Tara Brach - 2015-10-10-Morning-Instruction-and-Meditation (from retreat)

Episode Date: November 5, 2015

2015-10-10-Morning-Instruction-and-Meditation (from the IMCW fall residential retreat) Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Greetings. I'm Tara Brock, and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the talks and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To make a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org. Thank you. As you settle, you might sense your intention towards presence. that sincerity of choosing to be here. And with that, just reflecting for a moment on really the attitude that can hold our practice of bringing a genuine interest to what's going on right here and now, and a friendliness, interest, friendliness,

and then just relaxing with what's happening. Really the heart of our practice is recognizing what's going on right here and really allowing it. So this morning's guidance will be a bit of that kind of scanning and arriving more fully. And then some simple instructions just to begin the broader instructions that will unfold through the week. We often like to begin, since the portal of presence, really as waking up, in this body, being awake right here in this body. So to scan down through the body with awareness, relaxing, waking up. And I often begin with the area of the eyes.

It's very easy when we're thinking a lot to collect tension and tightness around the eyes. So you might just soften consciously. And I often use the image of a smile letting a smile spread through the eyes, letting the outside corners of the eyes, just sensing a kind of lifting up there, softening around the eyes, letting the brow be smooth.

So that whole region eases out some. In a similar way, a slight smile at the mouth tends to undo some of the tension in the whole body. You might sense the insolence. of the mouth smiling, relaxing the tongue right down to the root of the tongue. See if you can feel that, feeling the sensations and aliveness that fill the whole mouth, feeling the throat filling the neck, from the inside out, just sensing sensation, space inside the neck area, allowing the shoulders maybe to relax a little back and down,

feeling the shoulders from the inside out, just sensing what is there, if there's any tightness or tension, letting it float a bit, see if there's some natural unwinding in awareness, loosening, dissolving. You might sense the length and volume of your arms, extending right into the hands,

See if you can soften the hands, let them rest in a very easy, effortless way. And as you soften feeling from the inside out, a very receptive, intimate presence. Can you notice the tingling, vibrating, perhaps pulsing, feeling the aliveness and the space inside the hands, letting there be an openness in the chest area. and you might sense that image and felt experience of a smile at the heart, not to cover over but really to sense the space that's there, letting it spread through the heart. And feel from the inside out what's there, what's the experience in the heart area,

an interested, friendly presence, relaxing with what's here, scanning down and sensing the belly, softening the belly, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one, and again, and feel from the inside out, the aliveness, space, experience inside the belly, and continuing to scan down, feeling the whole pelvic region,

feeling from the inside out, the play of sensations, fully receptive presence, sensing into the length and volume of the legs, feeling right down into the feet, placing the awareness inside the feet and feeling the sensations there, and widening the lens of attention to include simultaneously this whole body,

this whole field of sensation, not stopping anything, not opposing anything, just letting this whole life live through you, including the dance of sensation, and also the appearing and disappearing of sounds, just becoming the space that's all happening in, awake, receptive, listening to and feeling the whole moment, aware of the sounds, the play of sensations and feelings, and in the background of that alert inner stillness, that which is aware, the presence that's right here. Our practice is to come back again and again, relax back into this presence right here. In the most simple version, it's a forgetting and remembering, a drifting into a virtual kind of reality, a noticing of that, and a pausing to reopen or relax back.

You'll notice that when there's a drifting into thoughts, the senses are no longer really awake. You're not noticing the sounds that are right here. the sensations right in this moment. So you can relax back by reopening or reawakening the senses, landing gently again right in the moment. And for many it's quite helpful to have a kind of home base in the senses

to come back to and anchor. For good number, that anchor will be the breath. And we invite you to sense wherever the breath is most predominant or easy to feel, most pleasant. It might be the in-flow, outflow at the nostrils. It might be the rising, falling at the chest, expanding, settling at the abdomen. For some, it might be the sense of the whole body breathing, opening, expanding, deflating, settling. And for some, if the breath isn't your anchor the best way to collect and settle, maybe sound

or the sensations in the body, for some, a combination of the breath, maybe sensations in the hand. The purpose of the anchor is to have a way, a kind of portal back into this presence, wakeful, open, here. Start fresh in any moment. Re-awakening your senses. Listening to the sounds that are here. Sensing that spaciousness that's listening, that openness and receptivity.

With that same receptivity, feeling the sensations and aliveness in the body, laxing where you notice habitual, clenching, relaxing the heart, your anchor, your home base in an intimate and receptive way, and sensing that background of presence that's really our home, what we are. Noticing where your attention is, and if the mind is drifted, if the mind is talking to itself in some sort of commentary, let this be an invitation to relax back again. and interested, friendly attention arriving right here,

moment to moment, relaxing with what's happening.