Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Living Presence

Episode Date: April 11, 2014

2014-04-09 - Guided Meditation: Living Presence

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Please come into stillness. You might notice your breath and begin extending the in-breath. Let it be a little more full, a little more deep. And then a slow out-breath, slow enough so you can feel the sensations of releasing the breath, inhaling deeply, filling the chest and the lungs. And again, a slow-out breath. letting go, relaxing outward, releasing.

And one more time, inhaling deeply. Slow, conscious out breath. See if you can soften down the length of the body as you exhale. Letting go. Letting go. And allowing the breath to resume in its natural cycle. And just noticing the quality of presence right now. Let your senses be awake, aware of the sounds, aware of the movement of sensations in the body,

and with a listening, a gentle attention, noticing the heart, state of your heart right now. Without any judgment, just notice. With that listening attention, see if you can sense what your deepest or most sincere aspiration is for this evening. What really matters to? I continue by establishing a kind of atmosphere of kindness and it can help to sense the image and shape of a smile. You might imagine great sky, the blue sky extending in all directions and that the curve of a smile is spreading through it. I just sense the openness and feeling tone, the receptivity of that smile, bright, expansive, vast.

And just let that fill the whole mind. So your mind merges of sky and is filled with that curve of a smile, open and expansive, receptive. You might smile into the eyes, letting the smile spread through the eyes, softening, around the eyes. So the corners of the eyes are a bit lifted up. Brow is smooth, at ease. In feeling that receptivity and openness,

you might feel the vibration, tingling through the brow area, the eyes. In a similar way, you might sense the slight smile at the mouth. The Buddhist teacher Tikna Han describes us as smile yoga because it sends a message to the nervous system to be at ease to relax the fight-flight freeze response so that there can be a natural quality of relaxation. Slight smile at the mouth. Let the inside of the mouth be smiling. So the eyes are smiling, soft, at ease, the mouth,

the jaw relaxed. You can sense in the throat area as you breathe in and out the sensations there and imagine and feel a smile spreading in that area. Openness, receptivity. Again, softening the eyes,

feeling a smile there, mouth, throat. And then letting the smile spread through the heart and chest area. This is not to cover over experience but rather to create space that allows for whatever's here to unfold. So visualizing and feeling, imagining, a smile spreading through the heart area. And you might sense a rippling out and openness

that ripples outward and outward to allow the shoulders to relax back and down some, just to let go a little, letting the awareness fill the shoulders. So you can feel them from the inside. Whatever, tightness or tensions there to let it float in awareness let it unknot itself in a natural way there of sensations in the arms right down into the hands you might let your hands rest in a very easy way soft at rest and feel them from the inside out and can you feel the flow of sensation the tingling perhaps the pulsing or vibrating. Notice what happens if you soften even more and feel the hands from the inside out.

The awareness filling the hands, the arms, the shoulders, the chest wide open, scanning down and sensing the belly and letting the curve of a smile spread through the naval area, the dantianas it's described in an energetic system Tai Chi, Chi-Gung. Let that curve of a smile spread through there. So you can feel the breath deep in a softening belly,

receptive and open, receiving the breath really deeply in the torso, letting that softening and opening spread down through the whole pelvic region. This is a cup can be filled with water. This body can be filled with awareness. and feeling the legs from the inside out, sensations, the space inside the legs, right down into the feet,

letting the awareness be inside the feet. If you can notice the pressure and warmth, where you contact the floor, and the very inner sense of sensation moving, vibrating, tingling, awake in the feet, the hands soft, filled with energy and aliveness, As you widen your attention, you can sense this whole body as a field of sensation.

You might sense that curve of a smile as vast and expansive and inclusive space, openness, just allowing the aliveness of the body to be just as it is, not opposing anything, just a changing dance of sensation, playing out in an open, kind awareness, noticing that along with sensation sounds are arising and passing away in this open space of awareness. Sensing how awareness listening to and receiving this whole moment, see how fully you can give permission for this life to be as it is. This play of sensations bubbling up, tingling, vibrating, pleasant, unpleasant, feet cool, it's changing symphony of sound. And in the background, that alert inner stillness,

recognizing that formless dimension of awareness itself, silent presence that knows what's happening. Being that open presence, natural that the mind will contract away from that openness wakefulness, fix it on the thought, future, the past, some commentary. How you respond to thinking will determine the quality of the experience that unfolds. So let your intention be to regard thinking with a real quality of acceptance, just noticing, ah, thinking, and pausing, and relaxing open again because whenever there's a thought the mind is contracted you can relax open again and begin to listen to the changing sounds

you can relax open by very intentionally softening in areas of the body that habitually contract perhaps the shoulders right now softening the hands the belly softening you can relax the heart perhaps sensing that image of a smile to softening the smiling into the eyes, the mouth, and creating that openness and receptivity from the smile and the heart.

Again aware of the dance of sensation and sound and that background presence that allows and wakefully notices this changing life. Letting thoughts be a reminder to relax open again, to relax back into your senses, the awareness of sound that's right here, relaxing with sensation, relaxing open to feel the life of the heart, living presence.