Scanning the body for held tension and deliberately letting it go, one muscle group at a time.
Listen to the Meditation
About This Practice
Stress carries itself in the body. We go through the day braced without noticing, jaw set, shoulders raised, stomach tight, and by evening we have no idea why we ache.
The tension is not incidental. It is part of how the stress response works, and it feeds back into the emotion that produced it. A body held rigid is a body signalling that something is wrong, and the mind reads that signal and concludes that something must be.
Releasing it deliberately breaks that loop from the physical end, which is useful on the days when working with the belief directly feels out of reach.
There is a second benefit that builds over time. The more familiar you become with what tension feels like, the earlier you catch it. Rather than discovering at midnight that you have been clenched since a difficult conversation at eleven, you notice at the time, which is when you can still do something about it.
Simple, physical, and a good place to start when everything feels like too much.
Micro Practice: Three Breaths
A few times a day, take three breaths.
- Breathe and settle on the breath itself.
- Breathe and scan for tension. Jaw, shoulders, hands, stomach.
- Breathe out and let it soften.