Tara Brach - 2015-01-21 - Meditation: Awake Space - Relaxing Back Into Awareness

Episode Date: January 24, 2015

2015-01-21 - Meditation: Awake Space - Relaxing Back Into Awareness

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Take some moments after you close your eyes to feel the posture from the inside out and make whatever adjustments allow you to feel that you're sitting upright, sitting with a quality of tallness that lets you be alert, and sitting with a quality of ease so that You may be tall but you're not sitting tight or stiff. Relaxing the limbs. Let's together breathe an extended in breath, inhaling deeply.

And then a slow out breath. Slow out breath. You can feel the sensations of releasing. That's it. Now inhale deeply again. And then again, releasing slowly, letting go, letting go. One more time, inhaling deeply. Very slow out breath.

Feel the sensations of releasing and letting go. So that as you now resume in a more natural rhythm, just feel the quality of presence that's here. Perhaps you'll notice there's a bit more of a sense of being collected. Let that presence or collected attention come into the heart area, sense that you can be listening to your heart right now and feeling your heart. Again, sensing perhaps the mood of the heart right now. Sometimes we don't check in very much.

This might be the first time in a while that you've very intentionally inquired. So what's the mood? Feeling tone. See if you can deepen the listening as you inquire into your, your intention for being here tonight. And take your time to sense into the deepest intention, the most sincere intention, letting the awareness gently scan through your body,

relaxing, waking up, any areas of tension or tightness, seeing if you can soften. You might begin with the area of the eyes, just relaxing the muscles, the little muscles around the eyes. letting the brow be smooth, relaxing the jaw, letting it be unhinged,

and see if you can relax down to the root of the tongue. You might sense a slight smile at the mouth, which helps to send a message to your nervous system, to shift from the fight-flight-freeze to a much more benevolent, attend and befriend. Slight smile. feeling the sensations through the face and see if you can sense your whole scalp and skull and the space and aliveness through your whole head continuing with soft eyes and a slight smile

at the mouth imagine and sense that the throat can fill the whole neck and feel the energy and sensations there relaxed flowing allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck, to relax back and down a bit, placing the awareness inside the shoulders. See if there can be a natural loosening, softening, dissolving. Can you feel from the inside out the movement of sensation in the shoulders? Ice to water, water to gas, scanning down the arms, feeling the hands, the hands resting in a very easy and effortless way now so that you soften, loosen,

and feel the hands from the inside out. See if you can let your awareness receive the tingling and vibrating and sensation that's there. Softening a little more. Intimate attention. See if you can sense the sensations floating, moving, dance. dancing in space. Just as a cup is filled with water, this body can be filled with awareness, awake space. You might sense an openness to the chest and feel the chest from the inside

out, and particularly the heart from the inside out, with the awareness fill the heart area. Again, sensing the movement of sensation, flow of energy, in the heart area. See if you can sense both the sensations of the sensations of the heart area. See if you can sense both the sensations in the heart area and the space that they're arising and passing in, continuing to scan down, loosening and softening the belly now. See if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath? Now this one. And again, feeling the awareness fell the area of the belly.

Sensing from the inside out, the movement of sensation, energy. Continuing to scan down right to the pelvic floor, feeling the whole pelvic region, feeling the aliveness of sensation. And sensing again the space, the space that sensation arises out of, dissolves into. Continuing to scan down through the legs, feeling the legs from the inside out, out, right down into the feet and see if you can place the awareness inside the feet, feeling the whole dance of sensation there. Tingling, vibrating, places of pressure, places of warmth.

You might imagine and sense through the feet the connectedness with the earth beneath you and around you, sensing this vast sphere of energy and aliveness and sensing how we're it lives through you so that your whole body is an extension and a part of this earth energy, living, vibrating, tingling, dancing energy. It's opening to that whole play of aliveness now, this energy body, sensing it is edgeless so that if you open out in front of you, you can open out further and further, imagining that energy and space extending past the most distant stars, opening up the space behind you.

Again, out and out past the most distant stars. Sensing how this energy body opens out to the sides. Again, visualizing and feeling that extension outward past the most distant stars and above you. up and above, energy, light, space, past the most distant stars, and beneath you, extending past the most distant stars. You can sense this vast openness of space, awake space, continuous space, just resting in this continuous space that's filled with the light of awareness.

It's really natural that before too long the attention contracts into thoughts, contracts from this openness and wakefulness into commentary, planning, remembering, images. And so the practice is quite simply to notice when that happens and let that be an opportunity for reawakening, to learn the pathway of reawakening, just to recognize thinking and then pause. In that pause you can begin to reopen the senses. Listening, where of these sounds right moment to moment, coming and going, re-relaxing in the body, opening the sense of feeling, perhaps by softening the shoulders, the hands, loosening the belly. Again, receiving an awareness the play of sensation. So that you're listening to and feeling, and feeling,

the whole moment to moment flow. For some to help collect the mind even more, to have in the foreground the inflow and outflow of the breath, give you an anchor, a way to notice when you've left in thoughts and a way to come back again. Check and see where your attention is. If the mind is contracted, if there's been a veil of thinking, just to appreciate this moment of waking up, relaxing open again, sensing the space you're in, sounds that come and go, relaxing the body again to see if it's possible to let go just a little bit more.

Notice if you can relax the heart as you feel and listen to the moment, can you sense the space that everything's happening in? Can you relax back into awake space? this teaching from the Tibetan tradition guide you in these last few moments. Utterly awake, senses wide open, utterly open, non-fixating awareness. We close by feeling our hearts once again. And just offering whatever blessing, whatever wish most resonates in this moment to your own heart and to feel your prayer or your wish for our world to hold this world in your heart

with prayer. Namaste and thank you.