Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Space & Aliveness

Episode Date: December 13, 2013

2013-12-11 - Guided Meditation: Space & Aliveness

A very good way to begin with any meditation is to very consciously adjust your posture. And so you might close your eyes and with your eyes closed, find a way of sitting so that you're really upright. You might just to sense upright, lean a little back or a little forward, lean to the left to the right. And then find that balanced a lot. line posture, where you're sitting tall but you're not stiff. And maintaining that tallness, see if you can just start relaxing your limbs.

Relaxing whatever can relax that's not directly supporting the posture. You might at this point let the breath deepen so that you take a much more full and extended in breath, filling the lungs, and then a slow out breath. slow, slow out breath. So you feel the sensations of releasing the breath. And again, inhaling and filling the lungs, filling the chest. And then a slow out breath. Letting go.

Letting go. One more time. Nice deep, full in breath. Releasing slowly, softening down the length of the body. Letting go. Letting go. allowing the breath to be in its natural rhythm now. And just notice the quality of your presence,

a little more of that sense of heerness being right here. Sense is awake to the sounds, awake to the sensations in the body, some interest, a kind of listening into your own heart. And just become aware of whatever mood is here. For some of us, we haven't checked in with our heart in a while. So just to pay attention and notice the state of your heart. And with that listening, you might sense what, if your heart could express itself,

what your heart really cares about, what brings you here tonight, what the heart longs for, what matters to you, listen with as sincere and attention as possible. You can sense a bit of a homecoming when you start contacting what matters to. It's from that place of presence and heart that we chant together as community, a very simple universal sound current of OM, sound current of connectedness. If you'd like to bring the palms together in that gesture and posture of reverence, of care, of openness, receptivity, please do.

We'll chant three times. Please inhale. Continuing with a gentle attention, relaxing through the body. You might sense the curve or shape of a smile spreading. through the eyes as if you could smile into the eyes, softening the corners of the eyes, letting the brow be smooth in a similar way, sensing the spirit and curve of a smile at the mouth, corners of the mouth soft, slight upturn, the inside of the mouth smiling, letting the muscles, the small muscles in the face to soften, relax, sometimes described as smile yoga

because it directly allows the nervous system to relax the reflex of fight-flight, to be more receptive at ease. Softening the eyes, the corners of the eyes soft. Slight smile at the mouth. You might feel the breath at the throat, sense that same curve and receptivity and openness of a smile there.

And in the same way, feeling the breath at the chest and letting a smile spread through the heart area, smiling into the heart, visualizing, getting a felt sense of the spirit of a smile in the heart area, not to cover over, but rather to create space for whatever's here, sensing an opening in all directions from the heart area, enough so that you can imagine and sense the shoulders relaxing back and down, letting the awareness fill the shoulders

so you can feel the aliveness and space inside the shoulders just to imagine and feel that aliveness and space inside the shoulders you might sense a dissolving where there's hardness in the shoulders are kind of dissolving from ice to water and water to vapor

aliveness and space letting that aliveness and space be felt through the whole arms both of the arms right down into the hands let the hands rest in a very easy and effortless way notice what happens

when you place your awareness inside your hands feeling the hands from the inside out softening the hands can you notice the tingling the vibrating the expression of aliveness inside the hands

can you imagine the space that fills the hands space and aliveness. Again, feeling the openness of the chest. Feeling inside the chest, the heart, noticing the sensations, the aliveness, the space that fills the chest. Scanning down some to feel the belly.

It might soften. Imagine a curve of a smile through the naval area. It's that receptivity, openness. letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and then this one. And again, sensing the aliveness deep in the torso,

imagining the space that fills the belly, the aliveness, spreading outward, filling the hips, buttocks, genitals. You're feeling yourself from the inside out as space and aliveness, including the region of the upper legs, eyes, the hamstrings, just feeling from the inside out, sensations, movement, down into the lower legs, calves, shins, right into the feet, placing your awareness in the feet, areas of firmness where you're touching the ground,

pressure, warmth, sensing with space, vibration, tingling, it fills the feet, and letting your awareness extend downward into the earth, feeling the earth as vast aliveness in space. Letting that aliveness and space when the earth fill you,

so you feel yourself as a continuation of earth, of space and aliveness, simultaneously feeling your whole body all at once as a field of sensation, space and aliveness. You might imagine the space that extends in front of you infinitely, past the further stars.

And imagine the space that extends behind you infinitely. Past the further star. The space that extends to either side out infinitely, past the furthest stars. Space that extends above you out and out past the further stars. And the space that extends beneath you, out and out. Past the furthest stars.

And can you sense that that that vastness of space around you is no different than the vast space inside you. It's continuous space expressing as aliveness, sensing that continuous space filled with the light of awareness. You might sense the heart's experience of continuous space, sense that every heart you know is filled with this luminous, continuous space, radio, awake, all part of the same continuous space, the same awareness, resting, letting go again and again into the spacious, awake presence. Quite naturally the mind is conditioned to contract away from openness and presence.

Just go into trains of thinking. if you notice the mind is narrowed into thought forms, future, the past, commentary. No judgment, just take that as a part of waking up. Oh, okay, thinking. Thinking. Just pause. See if you can notice the difference between being inside a thought, connecting with this moment-to-moment aliveness, this great space of emptiness and aliveness, the presence that's here. If you get lost and drifting, again and again choose to come back into awareness of the sensations that are here, sounds, perhaps the movement of the breath, relaxing with what's right here, space and aliveness.

You might see if it's possible. just to let go and relax a little bit more right now. These last few moments, not to do anything. Just simply notice what's happening and relax with the changing flow of experience. These closing moments, finding whatever way is natural for you to offer a gesture of kindness or appreciation to your own heart.