Cambridge Insight Meditation Center

02/23 – 3/23 Bodyfulness

Week 1 (2/23/26)

Bodyfulness Home Practices: Week 1 (2/23/26)

Formal Practice — in any of the four postures
  1. Set the intention to learn from the body with the attitude, “I come in peace”
  2. Incline attention where the experience is more or less neutral, but subtly pleasant more than unpleasant
  3. Feel the body from the inside out
  4. Notice the body breathing itself
  5. Let the body lead the mind in meditation
  6. Notice what the body itself is sensing
  7. If you’re newer to practice, notice that you are not experiencing the idea of the body, but many different types of sensations coming, going, shifting, and changing
    • Warmth/cool/temperature
    • Pressure increasing & decreasing
    • Vibration
    • Tingling
    • etc
Informal practice in motion (5-10min) — Find a simple daily activity that doesn’t require much thinking

How can the body itself be:

  1. Moving at a speed and in a way that fosters presence
  2. At peace with any discomfort. Acknowledging it, but not asking it to be different
  3. Example activities:
    • Washing dishes
    • Walking meditation
    • Stretching
    • Bathing
Inquiry — a few times per day, ask the following contemplative question(s):
  • “What does the body know right now?
  • What is the body aware of right now?”
Supplemental Info and Reminders:

If you are living with chronic pain and have not received teaching on how to use meditation and dharma practice as a support, you will likely find enormously helpful supplemental material for this course from:

  • Christiane Wolf (Link)
  • Oren Sofer (Link)

If you can do even 10min of an embodied movement practice either directly before, or directly after our class, you will likely find that it is a powerful pairing. A few practices you can explore if you don’t have your own already:

Week 2 (3/1/26)

Bodyfulness Home Practices: Week 2 (3/1/26)

Extra credit—
  1. During one or two meals a day for the first ~10 bites, put the fork or spoon down, finish chewing, and see if you can catch the impulse to reach for the utensil. Can you begin to recognize this expression of craving arising in the body? It may help you during formal meditation to notice the craving/urge/inclination to think the next thought.
  • Set a timer for 10min at the end of your formal practice. See what it’s like to carry forward the intention to be aware in the body for the next 10min.
Formal Practice — in any of the four postures

This week, add into the instructions we’ve been working with an intention to let all experiences arising in the mind lead your awareness and interest back into the body. Not as an alternative, better, or different thing to notice, but rather as a way to more deeply understand these experiences.

Take interest to become mindfully familiar with the experience of the body thinking. How are thoughts and the after effects of thoughts experienced in the body? Can you sense an imprint, or echo, of sensation that thoughts leave in the body.

Recognize any ways thoughts/concepts/ideas/images in the mind can masquerade as the body when we turn our attention there. The thought of the breath is not the breath. An image in the mind of the hands, or the body posture, is not the direct experience of these phenomena. When we feel in an open and relaxed way, we discover the experience is more akin to shapes and points of sensation in space shifting and changing.

Occasionally, in moments when you’ve set down the most recent train of thought and returned to the body, take an interest to see if you notice an inclination, leaning, yearning to think the next thought, or to move attention back into the realm of thoughts and thinking.

Informal practice in motion (5-10min) — Find a simple daily activity that doesn’t require much thinking

Add to last week’s instructions an intention to discover and nurture any enjoyment of bodily awareness that may be present in this gentle informal practice. Note, this isn’t enjoyment of the physical experience, like enjoying a massage or a swim on a hot day, though you may experience physical pleasure in the activity as well, the practice is to see if there is any enjoyment of the embodied awareness itself that can be noticed.

Inquiry — 

Please continue finding moments to ask the contemplative questions, “What does the body know right now?”, What is the body aware of right now?” This is, in part, a way to cultivate a clear recognition of how much wisdom there is to be found through awareness established in the body.