Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Listening to, and Feeling, the Moment

Episode Date: October 18, 2013

2013-10-16 Guided Meditation: Listening to, and Feeling, the Moment

You might close your eyes and with your eyes closed, adjust how you're sitting so that you find your way into a posture do you feel can support you through the practice. And the guidelines are sitting in a way that you're upright enough so you can feel a quality of alertness awake, sitting in a way that feels balanced so that if you leaned a little to the left or a little to the right, you could come back center and really feel okay this is center and sitting in a way that you can relax your muscles wherever possible through the body and then we take some moments a way of arriving that we can all practice together is simply breathing in a very full in breath more than usual so breathing in filling the chest filling the lungs and then a slow out breath

and make it slow enough so you can feel the sensations of letting go of the breath. Breathing out, letting go. And then inhaling deeply again, inhaling, filling the lungs. Inhale a little more. So hold for moments. You can feel the fullness there. And then a slow out breath again. Letting go.

Relaxing outward, letting go. That's it. And again, let's inhale. filling the chest and lungs, full in-breath, and then that slow-out breath, imagine and feel you can soften down the length of the body as the breath goes out, letting go, letting go. And then allowing the breath to come back to its normal or natural rhythm, but letting the attention continue to relax with the breath. So as the breath comes in,

you might like a balloon that's inflating, just open to receive. And as the breath goes out, a kind of settling, relaxing, letting go. Notice even just in these few couple minutes maybe, the quality of presence that's here that might not have been here before.

Aware of the sounds in the room so that you're just listening, open, receptive, aware of the sensations in your body, what it feels like to sit here right now, from the inside out. You might check the heart area and sense what feelings, moods, emotions might be here. Not to judge in any way, but just to have that connection with how it is for you. We open our time together with a brief reflection on intention. You might sense what brings you here tonight. And as you sense that, sense for the deepest intention that you're aware of.

What is it that really matters to you? So you can feel your own sincerity. And it's from that place of caring about presence or waking up, about open-heartedness, about relaxing, that we bring our voices together with a very simple chant, the mantra, Ome. which is a mantra of connectedness, to kind of wake up out of our preoccupations

and just feel our belonging to our bodies, to each other, to this earth. So if you'd like to bring the palms together, just centering the attention again at the heart, we'll chant three times. Please inhale deeply. The portal to mindful awareness is through relaxing and waking up in this body,

You might sense the brow area and just soften at the brows let there be a kind of smile spreading through the eyes so the corners of the eyes are up a bit and just feel the sensations that naturally arise around the eyes and the brow as you soften and pay attention in a similar way a slight smile at the mouth

feel the inside of the mouth smiling let the jaw be unhinged. Just feel the sensations of the tongue, gums, lips, the mouth area. Without forcing much of an expression, just feel the cheeks, the rest of your face. Imagine smiling into your heart area, letting a smile, a curve of a smile spread through the heart area. And the image and sense of a smile is not to cover over, but really to make room. for the aliveness, the mood, the emotion, and the heart area. So just explore that, smiling into the heart.

Sensing a smile spreading through the chest. And then just feeling from the inside out, sensation, emotion, whether there's a sense of openness or tightness, fear, excitement, like widening circles, let the awareness open up, outward and outward so that the shoulders can naturally relax back and down a bit. Bring the awareness inside the shoulders. See if you can notice a bit of letting go in the shoulders. We're kind of dissolving or melting.

See if you can notice a sense of movement, aliveness, of sensation, even a sense of space in the shoulders, doing the whole region of the arms. And then intentionally softening the hands so they're resting in a very easy way, a very effortless, relaxed way. And then bring the awareness inside the hands. Can you detect the sensations there as you soften and feel from the inside out? Are you aware of tingling or perhaps pulsing, vibrating?

The same intimate presence can be brought throughout the whole body. You might discover that as you relax there's more of an experience of aliveness, the movement of energy, feeling an openness across the chest, and then loosening down the torso so the belly is relaxed. You might see if you can let this next breath be received by a softening body. belly. This breath and then this one and now this one and again a soft open attention deep in the belly, letting the awareness spread through the lower torso, hips, buttocks, genitals, relaxing and feeling the aliveness play through you, letting your awareness scan down the legs

and feeling where your feet are, the pressure, contact, with the floor, or if you're sitting with your legs crossed with each other, or your legs and your feet contacting, just feeling the feet from the inside. Just like the hands, can you receive the sensations of aliveness of tingling or vibrating there? And notice what happens if you simultaneously feel this whole body as a field of sensation. Just open. opening the attention, not controlling anything, just purely receptive, allowing, letting this whole play of life move through you. In the space of presence, the openness of presence, widening even further to sense the sounds,

not doing anything. Sounds are known spontaneously by awareness. Let the sounds wash through you. Close in sounds appearing and disappearing like these words, the spaces between sounds, listening to the space in this room, listening to the more distant sounds, opening the attention to the most distant sounds you can perceive, sensing how awareness includes even the most distant sounds, vast space of receptivity, listening to and feeling the sounds and the sensations, moment to moment, sense the quality of heerness that you're right here. You might even mentally whisper here, relaxing with this changing play, sound, sensation.

For some, it can be helpful to stabilize. this quality of presence by letting the inflow and outflow of the breath be in the foreground. You can experiment with that too. Very relaxed, intimate attention, feeling the breath as it comes in and the breath as it goes out, not controlling the breath, just receiving it, just as you would sound or sensation. You can pay attention to the breath as a sense sensations in the nostrils. Or it might be the feeling of the breath as the chest rises and falls. It might be as the belly expands and settles.

Perhaps you're relaxing with the breath by feeling the whole body opening even in a cellular way as the breath comes in and settling, releasing with the out breath. At some point you'll notice that the mind's drifted and you're not here anymore, you're in some virtual reality, thoughts about the future, memories, commentary, some drift maybe. In those moments, simply pause and appreciate that you've noticed. Oh, okay, I'm back again.

Noticing the thought is a thought, and gently opening the attention again to what's right here, arriving again in Heerness these sounds right here perhaps relaxing the body the shoulders the hands the belly feeling the heerness or the presence

as this aliveness of the body and if it's helpful to you maybe gently arriving again with the next in-flow or outflow of the breath alert and relaxed moment to moment I'd see if it's possible to let go just a little bit more right now. The tension, the habitual tension in our body is a way of pulling away from the present moment. Letting go, relaxing with what is.