Tara Brach - 2015-04-08 - Meditation: Coming Home to the Senses

Episode Date: April 12, 2015

2015-04-08 - Meditation: Coming Home to the Senses

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. With a relaxed and friendly attention, we bring awareness to the life in the body. You might begin by softening the eyes. See if you can sense a bit of an uplift at the outer corners of the eyes, letting the eyes smile, the brow is smooth. The eyes are receptive. soft, slight smile at the mouth. See if you can feel the inside of the mouth smiling too.

Corners of the eyes up. Slight smile at the mouth, inside of the mouth smiling. Then relax right to the root of the tongue. Feeling the tingling and vibrating at the face, scalp and skull at ease. Feeling the throat filling. The neck. And the space and aliveness inside the neck area, feel a smile spreading through the heart

and sensing that that can create some space for whatever's in the heart area, letting that space widen and open out so that the shoulders can relax a little, sensing the shoulders falling away from the neck, bringing the whole awareness inside the shoulders and see if it's possible to loosen and soften, ice, melting to water. You feel that, ice melting, ice to water and water to gas. If you can feel the space and aliveness inside the shoulders, sensing the volume and the length of the arms, and feeling the hands from the inside out, making sure they're resting in a very easy and effortless way, softening the hands and noticing the

aliveness that's there. Again, the tingling, the vibrating, perhaps pulsing. In the same way that your hands can be filled with awareness, you can fill the whole chest area with awareness. Sense the space in aliveness that fills the chest, scanning down into the belly. See if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one, and again. Again, care of the sensation and aliveness. Deep in the torso, letting the awareness fill the pelvic area, hips, buttocks, genitals. And sensing the space and aliveness, dance of sensation, continuing to scan down the body, feeling the length and volume of the legs, feeling the legs from the inside out, filling the feet

with awareness. So you can feel the tingling and vibrating and aliveness there. And you might sense this feet like roots deep into the earth connected. So you can sense this earth body below and around you and allow that whole field of energy to flow through you, up through the feet, filling you. So if you widen the lens, you can feel this whole body as a dance of some sense. See if you can relax back into that changing dance, not stopping anything or opposing anything, including not only the play of sensation, but the symphony of sound with a receptive listening attention, the close-in sounds in the room, and the more distant sounds to listening not just with your ears. You're listening with your whole awareness, listening to and feeling the moment.

When you notice the attention has drifted back into thoughts, commentary, time-traveling into the past to the future, without any judgment, just know that's quite natural. Just appreciate the waking up again. You might pause for a moment. and then arrive again right here in your senses. Again, aware of the sounds that are right here, aware of the sensations and aliveness in the body. For some, you might find that the movement of the breath

can be a kind of home base to steady the attention. Just the simple inflow, outflow, coming home to your senses again and again, see how fully you can relax with the changing ways of experience. If something is arising that's difficult, if one of the waves is a feeling of unpleasantness in the body or maybe fear, restlessness,

you might softly, the mental whisper, just name it, just be the witness, naming what's here, feeling it as sensations in the body. letting the intention be to let it come and let it go naturally, bringing an interest and a friendliness to what's here, relaxing with the waves, if the attentions drifted off, let this be a moment of re-arriving,

reopening to the senses, listening again, to the sounds that are here, rather than the sounds of thoughts in your mind, becoming aware of the sensations in your body, perhaps by re-relaxing a little, softening and relaxing the shoulders, softening and relaxing the hands, softening and relaxing the belly, and softening and relaxing the heart. Just as a cup can be filled with water, this body can be filled with awareness,

where in the foreground of this whole play of sensations, thoughts, thoughts, sounds, feelings, and aware in the background of this alert, inner stillness, that which is aware, the most subjective of experiences of your own presence, resting as presence, this vast ocean, aware of the waves that move across the surface.