Tara Brach - Meditation: A Present Heart (2020-08-19)

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

Meditation: A Present Heart (2020-08-19) - This guided practice emphasizes bringing a gentle and kind attention to our bodies, and then including all experience with a receptive presence. We close by identifying a part of our being that is asking for a healing attention, and offering loving presence to ourself and then to others.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Some may know this, but the Chinese translation of mindfulness is present heart. So our meditation will be called present heart. And I invite you to find yourself a comfortable position to begin with so that you're upright, you're sitting upright and relaxed to close your eyes and let yourself become still, taking a few conscious full breaths to help collect your attention,

sense the possibility of relaxing and releasing with the out breath. And as your breath resumes in its natural rhythm, you might feel your intention in this meditation to relate to the life that comes and goes with a present heart, with care. We begin by bringing a caring presence to the body. You might use that image and felt sense of a smile, smiling into the eyes, sensing the eyes with that curve of a smile, that lift in the outer edges.

Let the eyes be soft. Let the brow be smooth. Bringing a slight smile to the lips. Ticknod Han, Zen teacher, calls this smile yoga because it sends a message to our whole nervous system that we can relax that fight-flight response, that we can sense more of a benevolence and ease with our life. You might sense the inside of the mouth smiling.

and letting the attention spread through the face, softening, relaxing all those micro muscles. Just noticing whatever sensations of tingling or vibrating or aliveness are right here. See if you can let your shoulders fall away from the neck, relaxing them back and down some. And then bring a gentle presence inside the shoulders. and sense what might be possible in terms of softening, releasing any tightness or tension that's there. Make sure your hands are resting in an easy and effortless way. And you might feel the hands from the inside out and soften, and then soften again.

Noticing the aliveness you can feel as you relax, keeping the hands soft again, sensing that smile in the eyes, smile at the mouth. And then smiling into the heart, you might visualize the curve of a smile spreading through the heart and have that felt sense of a smile. And sense the space that smiling creates, space for whatever's here. You might relax the torso, softening the belly, and letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. belly, this breath, and now this one, and again. I'm feeling from the inside out, the aliveness, sensation in that region. A gentle, soft attention.

It's allowing the life to be as it is. And extending that attention into the pelvic region. See if you can feel the breath deep in the torso, relaxing, opening, scanning through the legs, relaxing any tightness or tension, and sensing you can feel the feet and fill them with presence so that you're sensitive to the aliveness, the tingling, the vibrating that's there, feeling energetically that rootedness deep into the earth, and that openness letting the earth's energies flow up through your body. fill your body. You might extend and widen the attention to include sounds,

close in sounds around you, the sounds of these words coming and going, the sound of silence. So there's a listening to and a feeling the whole moment in an open, receptive presence, continuing to rest in openness, in receptivity. You might sense in the foreground, the movement of the breath, the changing sounds, the sensations, and in the background, this open, receptive heart space, this presence, that can regard all that comes and goes with a quality of tenderness. clarity, inclusion, as you continue in silence, letting everything be just as it is, the sounds,

sensations, feelings. And if anything feels challenging, to have that intention, to meet it with kindness, moment to moment, heart presence, holding, including, the life that's here. As a way of sustaining presence, it's helpful to check. And just notice, where's my attention right now? Am I dreaming? Sometimes we'll think we're present and find there's been a veil of thoughts, subtle. So just to notice, and if you find that your mind has been inside thoughts to gently reawaken the senses, listening again, listen to the sounds that are actually happening instead of the sound of thoughts. You can deepen that hereness, that presence. By re-relaxing wherever there's been a habitual tightening in the body, letting go in the shoulders

again, softening the hands, smiling into the heart and relaxing the heart. Feeling from the inside out, the aliveness of the body, receiving all that's happening in open-hearted presence again and again relaxing back from the trance of thinking back into this presence regarding the life that's right. here with tenderness. You might take a moment now to scan and sense if there's anything asking for your attention, any physical, emotional difficulty that wants to be included in open-hearted presence. And if there's something that's asking for attention, for healing, you might sense that you can breathe with it and feel it,

and if it helps to put your hand on your heart, to do so, and that you can let whatever is difficult be bathed with care. You can sense that gentleness and tenderness of that smile energetically, just washing through a place to be. of difficulty, holding it, suffusing it with warmth, light, and care. There may be a natural message from your own awake, wise heart that you want to offer to this part of your humanness.

As Rumi says, through love, all pain will turn to medicine. In sensing the heart space that's here, that and you which cares, that and you which loves, and sensing this heart space as vast and edgeless, so that all beings, all those who are suffering are included in this great open heart, sense that you're meditating with others in that heart space really merges to be one great field of loving that together we can hold the pain of this world and in the quietness to feel your prayer for your own being and for this world. Taking a few full breaths now and as you're ready to open your eyes and sense that you can take in whatever you see with this present heart You're receiving and feeling the world in open-hearted presence.