This guided meditation focusing on sound is part of our beginning meditation program to quiet the mind. The 30-day program offers a daily meditation series, each with a different perspective on how to calm the mind, become more mindful, and find a sense of stillness and inner peace.

You can click here to get started with the course for free.

Guided Meditation for Touch – Sensory Awareness Technique

Today’s meditation is on the mindfulness of touch. In the meditation, I’ll present a simple mindfulness meditation technique using awareness of the sensation of touch. You can practice the exercise in meditation, or throughout your daily life.

Click here to see more mindfulness exercises for the 5 senses, or browse our full list of mindfulness techniques.

Hello, and Welcome to Day 20 of Quiet The Mind. I’m Kyle Greenfield with The Joy Within.

Today, we are continuing our exploration of mindfulness, using the sensation of touch. You might think of today’s lesson as a pseudo-meditation, a game, or an experiment.

To begin, sit comfortably. Close your eyes if you’d like, or keep them open, gazing softly. You may wish to allow your eyes to shift gently between open and closed as we continue with this exercise. 

Place your hands in your lap, one on top of the other.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Bring your attention to your hands. Do not move them. Try not to fidget. Simply relax, as you were, and observe.

How are your hands positioned?

Which hand is on top?

Where is your lower hand resting?

There are no right or wrong answers. It does not matter how they are positioned. We are simply tuning in to an awareness of that position.

As you hone your focus, become clear on where, exactly, your hands are touching. Even if you are resting one hand on top of the other, your entire hands do not touch. Some points protrude more than others, creating an interplay of contact and space.

Can you isolate where these points of touch are?

Become more specific. How does the point of contact feel? How is it different from the space, the ‘almost contact’ next to it?

Now, begin to focus even more clearly. Narrow your attention to a single point on your top hand, perhaps at the tip of a single finger. Find an area of your finger the size of a pin, and keep your focus there.

Slowly, gradually, begin to move your top hand. Lift it off of the other, maintaining contact at the narrow point you identified on your finger. Then, move that finger. Feel the motion of it across your other hand.

Simultaneously become aware of the feeling in that finger, and the feeling its motion creates in your other hand.

Play with this idea. Pressing it more firmly. Then lifting it more slightly. See if you can play with the boundary between ‘touching’ and ‘not touching.’

Become more and more specific about the feeling of this touch. Identify the contrast between contact, and the air around it.

Continue with this game for as long as you’d like.

Learn more about how to use mindfulness to increase your awareness.