Satipatthana body scan for children (and adults) Zoltan Dienes

This is part of the first Satipatthana: http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/....

Tenzin and I go through the body scan in the Satipatthana sutta. The successive parts to pay attention to listed in the sutta are (with "brain" added as suggested by another sutta):
Head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth and skin
muscles, tendons, bone, bone marrow
brain, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, stomach to small and large intestines
stomach contents to poo, bile, lung mucus, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin oil, spit, snot, synovial fluid, urine
It is an idiosyncratic list but serves to bring attention to representative parts of the body regarded as underlying physical beauty, then moving from outside in, to organs, and parts that may be seen as most slimy or repulsive. Other suttas recommend considering e.g. genitals so the list was not meant as definitive, and indeed after working this list Tenzin made up his own list (including willy and "yoni" - child friendly Sanskrit name for female parts - to feel equanimity to both).
Our first step was to understand each part, copy anatomical drawings of each (e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Anatom...),
know the space in our own bodies where the part is, see photos and understand its main function. Then once the list was known we did one of the following practices each evening:
1) Pay attention to each part, or the location where it is. This includes practicing interoceptive awareness of e.g. the heart.
2) Pay attention to each part, and consider if one's reaction is: beautiful, yucky or neutral. The aim is to remove clinging or craving about any part as a basis of one's own beauty; and aversion to any part (as shame, disgust, etc). So if a part is felt as beautiful one sees it as yucky; and if yucky one sees it as beautiful, moving one closer to feeling equanimity about that part. Finally one considers that one's true beauty resides in one's capacity for friendliness-kindness, compassion, joy in other's joy and equanimity (the Brahama viharas).
(Conjecture: A lot of the problems people have in relationships, or in witnessing the relationships of others, comes from a lack of equanimity about bodies, including their own body.)
3) Pay attention to each part and consider how it constantly changes - breaks down, replenishes, grows, decays. Thus no part, including the brain, remains the same and cannot be the basis of a constant unchanging self. Thus no part is 'me' or the 'mine' of an unchanging self, or something unchanging that can be owned as it is constantly lost. Similarly, what is inside came from outside, and returns to outside: such is change. Thus, all parts of the body connect one to the external world, the sun, the rain - the Universe, including the stars. On any one sitting we consider one aspect of this web of issues.
The video shows us doing step 2.
First one practices internally, about one's own body, as shown in the video. Then we practice externally, sitting facing each other, Tenzin paying attention to the successive parts of my body (first his, then mine, then both together); to seeing the other's body as neither beautiful nor yucky in itself, but the other's beauty as coming from their capacity to show the Brahma viharas; and one sees each part of the other's body as constantly changing, as therefore not the basis of an unchanging self, but the basis of a connection with the world.
In the detail of these practices I was heavily influenced by this excellent book:
Analayo (2014). Perspectives on Satipatthana. Windhorse publications.

For the next and final meditation on the body (marana sati) from the first Satipatthana see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAB1u...


For mindfulness of breath meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4xIX...
For compassion meditation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j0Kb...
For meditating "internally" and "externally":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL8qJ...

Satipatthana body scan for children (and adults)
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