Using Meditation to Develop Gratitude and Love for Your Body
I'm your host Kara Stein-Conaway and this is The Business Mamas Podcast. The Business Mamas Podcast is made for women who know they should be doing more self-care and practicing more self-love but are overrun with balancing it all. This podcast provides the tools and support you need so you can have a successful career while also being a present and loving mom.
In this season, which is Season 4 of the podcast, I am sharing with you about my journey with meditation. I'm also sharing a particular meditation in each episode that I love, and that I hope you will love too.
I am so excited to get to talk with you more today about my journey with meditation and the benefits that I'm seeing in my life from practicing meditation.
One of the ways that I know that I've been benefiting from having a consistent meditation practice is that I am feeling more in touch and aligned with my body, with my mind, and with my heart.
By practicing meditation, I have been conscientiously spending time in my body.
I'll tell you a little bit more about what I mean by “in my body,” and the meditation that I want to share with you today is a really good example of that.
I'll just start by telling you a little bit about that meditation and how I have the experience of really being in my body while doing the meditation.
This meditation is called Bodyscan With Rumi, and it's by Schalk Neethling. It is a 24-minute meditation that I also found on the Insight Timer app, in the free section of the app, I will put a link in the Episode 35 show notes to this meditation so that you can also give it a try.
In case you haven't done a body scan before, I'll tell you a little bit about my experience. So, you're guided by the person doing the meditation to give attention to different parts of your body, usually starting with one end of your body and ending with another end of your body.
I believe this one that I'm sharing with you today starts with the toe of one foot, and you are guided to give your attention to each different part of your body moving from that big toe on one foot, up the leg, and so forth, until you've given your energy and your attention to every part of your body.
It's a really special experience to be still and to give your body that much attention, which is part of doing a body scan.
Resting your awareness on each part of your body is a special experience.
When I am engaged in a body scan, what comes up for me is this immense gratitude for:
how my body takes care of me,
how it functions in a way that allows me to be in this world in a way that I want to be in this world, and
how it allows me to be active to run up hills, to play with my children, and to do all these beautiful things that having a healthy body allows me to do.
By engaging in a body scan, for me it’s a gratitude practice of being appreciative for my body as a whole, and also being appreciative of every little aspect of my body.
Doing a body scan helps me really feel that deep support and awareness of my body showing up for me in such an incredible way.
As part of the Bodyscan With Rumi, Schalk Neethling also shares a Rumi poem for each chakra. I enjoy Rumi poems, so I feel like that is a little extra treat mixed into a body scan that is already a really nice experience .
I know that a lot of people experience feelings about their bodies that are not loving.
Sometimes the feelings people experience about their bodies are the opposite of loving. Part of my hope is that by sharing these tools that I have found, and used to cultivate more and more love for myself, which includes loving all aspects of me, that you can, especially if you're experiencing a lack of love for your body, or negative beliefs about your body, use this tool of doing a body scan meditation to reacquaint yourself with your body in a loving way.
When you develop love and appreciation for your body, and for all aspects of you, you will experience more peace, more presence, and more joy in your life, and I hold all those hopes in my heart for you.
If you enjoyed Episode 35 and this blog post, I would love it if you shared the blog or the podcast with someone you think could benefit from them. I would also be incredibly grateful if you could leave an honest rating and review of The Business Mamas Podcast on Apple Podcasts as that helps more people find the show and it helps me in sharing this message of practicing self-love and self-care with more people whose lives I know could be enriched by hearing it. Sign up to download my Morning Routine Guide and receive my twice-monthly newsletter at The Business Mamas Podcast. Until next time and with gratitude, Kara Stein-Conaway, @karasteinconaway on Instagram.
