Body Scan Benefits
The Body Scan is the most effective mindfulness-based intervention for lowering mental and physical stress. This mindfulness hack activates the stress reduction qualities of a full body scan using just your hand, a table and 5 minutes of focus. Click this link to hear the guided exercise.
Mindfulness Based Intervention – an intimidating name! MBIs are part of what organizational mindfulness development tries to offer orgs, their teams and their individuals. It’s just a fancy term for a science-based practice that can help train attention or reduce stress… or both! The most proven skill for reducing stress – psychological and physiological – is the body scan. When trained with other mindfulness skills, the body scan is a very powerful tool, but it is also proven to be very effective as an isolated practice! A recent review of studies showed that an 8 week course in Body Scan produces (Morton, Melissa, “A Systematic Review of the Effects of the Body Scan on Stress and Psychopathology”, 2021):
- Significant reduction in stress across populations, but especially among women, including reactivity.
- Significant reduction in heart-rate and improved RSA (a respiratory measure).
- Lower cortisol levels and DHEA (a natural stress steroid) among PTSD diagnosed combat veterans.
- Significant reduction in rumination (obsessive worrying) and negative emotions.
A full body scan can take 30 – 45 minutes with a guided practice. That’s a big commitment during a workday. But when you practice a skill you don’t need much to activate the benefits. So, here’s the hack: The Hand Scan. This takes only about five minutes, and activates calmness, slows the heart rate and lowers stress. More important, it can trigger in you the full result of a full body scan, if you have that as a regular practice.
It would be hard to do this during a meeting, but I do sometimes use this as a focus before or after a meeting. And during a meeting – especially when I am watching other people’s stress and tension – I will often place my hand on the table in front of me or (if standing) on my outer thigh or the podium. Just the touch and my intention can trigger the sense of calm. The more you do it, the easier and deeper the practice goes. Imagine that!! The key is to try, to notice but then pass over any judgments we make (“I can’t feel the table”, “I’m distracted”, “my hand is sore”, “I forget where I was on my hand”) and just pick up again.
I use hands because they are so expressive for me of work, love, play, life … and also these days because my hands often hurt. I am a lucky genetic inheritor of Dupuytren’s Contracture (aka the Viking disease), which is progressing slowly but inevitably. Focus on my hands, in a real way, also stands in for life. What will your hands do so that your mind will remember?
As always, happy to chat!
