your head or the bottom of your feet and move upwards. You’ll pay attention to all of your muscles and body parts, putting each one into a state of relaxation. However, are there any benefits to these scans or are they simply another form of meditation. Let’s find out!

Enhance Your Focus & Concentration

During a full body scan, you’ll find that you’re constantly aware of your body. Through regular practice, this helps you to improve your level of concentration. A full body scan will typically last anywhere between ten minutes and an hour. The whole time you’ll be improving your focus skills by really focusing on the parts of your body and how they feel.

Becoming More Self-Aware

This is a common benefit of meditation but even more so when it comes to full body scans. If you’ve got a tightness in your body, such as your back or your legs, you may not be aware of it. This is because our days are normally very busy and it’s easy for us to be used to how it feels.

However, through a scan, you can become aware of these pains and aches. During the scan, you’ll be told to breathe into these parts of the body so you can relieve the stress. But, the stress doesn’t go, you’ll be more aware of this ache, enabling you to do something about it, so it doesn’t cause any long-term damage.

You may also complete a scan and realise your body felt great, which a positive boost to your self-esteem!

Becoming Present

Another common benefit of meditation but again, more so in body scans. A body scan massively helps you to become more present. Too much of our lives are spent analysing the past and worrying about the future. However, the past is gone, and the future doesn’t exist, all that matters is right now.

Yes, that’s right this very second. Are you making the most of it? Because that second has now gone forever and the one we’re in now is going!

See, if this sentence makes you worry that time is going too quickly, it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, see this as a positive moment where every second will count.

Full body scans can help you achieve this state of present awareness which can echo throughout every corner of your life.

We are constantly connected to our digital devices; it’s a given. As people, we are constantly connected to the Internet and therefore the rest of the world. Writing this, I’m sat in a café which is playing music through an online app as I’m connected the Wi-Fi connection with my smartphone next to me for answering emails. As a blogger, I’m probably more connected to the Internet on a daily basis than most people but being connected is a very interesting concept. On Friday 28^th July 2017, I decided to try disconnecting for an entire day.

I put all my work on hold the day before, answered all of my essential emails and turned everything off. I have practised constant meditation and yoga for a month now and, through this blog, I constantly preach about the concepts and ideologies of being present and aware of what we are doing. So, in light of this, I decided to switch off for a day to become truly present. Browsing our social media feeds and constantly analysing our calendars keeps us from being present so I decided to test this theory.

Waking Up

When I awoke on Friday morning, I instantly got up, meditated and completed a 15-minute yoga session and instantly went for my smartphone, as I normally would, to check my emails. As I went to unlock my device and realised it was off, I remembered what I had set out to do! Just from habit, I had already forgotten what I had planned to do. So instead, I went down to breakfast and sat contemplating what to do for the day.

Usually, I would be getting ready to work or would take my morning tea to my office and make a start. Instead, I simply sat and enjoyed my breakfast looking out my kitchen window. I was already starting to feel the benefits of simply taking in what was around me. From here, I decided to go for a walk. I live in a very rural area so it’s easy for me to get lost in the great outdoors and I quickly found myself very far from civilisation.

Connect With Nature

The sky looked beautiful, the air felt pure but I still felt urges to access my phone. As a hobby, I love photography, and my smartphone has one of the leading cameras which helps me to practice. I walked past several photo opportunities but simply appreciated them for what they were without having to take a picture. Admittedly, it was a strange experience, but it was liberating, knowing I would be the only person to ever witness this exact event without having to share it on my feeds.

When I returned home, I phoned my other half on my landline phone for a quick catch up of her day before wondering how to spend my afternoon. I cooked a nutritious lunch, a pastime I usually rushed in light of getting back to work. I then sat in the garden and read all afternoon. Once it got to the evening, I invited my family over, and we sat and chatted for hours. It was very strange to see the rest of my family picking up and putting down their devices to answer messages or to check their feeds whereas I hadn’t touched mine once. I then read a bit more and went to bed. I would usually browse my feeds for half an hour before going to bed, but here I went straight to sleep. Let me tell you; it was probably the most refreshing sleep I’ve had in a long time.

Conclusion

All in all, this was a very perspective changing experience. I have never felt more alive, more present and more connected to the world around me. Even in the 15 hours, I was awake; everything felt so refreshing, so new. I haven’t felt like that in a long time. My takeaway from this is to find balance in my future. From now on, I want to try disconnecting when I can without giving into the temptations of digital life. I felt so productive, so focused and would be able to achieve anything I put my mind to.

I highly recommend disconnecting for one day, simply to feel how you get on. Trust me; it will open up your eyes to a whole new lifestyle. Let me hear your thoughts. Have you attempted to try disconnecting? What were your experiences? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!

Yesterday, we explored the ins and outs of becoming self-aware and briefly touched on some of the best ways to start your journey towards a more positive existence. Despite knowing how to become more self-aware, today, I would like to explore with you the benefits of becoming more so. Why is being more aware such a beneficial thing? Surely if it was that great, more people would have heard of it and would be practising it every day?

This is exactly what we are trying to educate people with here. By sharing this knowledge, more and more people can understand the simple life changes that they can make to greatly benefits all other areas of lives. Now, for your own peace of mind, here is a list of some of the many benefits you can stay enjoying the second you start becoming more aware.

The Conscious Act

Firstly, it’s important to note that events are happening all around us, every second of every day. By becoming more aware of yourself in the present, you start to notice these events and can, therefore, react to them accordingly.

For example, if you’re walking down the street on your way to work, you may be lost in thought, considering what to have for dinner, what you’re going to do at work or what you’re doing at the weekend. By becoming more aware, and more present, you start to take notice of the things that are happening around you. Maybe someone is struggling with a heavy box? Perhaps there’s a discount of that holiday destination you always wanted to visit? Maybe you can just take a deep breath and admire the beauty of your city at that time in the morning.

Whatever it is that’s happening around you, becoming aware of it can positively benefit your life in infinite ways.

Live Without Limits

By becoming more in tune with your inner self, you’ll start to notice that you feel a lot more confident in yourself. Imagine you’re going currently trying to figure out your life. What career do you want? Do you want to travel or start your own business? Whatever it is you want to do, becoming self-aware allows you the time and patience to realise your inner goals, enabling you to believe in yourself that these dreams are achievable.

Turning Dreams into Goals

At its core, we dream when we’re asleep. When people say, ‘Oh, that’s my dream holiday destination’, to me, this leads me to believe that that holiday destination is only something that appears in their dreams which keep it outside reality. Mentally, it makes this dream unobtainable because it is just a dream.

However, when you convert your dreams into goals, they become a lot more real. They become a lot more obtainable. Instead of pondering and dreaming about starting a business or travelling the world, make it your goal. Every decision you make in your life can be in the effort of achieving that goal. This mindset will allow you to live your dreams. This mindset can be achieved by becoming self-aware.

More Experience & Enjoyment from Life

One of the most overlooked benefits of becoming self-aware through meditative practices is the enjoyment you’ll start to receive out of life. After you have been practising, you’ll feel a lot more in touch with your body. If you’re feeling stressed about something, you’ll know what the cause of that stress is by listening to yourself, and you’ll be able to address it and relieve that stress. This means you’ll be able to spend a lot more mental energy enjoying the more positive experiences in your life.

You’ll learn to be more grateful for the things you have are currently doing, rather than focusing on what you haven’t got or where you’d like to be.

Love Yourself & Others

If you’ve ever completed a guided meditation, you will have heard something along the lines of ‘Accept who you are and who you feel, without judgement’. This is the key to becoming self-aware. Through the media and through the channels that modern-day society has created, nowadays, we are constantly berating ourselves and criticising ourselves for the way we are. If you’re feeling sad or stressed, we view these in negative ways and judge ourselves accordingly.

If you’re feeling sad, it will only make things worse if you ponder this sadness instead of listening to your mind on why you’re sad and what you can do to make things better. Without judgement, your perspective on your feelings will be a lot clearer and a lot more honest, enabling you to love yourself openly and, consequently, those around you.

Genuine Happiness

To conclude my list of self-awareness benefits, I’ve chosen happiness. If you address each point in the list above and you’re welcome to the new feelings of gratitude and appreciation you have for yourself and the present world around you, genuine and authentic happiness will come naturally to you.

From personal experience, I’ve begun spending a lot less time on social media because I’m outside, turning my dreams into goals and turning those goals into achievements. It doesn’t even have to be a big dream; maybe you wanted to learn a new instrument or a new language. But investing real time into these ambitions, without the judgement of others and doing it for your own satisfaction, you can take control of your life. This allows you to live the life you want to live.

In the next article, we’ll be exploring the aspect of growing your mind. This includes fuelling your mind with knowledge and how this can help you become more self-aware, benefitting your life for the better. We’d love to hear your thoughts and whether you have any ideas or things you want to talk about. Get touch by leaving your comments in the comment section below.

One of the most difficult concepts of meditation that the majority of people struggle with is getting to grips with practice. Scientifically, meditation is the exercise of the mind and, like any muscle, you can only build strength over time and with regular practice. With that in mind, many people practising meditation, especially for the first time, may find it difficult.

When you’re listening to a guided meditation, and you hear ‘clear your mind’, it’s not uncommon for people to become frustrated. This can eventually lead to feeling more stressed than before the practice and is one of the main reasons people stop. However, there’s a very simple method that you can try to improve your technique, allowing you a greater understanding of the practice. This practice can be performed anytime and anywhere and is extremely basic but essential for getting a grip on the basics.

If you start your meditation practices using this technique, you’re much more likely to stick and the process. Once you start improving, you’ll quickly find your mind becomes a lot calmer alongside the other benefits that meditation brings.

By focusing on one word, commonly referred to as a ‘Mantra’, you can slow down your brain. This draws your focus to this one word and, in time, the other distractions in your mind will fade away. It’s highly recommended that you practise this technique at least twice a day. However, there’s no pressure to, and you can simply do what you can. If you can make time to practice, instead of browsing social media, for example, you will feel the benefits tenfold. By practising each day, your mind will begin to feel more and more at ease with a lot less stress.

This reduction in stress will not only affect you; it’ll affect your work, your social groups and your family circles. More positive energy in yourself and you can change your life.

The Technique

This very simple technique is really easy to master, and it’s a great step in the right direction. Simply think of a word. This word will be your mantra. It can be anything you want, but it’s got to be something you can easily repeat in your head.

If you are stuck for ideas, try using one of these; Release, Relax, I Am Calm or Peace.

While meditating, it’s inevitable that random thoughts and feelings will pop into your head. By remembering this easy-to-remember word, you can subtly repeat it over and over again in your head, drawing your focus back to your practice. Over time and with regular practice, you can slowly stop those irritating thoughts entering your mind. This will allow you to better concentrate when completing guided meditations.

This technique is that simple. You can practice for as long or little as you like, but it’s recommended you try and achieve an hour a day. This is easy to achieve if you break that up into four 15-minute sessions. This could be when you wake up, twice during the day and once before you go to bed. Once you’ve completed the session, you’ll feel so much more awake, alert, productive and ready to take on the world! Even if you work in an office, once you have finished a task, complete a ten-minute session. This takes no time at all, and you can simply regather your energy to tackle the next task!

Just remember to keep your eyes closed and focus as strong as it can be. Over time, even over the course of a week, you’ll begin to notice the difference.

If you have any questions or would like more advice on this technique, leave a comment in the comment section below. If you have more advice for people just starting out, or technique that works for you, let us know!