Filling the Body With Light: 12 Minute Meditation

Vidyamala Burch guides us through a calming body scan meditation that focuses on bringing light and ease into the body.

This guided body scan for filling the body with light invites you to imagine a soft, soothing sensation radiating throughout your body, helping to ease any tension and cultivate a sense of relaxation. As you move through this meditation, you’ll have the opportunity to release stress and connect deeply with a feeling of inner peace, bringing lightness into your body and mind.

A Guided Meditation for Filling the Body with Light

1. Begin by lying down. If this is uncomfortable for any reason, then of course, adopt another posture. 
2. Allow your awareness to settle down into the body. Take a deep breath in and then on the outbreath, give the weight up to gravity. Drop awareness into the points of contact between the body and the surface it’s resting upon. 
3. Allow the breathing to settle and to find its own natural rhythm. Sense the swelling on the in breath and subsiding on the out breath in the whole body. 
4. Let your awareness flow down through the body, down through the legs all the way into the toes, feeling any sensations in the toes. If you can’t feel anything for any reason, that’s fine. Just see if you can be aware of the toes of inhabiting the toes with awareness. 
5. Imagine that the toes are filled with light, with spaciousness, with ease. Let the sense flow down into the feet, the tops, the ankles. Imagine the feet drenched in light, drenched in radiance, drenched and open in their softness.
6. Next, allow the sense to pour up through the ankles into the lower legs. Let this quality of light of radiance overflow and pour into the knees, filling into the shape of the knees, whatever position they’re in. Visualize it pulling up and saturating the thighs, the big muscles of the thighs, the bones, the thighs full of this radiant awareness. 
7. If you’ve got any discomfort anywhere in the legs of the feet, see if it can be soothed and softened by this quality of light and radiance. Next, envision it pouring up through the hips and the buttocks. Let the buttocks be soft, whether you’re lying down or sitting. Full of life, full of radiance. 
8. Next, allow this quality to pour up and to fill the abdomen, the belly. Feel it deep inside the body, noticing the way the abdomen swells a little bit on the end breath and subsides on the outbreath, being careful not to force or strain, letting this be the natural breath with receptive awareness. Now allow this quality of light to pour up into the whole chest area, the ribs and the lungs filled with the rhythm of breathing. 
9. Feel the breath expanding the face on the in breath and subsiding the face on the outbreath. Be aware of the whole front of the torso, the abdomen and the chest full of light. Allow awareness to rest in the rhythm of breathing. Expanding. Subsiding. Expanding. Subsiding. 
10. Now allow your awareness to flow all the way down to the buttocks and the back of the body. Let this quality of light pour up into the lower back. Can you feel breathing expressing itself in the lower back in any way? Perhaps an expanding and a subsiding. Maybe the angle or the shape is changing a little bit with each in and out breath. If there’s any discomfort, see if you can let it be soothed and softened by this quality of light, radiance, and the rhythm of breathing. 
11. Now imagine this quality pouring up through the whole back of the body, the middle back and the upper back, the length of the spine, the breadth of the back. Notice the rhythm of breathing, expressing itself in the whole back of the body. Opening, subsiding, opening, subsiding, filling the whole torso, the front, the back, the sides, the inside, the surface. Feel the soothing, gentle lights and the rhythm of breathing and the whole torso soothing any hard edges, softening any contraction. 
12. Let this quality pour through the shoulders, all the way down to the very tips of the fingers. Envision the shoulders, the arms, the hands, the fingers all becoming drenched and saturated and light. Feel the gentle, soothing quality, letting the hands rest in gravity. Let the shoulders fall away from the midline of the body as the arms rest in gravity. 
13. Now allow your awareness to flow up into the neck and the head. If you’re lying down, make sure you’re giving the weight of the head up to the pillow with the cushion fully. If you’re sitting, have the head poised on the top of the neck as best you can. Allow this quality of light and radiance to completely saturate the whole head, even the brain. Even the brain can rest in this quality of brightness! Feel it moving through your whole face: forehead, eyes, cheeks, nose, lips, jaw, tongue, mouth. Imagine them all full of softness, full of light. 
14. Finally, let’s expand awareness to the whole body: the legs, the torso, the arms, neck, head, face. Rest your awareness very deeply inside this quality of the whole body being filled with light, filled with ease, or the possibility of ease, and breathing. Any hard edges, any contraction soothed and eased by breath by light, by this quality of resting here moment by moment. 
15. As we begin to prepare to bring this meditation to a close, see how it feels to form an intention to take this quality with you into your day, if you’re doing this during the day, or into your sleep, if you’re doing it in the evening. This quality of rest is light, brightness, and softness. When it comes time to move, do it gently and carefully as you prepare to engage with whatever you’re going to do next. Thank you so much for practicing with me today.