Tara Brach - 2014-10-15 Meditation - Coming Back to Your Senses

Episode Date: October 18, 2014

2014-10-15 Meditation - Coming Back to Your Senses

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. The stillness let your senses be wide awake. You're aware of the sounds around you. Aware of the aliveness in the body. Aware of whatever mood or emotion is in the heart area. To bring a full kind of embodiment to gently scan through the body. relaxing and attending to the sensations that are here. It soften the eyes.

We tend to knit our brow as we're thinking. Just let the brow be smooth. The eyes at ease. Perhaps even sensing you could smile into the eyes, relax and receptive, letting the jaw be unhinged, Feeling the tongue and relaxing at the root of the tongue, letting a slight smile peer at the mouth,

slight but real, what Tiknaan calls smile yoga, because it relays a kind of message to your whole nervous system to be at ease. Eyes are soft, slight smile at the mouth, and feeling the breath in the chest, and letting a smile spread through the, chest area, the image and felt sense of a smile, not to paper over, but so that you can open to whatever experience, sensations, emotions are in the heart and chest area.

That a sense of openness widen out to include the shoulders and see if you can allow your shoulders to relax back and down a bit and bring the awareness right inside the shoulders. notice the more subtle movement of energy, tingling and the vibrating, perhaps a clenching or tightness. Notice if it's possible for whatever tangles are in the shoulders to relax in the space of awareness. It's possible to let go a little. Feeling the volume of the arms, the space inside the arms, right down into the hands, letting the hands rest in a very easy way, very effortless. And you might even soften the hands a little.

Feel the space inside the hands. You notice the tingling or pulsing or vibrating that's there. See if you can relax and soften even more at the hands and notice the increased sensitivity there. relaxing gives us access to more aliveness. Again, sensing an openness at the chest, feeling the space that fills the chest, the play of sensation,

scanning down some feeling the belly from the inside out. You might visualize and sense the curve of a smile through the belly, loosening, softening, feeling the play of sensations there. and bringing the attention deep into the torso so you can feel that same aliveness, filling the whole pelvic region, feeling the volume of the legs, upper legs, lower legs, right into the feet, feeling the sensations and aliveness, the warmth, the places of pressure where your feet are. You might imagine the feet rooting down into the earth below,

feeling this whole earth, including the atmosphere, including the atmosphere of this earth as a living organism, your body as a part of that, and just feel this whole field of energy, this whole dance of aliveness that you belong to, feeling simultaneously all parts of the body, tingling, vibrating, heat, cool, pressure, flow, including the vibration of sound, to listening to and feeling the whole moment, aware of the changing currents, of sounds, sensations, feelings in the foreground, and also aware in the background of that alert, inner stillness, that which is aware, deepest subjective experience of our beingness, resting in this wakeful stillness,

of this changing dance, sensation of aliveness. At some point you'll notice that the mind has contracted away from presence into a more virtual reality, a kind of commentary or dreamlike state, thoughts of the past or future. Our practice quite simply is just to notice when we do and reawaken to what's actually here. With interest, with friendliness, come back, come back to your senses, aware of the sounds that are actually right here, the vibrating and tingling and aliveness in the body, aware of

whatever emotion might be strong if there is one, and if it helps you to steady your attention, aware of the movement of the breath as a kind of home base, a place to return to and rest in if the mind is busy, preoccupied. Keeping your practice simple, when you notice the mind has drifted, gotten lost in virtual clouds of thought, just to reawaken, come back to your senses, to the aliveness and the mystery that's right here. And start fresh in any moment. reawakening to your senses, reopening the attention to listen to sound, just relaxing open and letting the sounds wash through, re-relaxing through the body, softening the shoulders, relaxing the hands, softening the belly, relaxing your heart.

Again, awake to the life that's right here. Close in a simple way by bringing the attention to the attention to the heart. the heart and with a quality of kindness and gentleness just to offer some wish, some blessing to your own being, your own well-being, whatever most resonates in the moment. And then sensing this heart space as edgeless, open, inclusive, offering your prayer to all beings.