Body Scanning
Chanel DaSilva. Photograph: Jubal Battisti. Taken from The Guardian 9 February, 2022
I’ve been thinking about creating a blog for some time now! So, here it is. All my thoughts - sometimes coherent, sometimes not. Those of you who take my classes know that I like to talk. Not just stuff, non sequiturs (although there are a lot of those I’m sure) but subject matter that directs our movement in an intentional way.
One of my goals as a teacher is to bring our awareness into/inside the body, to guide us through the body experience. Maybe you have never moved this way before, perhaps you’ve never actually felt the movement as a genuine experience of your body, but rather as an external imposition of movements or exercises. How can we feel the movement in our bodies with no vocabulary to articulate what is happening inside us, not to us? Our body, the “shell” that carries us around on two feet from day to day. The “shell” that homes our brain and allows us to be creative in so many ways, that allows us to interact with others. That “shell” has so much to offer us, much in the same way as a conversation with a wise friend does.
Body scanning is normally used in circles of yoga, mindfulness and meditation. One usually refers to it as a technique we can use to increase awareness of our body and assess how we’re feeling. For me, it’s all that and more. Scanning creates a map of the contours of our muscular system, skeletal system and all the systems that contribute to our body moving in space. Scanning is what makes you close your eyes while you’re practicing Pilates. We all close our eyes to bring our awareness to the inner workings of the body.
We automatically scan our body when a close friend or relative strokes our head. We close our eyes, look inward to feel, take stock and adjust accordingly to what is happening as we experience this moment of tenderness. This space, this world, this inner world is so magnificent, so enormous and so exquisitely profound. We all know and feel it. But verbalising our experiences helps us adapt, improve and grow in ways we rarely allow ourselves to.
I want to share a body scanning with you written by Chanel DaSilva, a dancer and choreographer and co-founder of MOVENYC. This article was published in The Guardian in their Lifestyle section Living in a woman’s body.. In this article DaSilva uses body scanning to share her experience of performing with us. She writes “I start with my body in stillness: my eyes closed, my head bowed, my sternum soft, my pelvis weighted, my knees supple, my legs wide.” She not only names the parts of her body, but she describes each body part in such a way that allows us to visualise her body in space. If she had written “My body is suspended: my eyes flickering, my head lifted, my sternum pushing, my pelvis weightless, my knees straight, my legs wide.” the image we would have had of her body would have been completely different. Maybe she would have been doing a grand jété across the floor. The words we use not only define the body part, but also the effort and direction of the movement. I hope you enjoy the article.
As I dance I get lost, enjoying the ride of the beat by Chanel DaSilva
In addition, I’d like to share with you one of my body scans. Enjoy!
Body Scan Ann 18/06/2025 Pilates breath
Lying on my back, on the cool floor, my knees bent and arms at my side, I feel tight and constricted. Yesterday was tough - lots of exercises, lots of movement, lots of muscles contracting and releasing. Yes, but back to the essentials - breathing. I focus on my breath, the movement of my chest and abdomen as it expands and contracts. I bring my attention to the pelvic floor, drawing my sitz bones together and feeling the muscles attached to the Ischial tuberosities contract and tense, then slowly release. I repeat the movement several times. As I repeat it the movement transforms to an image of a funnel, contracting, drawing upward, moving higher through the center of my body. As my body warms up, I can start to visualise more easily this image, and as I can more easily visualise this image, I can move deeper into engaging the pelvic floor muscles as well as the abdominal muscles. The contractions gain more force and flow in my body. I feel the pelvis floor lifting up towards my organs, I feel the anterior abdominal wall compressed, squeezing and forcing the breath out of my body and the air pressing out of my lungs. Now I’m ready for the shoulder bridge.