Whole-body steadying: the presence anchor, the part-by-part sweep, the whole body at once, and the felt sense as information. Chapter 2.
The longer practice, twenty minutes or more, to give shifts time to arrive.
- Set the posture, take the clearing breaths, and set the intention: what happens when you choose to notice and attune to what is steady?
- Find your presence anchor and rest there until something settles. Often the body relaxes on its own.
- Let the anchor move into the background and expand to the whole body, part by part if that helps – legs heavy, belly soft, arms heavy, head and jaw relaxed.
- Then open to the whole body at once. You might imagine awareness expanding like a bubble or a balloon, larger than the body, with all of it included. Let the mind rest into the body.
- When you notice awareness has contracted, appreciate the moment of recognition, then expand to the whole body again. A fork in the road, taken as often as it appears.
- Notice what is steady in the whole-body space, and keep returning to that.
- Tune into the felt sense of the whole-body space – its texture, its tonality, its energy. What is it telling you? Sleepy or activated, contracted or open, very likely some mix. Before finishing, notice whether anything has shifted since you began.
- As you come back to whatever is next – the room, the screen, the people – notice whether your attention is still tuned to what is stable, still picking up on the body. Keep choosing it.
If you use a different meditation object, keep it in the foreground and hold the whole body behind it. The whole-body sensitivity is what the later practices need, so do not drop it entirely.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.