Introduction to Mindfulness - Dean Amory

not present”. It was agreed by everyone present that being out of
touch with one’s body and feelings was a major risk for someone in
recovery as tensions and urges could creep up on you unawares and
get the better of you. The idea of taking some time daily to check in
systematically with your body and “stay in touch with it” became the
rationale for the Body Scan exercise, which is simply a slowed down
body awareness exercise, where attention is brought very
systematically to each part of one’s body.
As one of the participants described in the follow-up interviews,
addiction brings with it a fundamental mind-body disconnection,
mindfulness allowed her to confront this in a gentle way: “I walked
around for 2 years with a shoulder that was out when I was
addicted…. I did register the pain, got migraines etc., I felt it severely,
but I was still running from it, wouldn’t confront it.”
A recording of John Kabat-Zinn’s (JKZ) guided body scan exercise
was used because the team had purchased copies of this CD for each
person to practice at home, and it was felt that they should be
introduced to it within the formal program.
Feedback:
Reactions to the Body Scan exercise were mixed, but with more
people responding unfavourably than favourably. Table 2 gives a
sample of some of these reactions.
Some group members wanted JKZ to move a lot faster. Some
realised that the reason the body scan is slow is that it is as much
training for your mind to remain focused as any other meditation
exercise. And that it takes time to feel what’s happening in your body
when you’ve been out of touch with it for a long time. And someone
else did report how she had arrived in a negative mood, not knowing
why, only to realise through the body scan that she was extremely
angry: “I was very angry within myself when I came in… in a rage
actually. By doing the BS I felt like I was able to be in my body
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