Can anyone post a link to Goenka's body scan instruction? I am investigating and comparing different somatic practices. If anyone has any other links to any other practices where the body is primary please include a link, and if you have experience with the practice, the results. Thank you.

Bill

This is a decent summary of Goenka instructions. http://gurmeet.net/spiritual/vipassana-meditation-by-s-n-goenka-part-iii/  And this is Goenka talking about them, but it's for old students so the instructions aren't given as methodically here as they are on retreat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LxEIAl60L0 (Vipassana instructions begin around 12:30, before that is chanting and brief anapana. I always liked his chanting.)

Goenka's instructions are more focused on hitting every part of the body, compared to something like Reggie's Ray's 10 point practice. I found that useful for me personally, bc I've had many experiences of stubbornly staying on a numb part for however long it took to get a sensation, and eventually having a massive heat/release experience on other large parts of my body. The truly numb spots were usually on strange areas that you wouldn't focus on in something like Reggie's 10 points practice - like a spot behind my ear, or under a collarbone, and they would eventually lead to huge energy rushes down my entire back, or chest/stomach.  You're actually not supposed to stay indefinitely, per Goenka's instructions, but I somehow missed that instruction on my first 10 day retreat, and it had interesting results so I stayed with my version.

On the other hand Reggie has interesting ways of talking about looking for sensations, that triggered some different observations of sensations for me. For instance (and I can't remember if this was on retreat or on a recorded teaching) he talks about feeling into the difference between your big toe and you other toes, and he comments on how you might feel a heavier sort of aching, a feeling of something like strength/reponsibility in your big toe, compared to the other ones. I'm not getting the language exactly right here, and obviously the associations will be different in every body, but his way of talking about it seemed to cue me to a deeper sort of feeling of my body than Goenka's phrasing. 

A few months ago I started reading Bruce Frantiz's stuff on qigong, like this http://www.amazon.com/Opening-Energy-Gates-Your-Body/dp/1583941460 and feeling into the body seems to be pretty key for moving any kind of qi in his system. It's not the same methodology, but "sinking qi" reminds me of a more directed top-to-bottom body scan in some ways. I don't have much experience with this yet, but the small amounts of qigong I've done make me feel great consistently, whereas my pretty long history with Goenka and Reggie Ray body practices have profound but destabilizing effects on my nervous system (lots of bliss, lots of anger/agony). 

Excellent. Thank you! That's exactly what I'm looking for and it's useful. Yes, Reggie talks about almost personality types among the toes, the vulnerability of the little toe, etc. You were not far off if at all. If anybody else can add on here the more information the better.

Hi Bill, Hi all, 

Shhhh, it's a secret...

Might be able to pull out the exact instructions from the links below, I haven't doen that, and never having been on a Goenka retreat, was always curious as to the exact instructions.

But, I have listened to Goenka's ten day dhamma talks a couple of times and got the gist of it, something like this:

Scan from head to toe, systematically, start with a plam sized area, say at the top of the head, when one feels a sensation there move to the next sections, say the back of the head, when one feels a sensation there, move to the next area, say the front of the head, and so on, to the toes, then work from the toes back up.  Oh yeah, if one absolutley does not feel anything for like 30-60 seconds, move along, there are techniques to address this later.

As the skill develops with the above technique, one then goes to a smaller area of sensation, say a half dollar size, wash rinse repeat as above.

As the above skill develops , go to an even smaller size, say a pencil eraser, At this point I am just speculating and doing my own thing by reverse engineering from talks and what has been written on the internet.  Though not many talk about this as there is a secret handshake or something involved.

Also, it is of utmost importance to have reached a certain level of Equanimity First!  They do three days of Breath Meditation initially, before body scanning.  And I do feel that one should have a High degree of equanimity Before starting this sort of practice!  To anyone reading, Hello!  Shit will invariably come up to present itself to your mind, and if you can not face it with Equanimity, you have been warned! This is not a game, this is serious shit. Get Equanimity First.  Otherwise you are just stirring up your mind and not letting Equanimity do it's job of stabilizing sankaharas.

The mind is like a pond, when stirred up it gets muddy and nasty, when equanimity is presented the pond stills and becomes clean and clear.

Path of Purification, yada yada.

Okay, Goenka, what I have heard, later , I believe one does strip scanning, to unearth more sensations , by this one takes a one inch strip and criss crosses along body, meeting sensations with Equanimity.

Also, one moves to the internal scanning of the body, I do not know of any Goenka techniques for this.

Edit, oh yeah , Goenka,  finally one moves to the spinal chord sensations, inside and out, lookout Kundalini Uprising!  Seriously though, DO NOT play with fire!!!!

And, tada, Last day of retreat is Metta day, how nice...  Now Go Home!  Practice one continuous hour in the morning, one continuous hour in the evening.  Then go to more retreats.


Links:

http://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/pdf/analayo/DevelopmentInsight.pdf



file:///home/chronos/u-4a43f696d00034d4ade00a7c043c7d37dec30c01/Downloads/buddhism.-.s.n.goenka.-.vipassana.discourse.summaries.-.ocr_.version.1.pdf




http://eldar.cz/kangaroo/mirror/vipassana-critique.pdf


So, fair warning, to all, I really do not know Goenka's exact technique, this mostly comes from my own memory and experience, from what I have done and what I have read, and I do not know if one can really own a technique or anything.

And if this technique did come from the Buddha, the Buddha taught with an open hand and withheld no secrets, so one could not take information that was freely given in the first place.

Also, Ayya Khema has a good talk and a good guided meditation on the Body Scanning technique, which I will find and post here also.

As to personal results, yeah, dredge and stir stuff up, sort it out with equanimity, over and over, finally the majority of mental clutter gets cleaned up.  Yeah, can get distressing at times, if it gets to bad, I would put on some headphones and shhot some hoops or something similar, maybe play some Morrowind or Halo....lol

By the way, I was halfway through Reggie Ray's Mahamudra for the Modern World a few months back, it is really good and brought me to a new place of consiousness or two, guess I got sidetracked.... Good, wholesome stuff.

Psi

Ayya Khema Body Sweep, Guided and explanation:


Talks number seven and eight.


http://ayyakhematalks.org/Gaia_House_1991.html


Psi

Thank you, Psi, and thanks for writing all that up. That's useful. I sat with the Khema body scan tonight. Your directions seem on point.

Regarding the difference between body scanning and Vajrayana 10 points practice, 10 points practice seems to work with shamatha and release, where as body scanning is more vipassana, watching for arising and passing, buulds concentration as well, emphasis on equanimity rather than release.

If anyone has any more, still curious.

No problem, I too, am very curious about this method, I always have been.  Either the method is very basic and needs little instruction, or people are holding back on releasing techniques due to mushroom wormy taboo droppings...

So thank you for broaching the subject.

EDIT To add, the way I view Equanimity as a process of shamatha and release.  To me same thing different words.  

So, in other words, mind is in Equanimity, sensations arise, the sensations meet up with Equanimity, and are dissolved into and with Equanimity, in a way that whatever sanskara arose will pass away weakened, due to it mixing and connecting to Equanimity, and when successful, the next time the same sanskara arises, it will have less dukkha, it will meet up with Equanimity, pass away in an even further weakened state, and so on, until the sanskara finally starves due to lack of nourishment, and eventually never rises again.  Extirpated once and for all, but this can take a while.  Patience is Nibbana, so they say.

Psi

Psi

Yes, I spent three hours with it tonight and found it to have a different feel to it than other practices. Not sure how to explain, something sort of raw about it, like in paying attention to different parts of the body past tensions/memories held there are released. I will take more time with it this week. I understand what you are saying about equanimity and release. I only highlighted the release aspect of the 10 points practice because in that practice one is actually directed to release the tension from the body into the earth. In Vajrayana the Earth itself is seen as a Buddha, so it's sort of like the tantric equivalent of "letting go, letting God".

I have just finished a 10 day goenka retreat so hopefully I can shed some light on the technique.

First 3.5 days it is anapana (focusing on breath, particularly the nostrils and the upper lip). Think of a triangle from the point between your eyes (just below third eye) down to the bottom of your upper lip. I believe it may be the second or third day of purely feeling and following the breath he introduces retreatants to start focusing on the sensations within this triangle area. It can be any sensation, throbbing, itching, pulsing etc.

Reasoning behind this is to get your mind to be "subtler, subtler, subtlest". Just attuning your mind to get concentrated enough to actually feel the sensations. After that he introduces on day 3.5 the Vipassana. This is scanning as pointed out earlier in this thread certain parts of the body. The way I did it (I also confirmed with the assistant teacher the technique) is that I would focus on the top of the head (scalp of it), then move to the forehead, 'eye sockets' which was the eyes and the side skin of the face to my hair, triangle, left, right cheeks, lips, chin, left ear, right ear, back of the head, throat area, upper chest, abdominal, neck, upper back, lower back, right shoulder, right arm, right elbow, right forearm, right hand (you can break it down to palms, fingers, finger tips if you want), REPEAT for left side of shoulder/arm, then base of the trunk (this for me was the butt and groin region) then right thigh, knee, legs (which was like the shin) and feet, repeat again for the left side.

Fark that was a lot, okay now we did this for a day or two I believe. As soon as we felt a sensation we were to move on, if we didn't feel anything stay there for a minute, if there was still nothing then move on. Continue doing this from head to toe. And above all this, it was repeatedly mentioned to notice impermanence (annica) and stay equanimous throughout the whole ordeal. Not craving for pleasant sensations and not desiring aversion to gross unpleasant sensations (which were solidifed types of sensations).

After this I believe we were told to start doing the same thing but once we finished at the feet, to repeat the whole thing going back up, so head to toe then toe to head. After this we were to do simultaneous and symmetrical scanning where possible, this meant doing left and right eye sockets at the same time, left and right eye cheeks, left and right shoulders etc etc. I don't believe the actual process I outlined earlier is necessary, you can break it down (i.e. left pec, right pec, upper ab, middle ab, lower abs etc) or expand the body part areas as much as you want but the whole point of the triangle sensation focusing was that the smaller the area of your body the greater ability to detect sensations as your focus was greater on a smaller surface area.

Okay then after this I'm quite sure he started saying to 'flow'/sweep through your body, scan en messe or something along those lines. So kind of flow through the body with the sensations, do this once up and down then go to part by part. Repeat, repeat, repeat until you are flowing so that there are no 'blocked' parts of your body where you can't feel sensations or they aren't solidifed gross sensations. Then he talks about 'Bhangha' I think it is, where you lose all sense of your body and it just feels like sensations everywhere.

He then starts introducing higher levels of sweeping/scanning such as sweeping/scanning deeper into your body, going in lines from left to right (as in going through your head/body) and from back to front. At this point it is very high level and then he says when you go back you should practice seeing how strong your concentration is by pin pointing about an inch in diameter randomly in your body and see if you can feel sensations. Let it be random and just think of a place then use the inch diameter, if you can feel a burning hot sensation (or any kind of sensation) then your concentration is strong, continuously do this.

Again the whole time, equanimous and impermanent. I may have missed some subtle details but if you guys are really interested I just highly suggest going to sit at a goenka retreat, they are all over the world, on donation basis and serve great food.

Also I believe it may have been day 4 they introduced 'Adhittana' which is pali for strong determination. We had 3x1 hour sits each day from then on where we were not to open our hands, legs or eyes for that whole hour and to just sit and meditate despite the pain.

If there are any more questions feel free to ask, I'm also sure you should be able to buy/find the Goenka audio tapes instructing people?

The 10 point practice is similar to the Yoga Nidra instructions Ive recieved. Though the outcome is suppose to be vastly different. I have no results with either =).

Thank you, Gedanken, for typing all that out. Had you practiced other techniques before, and how does this one compare. Thanks again. It is useful.

Thank you, Andreas. I am not familiar with Yoga Nidra, or the outcomes. I know that Reggie has said before that the ten points practice is all that one really needs to reach full enlightenment, but then added as a caveat "however, we are complicated people" or some such thing. Can you point to me a good resource for Yoga Nidra? 

Yoga Nidra is awareness during deep sleep. The senses, body is all asleep. Only formless awareness remains. The instructions ive gotten however has more to do with deep relaxation than reaching aware deep sleep. Instructions were similar to this one http://www.swamij.com/yoga-nidra-method3.htm but not that many points more like reggies 10 points.http://www.swamij.com/yoga-nidra.htm

The technique is extremely basic.  It is based off of an amazing principle that happens to be true: 

For every thought and feeling you have there is a single corresponding sensation on the body that represents it.  Thoughts and feelings are two sides of the same coin.

The above statement will become very obvious as you become more experienced with the technique. You will find that different types of sensations on your body correspond to different types of feelings and thoughts you are having.  

Because of the statement above, by being aware of body sensations you are also aware of the thoughts/feelings that come along with them.  

The whole technique is basicaly:
Equinimity +  Awareness.  

or 

Detachedness + Awareness
 
or

Acceptance + Awareness

All the same things.


Meaning you are aware of a certain spot on the body and you are trying not to react to the thoughts/feelings that come along with them.  You try not to hate and push away the bad feelings and you try not to cling on to the good ones.  Your mind will drift off into thoughts frequently and you simply patiently bring it back to your meditation when you realize it. 

There are two parts which comprise the technique as taught by Goenka:


1) Body Part-By-Part Meditation: Start at the top of the head.  Place your attention on one spot at a time and move from top to bottom of your body hitting all areas.  The size of your spot-by-spot awareness can vary.  I would do somewhere in between small cookie to big cookie size 

2) Body Scan = Start at the head, and let your attention free flow about the body hitting all spots from top of the head to bottom.

Do your part-by-part technique once.  Then do your body scan a couple times.  Then repeat.  You can vary the sizes or the ways that you do things.  You may also spend some extra time on an spot if it really seems to stick out but don't stay much longer than a minute.

Andreas: Link is broken. Thank you though. I will research.

Thank you, Bailey. Do you have extensive experience with the practice, and if so, can you contrast it with other meditation practices you've done in terms of how it effects daily living?

Fixed it. Though the urls were the links

K, thanks.

I have only done concentration practice (anapana) prior to that, and perhaps one guided body scan meditation (jon kabat zinn) once before the retreat.

I believe this technique works based off the theory and undoubtedly the practice from those who have gone all the way. In terms of the effect, I definitely felt like it brought up repressed emotions/memories/feelings from the past and let me deal with them and move on from it. In particular I noticed during the whole retreat when I would get really concentrated I would get a strong pulsing in my third eye area. Very gross solidifed sensation but I just ignored it and continued the scanning, on day9/10 I focused on this area solely and sat with the sensation for an extended period of time. Noting the impermanence and being equanimous to it, eventually it started getting smaller and smaller then it pretty much disappeared. When I finished that meditation I felt so refreshed like something had finally been taken off my back, it was odd to say the least and is technically against the way they teach the technique but it was something I felt intuitively that I should have done.

O.K. Cool, thank you.

Yes I have extensive practice with Goenka's Vipassana. I do not have
experience with other techniques other than breathe meditation. The
benefit (aside from any attainments) is what I explained above.

Whenever an emotion comes up and is not reacted towards it comes up and out

The meditation engrains this non-reactive equanimity in you.  You will dissolve all the different types of mental problems/impurities you have and this is aside from the other awaking-attainments

Nice detail in this.
Slightly reluctant to give away the 'secrets' but since its already out may aswell help clarify.

A subtle detail I could add is, you mention how he talks about 'bhanga' and then moves on to scanning deeper into the body and up the spine etc.
So, specifically he recommends doing the deeper level scanning ONLY if you're currently experiencing bhanga, otherwise you should keep your attention on the surface of the skin.

Bhanga is this experience where the whole body loses all solidity and is experienced purely as very subtle energy waves.
He then gives a 'test' to see if you're really in this: assuming the energy is flowing rapidly and totally smoothly throughout the body, pick any thumbnail-sized area of the body - no matter where it is, if you can easily feel exactly what's going on there, that's bhanga.
Now you have 'permission' ;) to dive inside the body, go in and out for a bit, then go inside the spine and work your way up along it.  

After this bhanga experience he says its very common to have lots of pain and gross sensations and feel very solid/physical again.  (dark night after A&P?)  
On my one 10day that I've done I got bhanga on day 4 or something, which is well before he teaches this really fun innerbody&spine stuff and I didn't think of exploring in there myself, and then I felt like a rock the next few days while he was actually teaching this stuff so I missed my chance to explore inside my spine.  Oh well, next time Goenke!!

So I'm curious:
Is this 'bhanga' experience quite unique to this form of bodyscanning?  Or is it going to come up in different kinds of somatic work...or even non-body focused practices??

Hi!

This book seems to be quite the same intsructions as Goenka: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Breath-Extraordinary-Mindfulness-Whole-Body/dp/1582900434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432562014&sr=8-1&keywords=beyond+the+breath

http://soundmindmeditation.com/ Seems to have the same instruction too with added binaural beats. Haven't had time to try it out myself.
Shinzen Young teaches his version of body scanning in the Science of enlightenment.

My own experience with Goenka come from two retreats. First one in India. I had manage to bring a girl I had a crush on to go to it too. So most of the time I was In fantasy land. But I did have an intressting experience. Nearing the end of the retreat. I kind of got to place where body and mind bourders was dissolved. Below the surfaca I could see thousands of these thoughts arising and passing like small light dots.
A few weeks later I was sitting meditating with two friends and got really deep. The mind got to a still and there was only the inner darkness. But suddenly two lips formed out of the emptiness, that said thou art fire. Afterwords I was feeling really stoned, Like I hade smoked some weed. The same body numbness in head and body. And when I moved my head fast perceptions would move in slow motion.
The second retreat was pure hell. It was in Sweden. A friend of mine who had done a retreat there before had told me to show up early so I wouldn't end up in the house he called, the house that God forgott. It had a water heater that made a loud noice every time it turn on or off. I didn't turn up in time. The noices came every half houre it felt like making you quite sleep deprived. Added to that I was heartbroken. At some point my shoulder started jumping every sitting. After that course I kind of gave up on body scanning for Mahasi noting and Shinzen young. 
Last autom I did a course that had incorparated a lot of Goenkas technique. Had a lot of resistance to it. But it turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. Scanning kick in quickly and reduce the thinking to a small stream in the back of the head.
In the near futere I would love to go to a retreat with 

Mother Sayamagyi at the 

http://www.internationalmeditationcentre.org/

Heard that they have a lot more metta there and you do anapanasati up to five days.
Cheers gunnar

re: Bill F. (1/6/15 10:45 AM)

Here are links to a body-scan meditation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Than-Geof), which I highly recommend. Basically the same guided meditation, at two different times, places. Reflects the Thai Forest lineage he represents, probably from Ajahn Lee, the teacher of his teacher. Has aspects quite similar to Chinese qigong practice, and use of the body segments similar to Chinese medical 'channel' theory. (But one doesn't need to know anything about that.)

Both versions have pauses after each part of the instructions (for practice).


1) at Metta monastery (Southern California)
Last of a 64-talk collection (also available on CD), called "Basics"
"64 Guided Breath & Leaving Meditation (40min).mp3  20115 KB"

this links to it as youtube play; (can be captured to file using ClipGrab for off-line listening)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO1AEBxK7bI&list=PLOjrj_IM0EYrQFQSZbJgf-L-B5oCoYoTi&index=64

The ambience, audio quality, and intensity is a bit better in this one, on Than-Geof's own home-ground. You can hear the birds singing in the background (the monastery is in an apricot orchard).


2) at Insight Meditation Center (Redwood City, CA)  31 min
At beginning of an all-day dhamma talk on mindfulness and concentration, April 4, 2010.

2010-04-17_ThanissaroBhikkhu_GuidedMeditation.mp3  5613 KB

Here's copied from Audiodharma (with embedded links):
(found at: http://www.audiodharma.org/series/16/talk/1869/)

Guided Meditation

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

2010-04-17

31:54

Download  Stream

Click on 'Download' to get the MP3 file; click on 'Stream' to listen directly (this playback can't be captured with ClibGrab).

This version starts with a brief metta meditation (the one above (1) doesn't), which Than-Geof often uses. The rest is bascially the same as (1), and about as long; but not as intense, vivid, IMO.

It is a stage in the Progress of Insight more precisely called bhaṅga-ñāṇa or "Knowledge of Dissolution".

It is not in the Pali Canon, but it can be traced back to the Visuddhimagga, which places it right after the mature stage of the Arising and Passing away (after one figures out that the corruptions of insight are cool but not the Path) within paṭipadā-ñāṇa-dassana-visuddhi "Knowledge and Vision of the Course of Practice". Paṭipadā-ñāṇa-dassana-visuddhi is indeed in the Pali Canon, in the Relay Chariots discourse (Ratha-vinita Sutta, MN24), but it appears nowhere else (as far as I know) and no details are provided about it there really. According to the Visuddhimagga, paṭipadā-ñāṇa-dassana-visuddhi is basically all the stages from the Dark Night to Equanimity, but before Cessation and Stream Entry.

Mahasi Sayadaw discusses bhaṅga-ñāṇa in the Progress of Insight and Daniel has further expanded upon it in MCTB:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB+5.+Dissolution,+Entrance+to+the+Dark+Night

See here too:

http://www.vipassanadhura.com/sixteen.html#fourb

To come back to your question, given that the Visuddhimagga is possibly the most authoritative commentary in Theravada Buddhism, bhaṅga-ñāṇa is probably recognised by practically all traditions of Theravada-flavoured Vipassana.

aha, so bhanga happens in dissolution?  
so maybe that was a little A&P event I had when I was meant to be doing anapana, nobody having told me to ignore the fact that the body sensations didn't happen to anyone and seemed to reside outside of space and time ...  still trying to get my head around all this map stuff...

Bhanga is dissolution, literally. Sensations vanish for most of the Dark Night, though. You could say that the Dark Night is dissolution + fear / misery / disgust and so on