Tara Brach - Ask Me Anything: Questions & Responses with Tara - Part II

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music

Welcome friends to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Namaste, welcome, friends. Thank you for being here.

A few weeks ago, we invited your questions that kind of asked me anything, and I received so many amazing, wonderful questions, and I responded to some of them a few weeks ago. So what I'd like to do today is continue and begin explore a few more of them. they'll range from really practical ways we can work with difficulties to very deep inquiries about relationship and how to live in and respond to a very troubled world.

So we'll start with Sam from the UK who asks, When you're hijacked by emotions or thoughts, what helps you return to the present? What's an approach you have recently used? I'm interested in small things that are working for you at the moment. So I appreciate that, Sam. It was a chance for me to, you know, review my favorite go-toes. And I've had a great opportunity recently. We're moving.

And I have been living with these deadlines, get the house ready for buyers, and also renovate enough stuff. that we can move into a new place and so on, plus my normal demands of daily life. So, it's been busy and I've been, I've had some anxiety on deadlines and also frustration with myself. I'm not a particularly well-organized person, so I felt like I haven't been going around, I haven't been doing things intelligently. So the first thing, when I become aware, okay, I'm speeding around and I'm kind of stuck, I'm hijacked, is to acknowledge what's happening. Okay, speedy, anxious, judging. I'll just kind of name it. And then I breathe and I do a breath where I'll take in a

kind of a shortish inhale and then a long, slow release. And I find that I'll do that about three times. I'll just stop and I'll go through my mouth, a long, slow release. And then if I'm down on myself at those moments, I'll also just kind of put my hand on my heart. It's kind of that gesture of kindness. And then I'm more aware and I can begin to sense, oh, what's happening right here? And then there's taking in the sounds and the feelings of the moment and my breath, but I'm more here. I'm more here. And it works. It's not like my mind becomes like this calm lake reflecting the sun or whatever, but there's more presence, more kindness. I'm not so caught in the narrative of that kind of imprisoning mind state that

something bad's about to happen around the corner. So what I find is that I do that when I I'm stuck, but I find moving through the day that those steps are actually a wonderful pathway back to more full presence, even when I'm not hijacked. We can try it together right now and by anyone listening that would like to just to turn inward and sense, okay, what's happening right now inside and just breathe with it. Breathe with it. And if there's any sense that you've been down on yourself, you might add some kindness, put your hand on your heart. So you're breathing, you're paying attention, your hands on your heart. You might explore that short in-brath and that long out-breath. And simply notice what it's like right now to be here.

Perhaps you can notice the Chinese put it this way, they call it heart presence, that there's, this is the word for mindfulness, that there's more heart presence. presence. So again, thank you, Sam, for starting us off. I love the very small kind of mindfulness reminders, like breathing, like hand on the heart, like naming what's here, just to bring us back. Okay, the next is Amanda from the UK. Do you have any advice on how to be able to keep these teachings live when I'm too overwhelmed, when I don't have energy to tune into them when thoughts arise like, what's the point in embracing these teachings if I can only engage with them when things are going okay? So, Amanda, what you're naming out loud

many people experience. Like if we were here alive and we did a hand raise, so many feel like the spiritual path goes out the window when we get overwhelmed. We get very small and tight and preoccupied. And this is just in our world, it's just pervasive, the sense of overwhelm, especially if you're sensitive, the speed of change and I think climate change and it's just every day you can read in the news or right where you are, something really in extreme is happening. Speed of change through AI. social media, financial pressures, so many living with. Especially for young people, the uncertainty around jobs,

and then of course the global violence that we're all aware of. So, the reality is that practicing presence, practicing mindfulness and kindness, much easier when we have a general sense of things okay. and when we're not in survival mode. But once we get overwhelmed, once fight, flight, freeze kicks in, we disconnect from a kind of whole integrated state of mind, and we get very tight.

It's very hard to access kindness then. So there are two domains that save us in a way, that when we're overwhelmed, they can help to bring us back online with our own intelligence and heart. And one of them is relational, that we are relational creatures and if there can be some connecting in some way with another, even if it's a very short pause to say, I'm here, are you here, looking into each other's eyes and are getting a hug or whatever. and then the word in Buddhism in the Pali language is Sangha, a sense of a spiritual friend. If you have any people that value the path and want to kind of set up keeping company some

so that you can touch in even at the end of the day some people do a gratitude check-in because that can lift the spirits. or some people take just like 10 minutes in the morning to sit quietly together online or on the phone or in person. Draw on Sangha, draw on community some just to discover that you can break through overwhelm when you feel even a moment of real contact. The other way of saving ourselves of reconnecting. connecting of waking up out of the overwhelm is even a mini dose of mindfulness.

And this I just touched on, three breaths, short in-breath and a long out-breath. And biochemically, there's more balance, there's more of the kind of atmosphere for presence. I also recommend, even when overwhelmed, doing what I call a light rain or a brief rain, or you just name it, you just say, overwhelmed. You let that be for a moment. You might breathe with it, just feel the sensations in your body, and offer yourself a wish. Just offer yourself a wish, put your hand on your heart and say, may I relax? And you'll find you're a little bit more at home.

then you can kind of start noticing what you're actually seeing and hearing and smelling and feeling in the moment. Another mini dose of mindfulness is possible if you just look up and widen the gaze. You know, lift your gaze, notice the sky or notice a tree or notice the light in the room or the space around you. but shift your attention, widen the lens, because when we're tight, when we're overwhelmed, the lens of mind and attention gets really narrow. So you can interrupt that by literally looking at the sky. I sometimes try to imagine my mind is the sky

and just imagining that opens me up. so when overwhelmed connect with the body connect with a larger awareness you know maybe i'll share an image that i love which is really helpful to imagine a hill with really deep grooves in it like for skiing or sledding and that our habit of mind is to keep going down the hill in the same grooves, the same thought patterns and thoughts and feelings looping, but the same patterns. And that mindfulness, a moment of mindfulness is like a snow that helps to fill in the groove so there's more choice to move down the mountain with awareness, with presence, with heart. There's less rocks, there's more flow and grace.

So what builds our capacity to deal with overwhelm is the more that we have that snow, the more we do the mini mindfulness interventions and a daily practice, to some degree to maintain a daily practice. Some of you might know my story, which was I lived in a spiritual community for 10 years plus, and so it was much easier to have a daily practice. with everybody else, but when I left the community and I had a child, it was tough. And for a few months, I didn't practice so much. Then I started noticing, you know, I had some money in the bank, so to speak, I had done so much practice that it carried me some,

but then I started noticing that without a daily practice, I was much more inclined to get stuck, to get overwhelmed, they get reactive. So what I started doing, I made this commitment. Every day, no matter what, I was going to do some formal practice. But I had a back door and that was it didn't matter how long or what kind of practice. I just had to consciously in some way come into stillness and have the intention for presence. So that was about 40 years ago and I've done that. And some days it's been like very end of the day, you know, just sitting still for a few

moments and then saying bless everyone, you know. But other times I'll sit down and I won't have the, I won't think I have time for a long sit, but it ends up being longer than I expected and more settling and more opening. So I just want to encourage any of you that feel like you want to deepen your commitment to say to yourself every day no matter what. But give yourself the back door so it's not rigid so that it actually is coming from your love for waking up. It's a real gift to the soul. Okay, this is Ali from the Midwest. I have struggled with my own mental health. and addiction. Finding out that I was pregnant was a turning point. I've done a lot of work and

healing. I have a teen son now who has a lot of struggles to trigger my own insecurities. How do I accept that I can't force change in him? So I picked this alley because it's such a deep and challenging thing when we feel like our children are suffering. And as a very, we're a mom, I know that we can, we're, our attachment to our children, it just doesn't end when they grow up. I mean, my son's 40, you know, and I still feel how much I get a minute. It's intense. We worry when they struggle and we know mentally that we can't force to change, but emotionally it's very strong. So, maybe to share one woman I worked with who was a recovered alcoholic. Her adult daughter in her early 30s, I think, was alcoholic.

And she would confront her and her daughter would not admit it. And they became very angry and distanced. And so all she could do was try to accept her own feelings, which is, I feel powerless. Somebody I love is destroying their lives. I feel fear. I feel grief. She couldn't it wasn't about accepting her daughter as much as accepting her feelings, her pain about her daughter. And the more that became her practice, just opening to that powerless and that fear, she found the only way she could hold it was to in some way offered in prayer to be held by God or her sense that the loving universal spirit that holds everything. So her practice was to feel her upset and distress about her daughter, feel it,

and then in some way I'm kind of giving you the sense of a gesture just like offering it to be held in something larger. And that really allowed her to have the space to be with how painful it was. And by the way, I use that gesture myself. It's kind of that handing. over gesture where I'm not trying to get rid of something or deny something, but I'm letting it be held by a larger reality. I've worked with many people, executives, musicians around their performance, people having held trouble, and there's a real power to sensing that the pain

we're experiencing. It's like a wave in the ocean can be held by the ocean. Well, for this woman, and there were many rounds of that, feeling powerless, feeling the fear and the grief and handing it over with prayer. And with her daughter, she would still name not as much in judgment but just in truth. This is what I see going on. And if you ever want to talk, I'm here. You know, if you ever feel ready, I'm here. Well, it wasn't until her daughter encountered like a major tension and conflict with her marriage.

It was kind of about to completely tank that she began to talk to her mother and she did find her way into AA Alcoholics Anonymous. So, Allie, I don't know what the particulars are with your son, but what is true is we can't control with anybody. Acceptance starts by accepting our own pain about what's happening and for you accepting the insecurities that are triggered, accepting the powerlessness, fear, shame, and let it be held in something larger. Because when we do, we become larger, we become more of a force for healing, not through controlling, but because of more access to presence and to love. K. This is K. This is K.

Kendra from New York. I've spent many years caught in what you call the trance of unworthiness. Rain helps the most. I'll go through the steps and sense the part of me that feels bad and how young she is and imagine embracing her. When I take the time it works, I feel better. But then something will happen and there I am again, this flawed human, not enough, messing up in some way, something wrong with me. Will this ever stop? It feels like an endless loop. Thank you, Kendra. I so appreciate your question because one of the hardest things about the trance of unworthiness is how incredibly persistent it is. I mean, those are deep grooves when I describe that hell with the grooves. Those are very deep grooves. We've rehearsed the beliefs and the feelings for years. So it's natural. They keep arising.

I mean, I can honestly say that after more than 50 years of working with the trance of unworthiness, the thoughts and feelings still visit me. But it's not like an endless loop. It's more like an ascending spiral. And I want to explain that because that's a helpful image for me. So a loop keeps taking us back to the very same place. We're the same place because we're identified with this separate. flawed self, right? A spiral, it also revisits the familiar territory, but each time it does,

we're inhabiting awareness a little more fully. So the old patterns become increasingly visible. They're also transparent. They're less solid. They're less believable. It's as if they're gradually becoming more suffused with light. So we see, oh yeah, there's that narrative. but it's not really who I am. So when I notice I'm caught in self-judgment, I described a situation earlier, I pause and like you, I practice rain, I recognize the judging, I allow it to be there,

I investigate the shame and the fear underneath, I nurture, but that's not the end of the practice. A lot of people end rain after nurturing and forget what's called after the rain. because after the rain is when you just stay and start getting familiar with the more in large quality of being, that sense of presence and awareness that's including what's going on but not caught in it. There's more of a sense of openness and tenderness and spaciousness that's holding it. And so we start sensing that that's more who we are than any of the same.

of the old narratives. Sometimes I invite people during after the rain to ask the question, well, who am I if nothing is wrong with me? I mean, all of you listening right now, just check that out for a moment. Who am I if nothing is wrong with me? Sometimes what we notice is how much of our sense of who we are is wrapped around believing something is wrong. And sometimes if we we get a glimmer of this mysterious vast presence of what we are if we're not in that narrative. So the next time for me that the trance returns, something's different because the thoughts may still come, but there's just more remembrance of that space and that light of who I am so I don't believe it as much. So I guess what I most want to say is don't be discouraged if the old patterns keep arising.

The question isn't if they arise, it's who are you when they arise? Can you become more and more the witness, the space that they're happening in? Because as that happens and that happens with after the rain and that presence, as you become familiar with that larger space, you're not so hooked. there's more freedom. This next one is Asmita from India. How does one practice better awareness in a relationship, specifically a marriage, when one spouse is entirely unwilling or unable to meet halfway?

In a relationship with obvious communication and intimacy problems, is it possible for one person to do her best to improve a marriage? So, wonderful question. and yes, yes, it is possible. And thank you for the question because so many people are in relationships where the capacities of the two partners actually are very uneven. That happens. So maybe first to just acknowledge for USMita and for anyone in that, how painful it is.

Because most of us long to be met with presence. We want to be met with interest and honesty and affection and this kind of willingness to grow together. And sometimes because of one partner having particular strong trauma or because of ways our culture shaped us, one partner might not be able to meet us to join us there. I worked with a woman whose husband would shut down whenever conflict arose and she would pursue with attempts to talk with pleading and then with criticism and he would

withdraw, withdrawal, withdraw. And that became their dynamic. The more she tried to reach out and connect and judge him for pulling away, the more angry she got, the more he completely, you know, just fully distanced. So through her practice, she began to recognize. that beneath her anger at him was a really deep fear of not mattering, of being alone. It was a lifelong longing for connection. So she learned when he was pulling away to pause, and rather than go after him with either grasping or judgment or whatever, she'd pause and she'd feel that place in her that felt like she didn't matter and the feared being alone. And she began to deepen self-compassion.

And she found that if she did that first, if she could speak to him from vulnerability, often she'd say something like, I'm sad because I miss feeling close to you rather than blame. She found something shifted. He just didn't have to be so defensive. Now, I want to make clear that he didn't suddenly become, you know, you know, emotionally expressive, sharing his deepest darkest vulnerability, but he was less defensive. And then they had fewer escalating arguments and more moments of connection. And it allowed one of their bonding strengths, which is humor and play to come out more. And gradually he got curious about meditation. He started listening to some podcasts.

So he found that if he did some breathing practices, it quieted his anxiety at work. but it also made it so he had more tolerance for discomfort and more capacity to listen and hang in with her. So friends, this is the power of practice. We can't change each other by judging or controlling, but we can awaken inwardly. We can transform inwardly in a way that we inhabit relationships differently. We can make it more safe for another person to relax and open.

we can hold with kindness so they can relax and open. And that makes it possible for there to be more contact that's real. So I guess what I want to most emphasize is tend to the places where you react inwardly, where you go into a trance of fear or hurt or anger, shame, unmet longing. Because again, again, if we bring that compassionate presence to what's inside, we will be more creative and accepting and kind in how we respond to others. And sometimes it has a very obvious healing influence on the relationship, bringing more intimacy. Sometimes it doesn't.

But it's never wasted. It frees us from being imprisoned by reactivity. And from that place, there's more potential in the relationship. Okay, the next question is Karen from Australia. Some tips. How to bring love and kindness toward a loved one who betrayed me, affairs and myth-truths. I'm no longer in the relationship, but I grapple with bringing acceptance and meta, loving kindness, with feeling angry and betrayed. Rain helps a lot, but healing seems a slow process. So, thank you, Karen.

I can feel your dedication to waking up through this. And you're right, it can be painfully slow. So when someone we love has betrayed us, it's very difficult for the heart to genuinely open toward them while the wound is raw. It just, that doesn't happen. And it's not a failure of your practice, that it's slow. It's a sign that your work is not to cultivate loving kindness toward the other just yet.

It's a sign that that wounded place wants more attention, more presence, more care. For many of us, I would say the pain of rejection of betrayal, it's maybe the most deep, intense wound. and it touches very old places. So it calls for an equally deep and tender presence. I love these words from Henry Nguyen. He says, you need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds.

And I'm sharing this because I think betrayal is just bring such action. agony, you need to let your wounds go down into your heart, then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds. So it feels really important to say I've seen many people try to prematurely forgive and be compassionate. And it bypasses that necessary healing of discovering that our wounds can be held by our heart. And the inner work is really hard. It requires us to touch into such pain and it's freeing. So Karen, trust your own unfolding. Your heart space is vast enough to hold these wounds with compassion. And as they are met and healed, you'll find that acceptance, loving kindness,

towards the other naturally arises, not because you made them happen, but because your heart's no longer in prison. It's your nature to be loving. So for now, let your primary practice be offering that loving presence to the one who most needs it, that hurting place inside you. The next question is Emily from Minneapolis. What does setting boundaries look like in difficult relationships. I struggle with feeling like I need to accept everyone's behavior and not speak up for myself for fear of hurting their feelings. What does clear and honest communication look like in this sense and what about the emotional reactivity a person may have to these boundaries? Essentially, what is the best way to balance love, kindness, and non-judgment while also setting boundaries?

So, thank you, Emily. This could be, you know, we spend a year on this together because it's such a basic part of how we navigate relationships. And I often talk about it, as many of you know, Roshi Joan Halifax's term, strong back and soft front. And it's true that there's this potential and challenge, of cultivating a strong back with boundaries and protecting,

and also that soft front of opening our heart, keeping our heart open. And it helps me to think of it in terms of our species from an evolutionary perspective that we're all wired with survival strategies, and when we're threatened we can hurt each other. So we need a strong back to respond to wisely when another's acting in harmful ways. At the same time, we have the evolutionary potential to love and to heal, to forgive, to awaken together, and the soft front nurtures that.

I give you an example of where I saw them come together in a beautiful way. I was working with a couple whose 25-year-old son was living with them, and he wasn't working and leave the house in disarray and who's using drugs. and they lovingly but firmly told him that if you wanted to continue living at home, he needed to find a job or volunteer and clean up after himself and begin attending a 12-step program. He refused and they made that heartbreaking decision to have him leave. Especially for his mother, this was just crushing to kick her baby out. She felt intense guilt. She questioned herself constantly.

So what happened to have a strong back was her daily meditation, where she would first hold her own fear and grief and guilt with compassion, then she'd open her heart to her son's pain and suffering. She'd hold him with love. And rather than hardening her heart, the boundary arose from love that was clear and courageous and healthy. So she had the strong back, the boundaries, but it was really... it was animated by loving and she could feel that. And it was that same love that enabled, you know, where they asked him to leave,

that was there two years later when he was ready for rehab in a different life. But this is what I mean by a strong back and a sawfront. They go together. A strong back says, this behavior cannot continue. And a soft front says, and I have not stopped loving you. So, while the circumstances are different in different relationships, the same principles apply. So with a spouse, it might mean saying, I won't stay in a conversation where we're attacking each other.

With a friend, it may mean declining a repeated requests that leave you depleted. You know, with a colleague, it may mean calmly naming what is and isn't workable. So a boundary isn't about controlling what another person's behavior. It's about being clear how you will respond while keeping your heart open. It's not a wall. It creates conditions for actually more loving, more honest relationships. So, I hope that conveys a bit of the spirit of how we navigate. Okay, friends, and now for our final question for today.

Emma from Australia, how do we spiritually navigate intentional predatory harm perpetrated against us? Loving, kindness and forgiveness feel unsafe when a person hasn't been held otherwise accountable, but forgiveness is often spoken about as vital to healing. So, thank you, Emma, and it's really good to get clear on this, that when we're being violated, we need to do whatever we can to protect ourselves. We start with a strong back. We do not start with a soft front. I worked with a woman whose husband drank heavily, and after he would drink, he'd often become violent. He'd yell at her, he'd belittle her on several occasions.

He physically assaulted her. And then he would, you know, the next day, apologize profusely and promised to change, and for a time she'd believe it. She had what I would call the shadow side of the soffron. She kept thinking if she loved him enough and forgave him enough or understood him enough, he would change. And she started coming to meditation classes. And one evening, this was after another incident of her shaking her and shoving her against a wall, he went to bed, she sat quietly, simply feeling what was happening inside her, and suddenly the truth became a mistakeably clear

on being abused. He's not going to change. So, with that, that recognition came huge ways of anger and fear and grief. But beneath the waves, there was this deep clarity. She was no longer turning away from reality. And she left the marriage. And over the following years, she committed to, you know, therapy and support groups and this real practice of self-compassion. And gradually she healed.

And eventually, she could think of her former husband with genuine compassion. she could recognize the wounds that had shaped him. But she also knew with complete clarity that compassion did not mean entrusting him with her life. As we've talked about in this time together, forgiveness is vital to healing, but premature forgiveness can be harmful. And I feel like this woman's journey really illustrates why. I mean, when we're threatened or endangered, our first responsibility is to be us with ourselves about what's happening and to seek safety. And this is individually and also for groups that are being violated. Do what we need to protect ourselves. This is the meaning of a strong

back. It is not loving to ourselves or ultimately to others are our society to allow continued violation. I mean, sometimes love takes the form of distance from boundaries or allowing legal or social accountability to unfold. Only when we're safe enough can we contact that capacity to see how others are hurting to recognize that the predatory behavior comes from its own wounds, from fear, from ignorance. So we can hold that person or that group that's predatory with compassion without excusing the harm they've caused or relinquishing appropriate.

consequences. So I hope that's clear. Maybe I'll just take some moments to expand a little bit about for each of us how we can understand what it means to have a strong back or in a soft front because there are shadows to both. And if we know the shadows, we can honestly sense to ourselves am I responding in a healthy way? You know, in Zen there's this term appropriate response. And it's actually really profound notion that moving through the world

responding in ways that serve healing and awakening in ourselves and others. So with a strong back a lot of people will say, well I'm just having a strong back, I'm just protecting. The shadow is to reflexively perceive

threats everywhere and become rigid in our defensiveness. A strong back that's the shadow have a strong back is real tight, real armored. So rather than protecting against real danger, we're just chronically hardened and armored against ourselves and against others, you know. So the flag is chronic blame, anger, and resentment. If you're looking for the flag of a, of the shadow of the strong back, with a soft front, and I've mentioned this earlier, the shadow is to accommodate, placate, excuse, prematurely forgive out of fear.

We abandon ourselves in the effort to avoid conflict or guilt or pain, and it appears like a softrum, but it's not genuine compassion. So I hope that's helpful because for each of us, if we really have that intention to cultivate both because they absolutely go together, we can start responding to our lives more and more with wisdom. Maybe what we'll do, let's just do a short practice together. This is a practice that I shared recently with the year-long group that I have on the soft back, soft front and the strong back. So take a moment here.

And you might tune into a particular situation. in your life, a person where you have a pattern of conflict or tension, a person where you feel trigger, you bad other, someone you care about, but that you bad, you judge them, you blame them, you feel you're in conflict with them, not traumatic, not something coming from trauma. So bring to mind that, a person where you're kind of caught in that dance and look for the shadow? What's your shadow habit? Do you have the shadow of the strong back where you get overly defensive and judgmental? Do you have the shadow of the soft front where you're not clear on boundaries, your own wants and needs and you're over-accommodating? Now go to an actual example

where you got triggered, where there's a sense of conflict and dividedness, an actual example. remind yourself what was going on, what was being said, the space you're in, make the you turn. Just notice what's going on inside you in the middle of the conflict. What's the state of your body and your heart and your mind? You might sense what you're believing. They don't love me or respect me. They're rejecting me. Or maybe you're believing they're hurting themselves and I'm afraid of that.

they should be different. And sense what the feelings are in your body along with the beliefs. Sense of aversion. Squeeze in the chest. The heat from anger. So you shift from your head to your body. You know, if you let go of them being wrong or bad,

what is it that's hard to feel? What are you unwilling to feel? What's the vulnerability here? So this is the inquiry. What's under the reactivity? what's the vulnerability feel fear or hurt or powerless endangered deficient and take a few moments to bring some kindness

to whatever you're finding whatever you're finding hand on the heart kind of sending that message I'm with you I'm with you it helps to calling on your own highest self or maybe calling on a being in your life, spiritual figure, therapist. It's that energy of love and wisdom and just sense that you can bring real nurturing to whatever's going on inside you. We hold our own wounds with kindness. We can look through clearer eyes at the other, look through the eyes of the heart. Look at the other now and sense, what might they be struggling with?

Where might they feel hurt or afraid or not seen, not safe? Just let your heart be touched by that reality. And from this more open, wise heart, sense what love is asking. How might you have a strong back that protects life, the well-being of you both? and a soft front that nurtures life. How might you be more creative, having a strong back and a soft front?

You might take a few full breaths. Thank you, friends, for your wonderful questions and for being with us, for exploring this path of awakening together. Okay, love and blessings to each.