The body scan is somatic practice’s front door: lie down, sweep attention slowly from toes to scalp, and discover the inventory — the jaw you didn’t know was clenched, the shoulders at half-shrug since Tuesday. The finding IS most of the fixing. Ten minutes, horizontal, revelatory.

The Technique

Lying down (bed counts; falling asleep is a valid outcome), attention starts at the toes and moves in slow territories: feet, calves, thighs, hips, belly, chest, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, jaw, eyes, scalp — ten-ish seconds each, just NOTICING (warm, tight, buzzing, absent — all valid reports). No fixing required; attention does the visiting.

The Clench Inventory

The scan’s reliable discoveries: the gripped jaw (near-universal), the raised shoulders, the held belly (the never-fully-exhaled abdomen of busy lives), the tensed hands. Chronic tension hides by becoming baseline — the scan is the audit that makes the invisible line-items visible again.

The Release Physics

The charming mechanism: noticing tension often releases it without instruction — attention plus one slow exhale into the area, and the shoulder drops on its own (the brain un-sends a hold order it forgot it issued). Stubborn areas get the deliberate version: tense harder for five seconds, then release fully — the contrast teaches OFF.

The Practice Rhythm

The scan slots anywhere horizontal happens: the pre-sleep edition (the classic — many practitioners never hear the ending), the post-workout cooldown, the Sunday afternoon reset. Guided versions abound for the beginning; the solo sweep arrives within weeks. Ten minutes, most days, and the clench inventory starts shrinking between audits.

Toes to scalp, notice without fixing, exhale into the holdouts. The tension was hiding as baseline — ten horizontal minutes a day is the audit that keeps finding it first.