Five Vital Ways to Sneak Mindful Awareness of Body Sensations into Your Busy Day
Checking a person’s vital signs is a fundamental aspect of medical care.
With just five easily measured bits of data, vitals give healthcare professionals a fast, objective way to spot the early signs of potential medical concerns.
Checking your vital sensations
While it’s important to pay attention to what can be measured, sensations related to our basic bodily functions provide lots of opportunities for toggling your attention away from your imagination and into what’s playing out in the present.
Here are five vital-signs-inspired ways to sneak some mindful body awareness into your routine.
Weight
Try to sense the basic heft of specific parts of the body. Not to determine its actual weight but to notice it resting in physical space.
Not in a quantitative way — not trying to guess how many pounds or ounces it would register — but more like trying to feel the impact of gravity, the way the body takes up physical space.
Then try to do the same things with various regions of the body and the entire body as a whole.
Temperature
Notice the general body temperature. Does it seem to be the same over your whole body or varied?
What part of the body feels the coolest right now? The warmest?
Are there places where it’s difficult to gauge any temperature at all?
Briefly noticing the overall temperature of your body, or of specific physical locations within it, is a great way to get a little mental reset. The more you practice, the more effective it becomes.
Pulse
Can you detect the rhythm of your heart beating?
Does resting your attention on your hands or feet for a bit make it possible to detect blood flowing in your fingers or toes?
If you’re not able to sense your pulse in these ways, you can place a couple of fingers on your wrist or along the side of your windpipe.
Instead of counting the number of beats within a specific duration of time, just tune into the rhythm itself — as if it were any other aspect of nature you wanted to observe for no other reason than because it’s kind of amazing.
Respiration
Not that breath awareness needs any more mindfulness PR, but they’re a popular choice for good reason.
You can notice a few exhales or inhales or notice them both.
You can control the pace a little, a lot, or try not to control it at all.
Don’t try to stop thinking. Just give the sensations related to breathing the spotlight for a few seconds or minutes. Your eyes can be open or closed. As with any mindfulness exercise, experiment to find an approach that holds your interest.
Pressure
Instead of trying to notice your blood pressure, see if you can detect any subtle or not-so-subtle emotional pressure.
If you do, instead of trying to get rid of it, investigate its physical aspects.
Where do you feel it? All over? Localized?
Do any specific emotional flavors stand out? Fear? Frustration? Agitation? Restlessness? Something else?
How intense is the discomfort? Mild? Moderate? Strong?
As you explore it in this way, does it change in any way? Size? Composition? Intensity?
You can explore these techniques while sitting, standing, walking, or even lying down. Test them out in a variety of circumstances. Make your way through all five or just pick one or two.
To turn them into formal meditation exercises, try this eighteen-minute guidance from a recent mindful midday pause.
Habitually observing body sensations a few times a day is an outstanding way to experience the impact of mindfulness practice for yourself — not to try to be relaxed all the time, but to experience a little more vitality.
Did you know that people who sign up for my 30-Day All Practice Membership receive recordings of the weekly Midday Mindful Pause sessions?
