Tara Brach - Meditation: A Listening Presence with Smile Body Scan (2016-11-10)

Episode Date: December 29, 2016

Meditation: A Listening Presence with Smile Body Scan (2016-11-10) - Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. This meditation emphasizes the anchor of listening, and guides us to relax through our bodies, filling them with the image of a smile. In this receptivity we find a homecoming to full presence and peace.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. So as you're arriving, sensing yourself here, you might open the sense doors to sound. Begin with listening. See if you can listen in a global way, just taking everything in evenly,

noticing with listening that receptivity that there's not much to do. It's just sounds are just known spontaneously. Just letting sounds wash through, sensing the space that they're happening in. So that right from the start you can sense that kind of receptive presence, listening presence. You can bring that listening receptivity to a scanning

through the body, receiving sensations in that same way as you receive sounds. You might soften the eyes even sense that smile that can spread through the eyes, uplifting the corners,

letting the brow be smooth. Just receiving sensations in the region of the eyes, slight smile at the mouth, let the inside of the mouth smile, and receiving the aliveness there, letting the shoulders relax back and down, filling the shoulders with awareness, and just receiving, opening to the life, the aliveness, the sensations that are there, softening the hands, feeling from the inside out. Again, it's as if you're listening to and

feeling aliveness, letting there be an openness to the chest. You might even smile into the heart, sense a smile spreading through the heart area. From the inside out, feeling, receiving the experience of the heart region, loosening, softening the belly. You can bring that same smile, that same image and felt sense of a smile there. again to create that spaciousness and receptivity to the life that's here. Feeling the belly from the inside out, an intimate presence. Awareness to fill the pelvic region.

Again, that curve and receptivity of a smile. Again, from the inside out, sensing the aliveness, space, the pelvic region. receptive presence. You'd be aware of the length, weight, volume of the legs, let the feet fill with awareness from the inside out,

receiving, experiencing the sensations there. Imagine and sense into this whole earth's body, the earth, sky, below and around you, just letting that energy flow into you, through the feet, filling your body, receptive, fully alive. It's widening out to feel this whole field of sensation. Let everything happen. Not opposing or resisting anything.

This field of aliveness, including sound again. And sensing the space that everything's happening in sound, sensation. It's from that wakeful openness just listening to and feeling the whole changing flow. You might sense in the foreground this changing dance of sensation or sound feelings. And in the background, that alert inner stillness, that wakefulness, it's your own presence. We let our intention to quite simply be noticing

when we've left this awakeness, this openness, this receptive presence, gone into ideas and thoughts, the trance of thinking. And in the moment that there's a noticing to relax back, to become aware of what's going on right in this moment, these sounds, this play of sensation, listening to and feeling the moment. To further support your presence, you're with the breath, sense the possibility of listening to and feeling the breath.

Very receptive presence, not controlling the breath in any way. Just being breathed, intimate, listening, present. or if your anchors, sensations in a part of the body, receiving the sensations moment to moment, your anchor sound, receiving the sounds. Start fresh in any moment in your practice in life when you sense the veil of trance. And if you want to establish or reestablish that quality of openness and receptivity, you might explore listening again, with the attention to the symphony of sound,

sensing the space in the room, and close in sounds, even sensing into the more distant sounds you might detect, appearing and disappearing, that you're listening, not just with your ears, but your whole awareness. Sense the vastness that includes sounds. Just rest in that wakeful open,

happiness receptive. You can bring that same receptivity to tangles, motions, difficult sensations in the body, just sensing that you're listening to with an intimate presence exactly what's happening. You're the space surrounding, receiving the experience. You can listen to to and feel it from the inside out also. That receptive awareness permeates the experience, listening to and feeling the life that's right here. And if the life that's right here is very difficult, notice how deeply tender that listening presence can be intimate and tender in these last few.

minutes you might experiment with letting go of all doings, just letting everything be as it is, simply listening to and feeling the changing life.