Tool 04 · Breathing & Body

Body Scan Guide

A head-to-toe attention tour. Pick a length, follow the voice in your head, and tap any region that wants more time.

Tap a region to linger there

Region 0 of 12

Ready

Pick a length and press Start. There is nothing to do — just notice.

~30s on this region · total —

If you fall asleep, that's fine. If your mind wanders, that's also fine — when you notice, return to where you were. The instruction is to notice, not to fix.

How to use it

Pick a length. 3 min fits before a meeting or as a mid-day reset. 8 min is the daily-practice default. 14 min is for evenings and weekends.
Lie down if you can; sit upright if you can't. Either works.
Press Start. The body outline fills region by region, head to toe.
When you tap a region on the body outline, you'll spend an extra 30 seconds there.
When the timer ends, stay still for half a minute before getting up.

When to reach for it

Before sleep, when your body is tired but your mind is not.
After an anxiety spike, to land back in the body.
After long sitting — when your back is one solid plank of tension.
As a daily 8-minute practice to build interoception (the ability to notice what's happening inside).

Reading your results

There is no score. The "result" is what you noticed. Often: a hip you've been clenching for an hour, a jaw you didn't realise was tight. The 30-second linger button exists for the moment when one region feels more interesting or more uncomfortable than the others — that's the place to stay.

What this actually does

A body scan is a structured form of interoception — attention to internal sensation. Most anxious thinking lives in the abstract: about a future meeting, a past mistake, a hypothetical disaster. The body scan pulls attention into the concrete, sensory present — the pressure of the chair on your sit bones, the warmth of your hands, the place where your shoulder meets your neck.

It doesn't ask you to fix or change anything. It just asks you to notice. That single act of noticing does two things. It interrupts the runaway train of thought by giving attention somewhere else to land. And it accumulates a kind of bodily self-awareness that, over weeks, makes it easier to catch tension early instead of at 11pm.

Who it's for

People whose anxiety is partly physical — restless legs, tight chest, clenched jaw, GI distress — and who want to learn to feel it earlier. People who find pure breathing work too passive or too short. Anyone curious about mindfulness but put off by meditation apps with names like "Inner Radiance Bliss". It's also one of the few anxiety tools that's appropriate for most physical conditions, since you set the pace.

If you're in acute pain, scanning into the pain can amplify it. Scan around it instead — the parts that don't hurt.

Limitations

The body scan doesn't directly change thoughts. It also doesn't fix the things that caused the tension in the first place — bad ergonomics, poor sleep, a job you hate. And for some people, especially those with trauma, scanning into the body without support can be activating rather than settling. If body-based practice reliably destabilises you, that's information, not failure — try a thinking tool instead and consider trauma-focused support.

How to read your results

The "result" is what you noticed, not whether you did it right. Most people notice more on the second or third scan than on the first, because attention is a skill that improves with practice. If you can name a sensation you couldn't have named yesterday, that's the win.

Common questions

Why three lengths? ▾

Body scans are time-flexible, but the research usually groups them into short (under 5 min), standard (around 10 min), and long (over 12 min). Short is for in-the-moment resets; medium is the daily practice sweet spot; deep is for evenings and weekends. The 30-second linger on any region is what makes this version more useful than a fixed-length track — you can give time to whatever needs it.

Should I do this sitting or lying down? ▾

Either. Lying down makes it easier to notice sensations (no posture work) and easier to fall asleep, which is often a feature rather than a bug. Sitting upright is better at work or before driving. If you fall asleep during an evening scan and that's what your body needed, you've done it right.

I keep getting distracted. ▾

That's the practice. The instruction is "when you notice you've wandered, return". Each return is a rep of attention, the same way each bicep curl is a rep of strength. You are not failing by getting distracted. You are failing if you never notice that you've been distracted.

Can I do this with my eyes open? ▾

Yes. Soft gaze on a fixed point (a wall, the body outline on this page) is fine and often easier for people who feel odd with eyes closed. Some people close their eyes for the head and face, open them for the legs and feet, where there's less to "see" anyway.

What are the common mistakes when using Body Scan Guide?

Most common mistakes come down to four habits: entering 20 when the field expects 0.2 because the field is a percentage; leaving a field blank and accepting the default without checking what it stands for; changing one input and reading a result that was calculated before the change; and quoting the output as an exact figure when the page describes it as a reference estimate. Press calculate again after any edit, and treat the number as a reference point rather than a final answer.

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