When did you last actually check in with your body? Not track it, not analyse it — just notice how it feels?
For most of us on the TTC rollercoaster, our relationship with our bodies has become almost entirely functional. We monitor and measure. We wait. The body is something that is either performing or failing, and either way we are watching it from a distance, from inside our heads, slightly braced for the next piece of news.
And meanwhile the body is just getting on with it. Carrying everything. While we’re busy thinking.
A body scan is the simplest possible antidote to this. It is not a technique or a treatment. You are not trying to fix anything or achieve anything. It is just a quiet moment of attention – a “hey, how are you doing?” directed inward, perhaps for the first time all day.
What comes up often surprises people.
Tension in places they have stopped noticing. Breathing that has been shallow for hours. A tightness in the belly or a heaviness in the chest that makes complete sense once it is named. Of course it does, given everything.
You just notice. And something shifts simply in the act of noticing – the nervous system softens a little, the breath deepens on its own, the bracing eases.
This is why a body scan is the first thing I include in my fertility yoga course. Before any movement, before any breathwork, there is just this. A moment to arrive. To come back to yourself after a day – or a season – of living entirely in your head.
I have seen it change the quality of everything that follows. Not because anything in the situation changed, but because something in the relationship with the body did. A little less adversarial and a little more like coming home.
If this resonates, I would love for you to try it. The course is gentle – no pressure or performance. Just you, your body, and a little breathing room.
Recommended articles:
Heart and Womb: A Meditation for Fertility
Trying to Conceive: The Language Matters Too
Photo by Margaret Young on Unsplash