Tara Brach - 2015-03-04 - Meditation: Open Wakeful Presence

Episode Date: March 7, 2015

2015-03-04 - Meditation: Open Wakeful Presence

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Letting your eyes close and invite yourself right here. Just welcome your being into the moment. Just notice how it is right now. Be aware of the sensations of sitting right here, just how your body's feeling, and bring a gentle attention to your heart. perhaps it's the first time in a bit that you're actually taking stock

so just to listen in and feel into the mood, emotion, the state of your heart right now and as you continue to listen and feel your heart sense what your intention is for being here tonight what it is that most matters to you so you just take some moments to sense, as you're listening, the most sincere place in you, what it is you really wish for your life. In the stillness and quiet, let the attention come into the body. You might let the

thought energy just kind of drain and so you can begin to just feel the head just as it is, just feel the vibrations and sensations in the back of the head, sigh. You might feel inside the ears and let the brow be smooth and let the eyes be soft. Let the flesh around the eyes be soft. So there's a kind of receptivity. Let the jaw be unhinged. See if you can relax down to the root of the tongue. You might let a slight smile spread through the lips and just feel the region of the mouth,

the sensations that are there. there, sensing the throat, filling the neck area, and from the inside out just to feel the neck, sensations and vibration there. That the shoulders gently fall away from the neck and place the awareness inside the shoulders. We usually carry so much tension and tightness there. See if you can let what's there float a bit in awareness. you can notice tingling, vibrating flow of sensation inside the shoulders, sensing the length of the arms, the volume of the arms, and feeling them from the inside.

Let the hands rest in a very easy way, an effortless way, placing the awareness inside the hands, feeling them from the inside out. You might soften the hands and notice how much more aliveness you can feel as you relax. Can you sense the vibrating or pulsing in the hands, places of warmth, pressure, contact, where your hands might be touching your legs or each other. So you're experiencing a more intimate sense of presence here as you feel this aliveness of the body from the inside out. Let there be an openness at the chest.

And again, placing the awareness inside the chest so you can feel in a very immediate way, the sensations at the heart area, just letting the sensations float, unfold, express in awareness, feeling the space and aliveness through the whole chest cavity. And scanning down the torso, loosening. loosening the abdominal area and letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one, inhaling, receiving the breath in a softening belly, and again establishing presence deep in the torso, letting that awakeness continue to deepen and widen through the whole pelvic region,

feeling from the inside out, the hips, buttocks, genitals, and continuing to scan with awareness and presence, feeling the legs, the length, the volume of the legs, the sensations that fill the legs, into the feet, feeling the places where the feet contact the floor, places of pressure, warm, and feeling the feet from the inside out, the interior, vibration, and aliveness, and then opening the attention so that you can experience simultaneously this whole field of sensation. Just let everything happen, not opposing, not resisting anything, sensing how there's no boundary to this field of aliveness, no way of really detecting where a body ends and space begins,

relaxing back, fully receptive to this whole play, this whole dance of aliveness. If you notice some tightness somewhere, some contracting or holding, just gently re-relax, relax back. So you're resting in that awake spaciousness that this whole play of sensations is happening in, is arising out of, including this whole symphony of sound, close in sounds, including these words, noticing the sounds and the spaces between the sounds. So you're listening not just with your ears but your whole awareness, the more distant sound, sensing the space and the awareness that includes the most distant sounds you can detect. Just continue relaxing back.

If there's any tightness or tension just to notice it and re-relaxed, back, so you're resting in that openness, that space of silence that's listening to, perceiving this moment-to-moment experience. It's quite natural that in addition to the physical tightening and contraction that the mind contracts into thoughts. So when you notice that, when you notice that you've been off time-traveling, comparing, commenting, planning. Again, just gently pause and re-relax again. Relax back. Aware of the changing flow of experience, listening to the sounds that are here, relaxing and again feeling

the aliveness in the body, aware in the foreground, the changing appearance of sound and sensation, feelings. And in the background, that alert inner stillness, that most subjective experience of what we are, relaxing back into that which is aware of this changing life. You might ask yourself if it's possible to let go just a little bit more right now, to notice if there's tightness in the body, their thoughts that are going on, And just relax back. See how fully you can let go into what's actually right here, listening to and feeling the moment.