Tara Brach - 2015-04-15 - Meditation: Relaxing, Smiling, Being Here

Episode Date: April 17, 2015

2015-04-15 - Meditation: Relaxing, Smiling, Being Here

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Letting the awareness scan through the body. Begin by just noticing if there's areas of particular tightness or tension. Sensing the possibility of bringing awareness to those domains and letting there be a softening, loosening. For many, the image and shape of a smile can help to bring that ease into the body. You might sense a smile spreading

through the eyes. With the corners of the eyes gently lifted up, the outside corners, let the brow be smooth, the eyes soft, a slight smile, a real smile at the lips. Imagine the inside of the mouth

smiling, relaxing right down to the root of the tongue. The eyes are smiling, the mouth. You can feel the breath and the throat and imagine the curve of a smile in the throat, softening, opening there, and feeling the spread of a smile through the chest, through the heart area. You can visualize and feel a smile there, creating space for whatever experience is arising,

letting the openness of a smile spread outward and outward so that the shoulders are free to relax back down a little, back and down. away from the shoulders and since your awareness can fill the shoulders continuing a letting go a softening there it's as if anything that's tangly

or tight can float in awareness naturally untangle feeling the length and the volume of the arms right down into the hands letting the hands rest in a very easy effortless way

and softening the hands so that you can feel from the inside out the aliveness there. Sense the hands filled with awareness, keeping the hands soft and again sensing the eyes soft, smiling, the mouth, throat, and again the spread of a smile through the chest, feeling that openness in the chest, really allows you to sense the aliveness in space that's inside you,

Continuing to scan down the body, feeling the navel area and letting the curve of a smile, the image and feeling of a smile spread through the belly. Let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and again and again. You sense a smile and the space, awareness that's there. It's a wake space. In a similar way you can let that image and sense a sense. of a smile fill the pelvic area, opening to the aliveness, sense of sensation and space

that fills that whole region, feeling down the length and the volume of the legs, letting the feet be filled with awareness, feeling the space, vibration, aliveness that's there, and sensing your natural rootedness in the earth below you and around you. As you can imagine and sense this whole field of earth and sky filled with aliveness and flowing through you, right up through the feet, filling your body with intense presence, awakeness, and life. Just let everything happen, not resisting or opposing anything, sensing this body as a field of sensation. In addition to sensation, aware of the sounds that appear and disappear in the space of awareness.

You're listening to and feeling the whole moment, aware of the changing play of sound, sensation, changing flow in the foreground. You also be aware of this alert presence, this awake presence, that which is aware in the background, the stillness that's aware of sensation, the silence that's aware of sound, relaxing back into this wakeful openness, aware of the changing dance of experience,

noticing when the attention gets distracted, contracts away from this living presence into some thought form, memory, commentary, plan. And the practice is simply to notice that, to appreciate that when you're noticing it, you're waking up again. Relax open.

If it's helpful, if the smile is helpful, just to soften the eyes and feel the smile there, the mouth. the heart, softening the hands, feeling the movement of the breath. Know that you're here, right here. If the mind feels very busy, it's quite fine to let the breath be a home base or anchor that helps you reconnect with presence again and again. Once again, let the attention come to the eyes, softening, let a smile spread through the eyes. receptive, slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling, and smiling into the heart,

sensing the receptivity and space that can open there. Let that listening attention come to the heart area, feeling the state of your heart in this moment, and offering whatever wish or blessing you'd like that resonates right here and now, offering inward to your own being and sensing that space of the heart is quite vast and open, including all beings and all life. So you offer your prayer now in whatever way you'd like to this whole web of aliveness, to all beings everywhere.