Tara Brach - Meditation: Arriving in Embodied Presence (retreat) (2017-04-30)

Episode Date: June 22, 2017

Meditation: Arriving in Embodied Presence - This guided meditation instruction includes: 1 - Arriving in embodied presence with senses awake, 2 - Further collecting the attention using a primary anchor or base, and 3 - Continuing to collect around an anchor or widening to rest in open, natural awareness - in presence with what is. Given as part of the morning guided meditation Instruction on the Spring 2017 IMCW Retreat. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. I might begin practice with the simple intention to bring that these qualities of interest, friendliness, ease in relating to whatever comes up. The guided instructions will have three parts to them.

The first is really arriving in an embodied presence, our senses awake. The second is to further collect the attention, the primary anchor, home base that we're using. And the third is presence with what is. And that might include continuing to collect around an anchor as appropriate. We very often begin with some form of a body scan because without that quality of awake presence in the body, we tend to be living in a more conceptual reality, virtual reality. And just to say you can't too often re-arrive in the body, no matter where you are in your practice,

you can always start fresh by scanning and coming back right here. I often like to use the visual image of a smile because I find, and this is in both the Taoist and Buddhist tradition, that that image when we can bring it into the body as a felt sense helps to create space for what's here. You can begin by imagining a smile spreading through a whole big, vast, open sky and just letting the mind merge with that sky so that the smile is filling your mind and that that curve you can feel with the curve, that quality of openness and receptivity.

brightness. You might sense the curve of a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners of the eyes gently. And with that, softening the eyes, letting the brow be smooth, and sensing the aliveness of sensation in that region of the brow, a slight smile at the mouth and the inside of the mouth smiling. You might see if you can feel from the inside of the tongue. Let the tongue spread, filling the lower jaw. See if you can feel right down to the root of the tongue, relaxing the tongue. Let the mouth be filled with sensation.

You can visualize and feel a smile on the throat. You just sense of space and aliveness that fills the whole throat and neck area. The eyes are soft, smile at the mouth, the throat. and then letting a smile spread through the heart and chest area, like a vase that has a great openness within it, so that you can actually feel the aliveness in the heart and the chest area. Let it freely express, letting that space widen out, so the shoulders are free to relax back and down,

letting the awareness fill the shoulders. sensing from the inside out, sensations, there's tightness or tension, letting it float in awareness. Feeling the energy in life inside the arms, the hands, noticing if you soften the hands how much more aliveness you can feel, of the openness in the chest area, loosening, softening down through the belly,

you might again visualize, and feel a sense of a smile spreading through the belly, sensing the space that's there and the aliveness inside the belly, getting into that aliveness and space, feeling the life that's here, from the inside out, deep in the torso. You can let the image and felt sense of a smile fill the pelvic region. Awareness there, feeling from the inside out, the life, the aliveness and space.

that's there. It's the volume of the legs, feeling the feet from the inside out. Noticing, tingling, vibrating the space inside the feet. Imagine the whole earth body beneath and around you. This mass of energy and aliveness flowing through the feet,

up, filling your body and being. You can feel the inner body, this aliveness of energy and sensation. Sensing there's a field of sensation, no edge, no boundary. Just letting everything happen. Letting this life lift through you. And widening the field to include sound,

to listening not just with your ears, but with your whole awareness. Receiving the play of sound, dance of sensation, in a vast, open awareness in the midst of this field of aliveness, sensing your anchor or home base, perhaps the stream of sensations of breathing. So receiving that now with this open, listening, sensitive awareness, relaxing with, resting with, attending to,

The moment to moment experience, it may be the breath or you may be resting with and experiencing the movement of sensation through the whole body or perhaps your anchor or sound. Sense that quality of heerness. Right here with the breath you can deepen that presence if you're attending to the beginning, middle and ending of each breath. of each breath. Just know that it's happening, listening to and feeling, the changing experience. At some point, there'll be a recognition that the mind has drifted from presence. How you re-arrive really plants the seeds for what's next. So just to sense the possibility of pausing, noticing what's going to be. what's going on and gently reopening the attention.

When the mind drifts it closes into thought form so you reopen the attention. Opening again to the sounds that are actually right here. Softening in the body and opening to the sensations right here. Relaxing, open your heart, re-arriving in this presence gently. kindly, right here when there's a coming back into this presence

and then sense whether it's supporting your stability of presence to continue to come back right to the anchor gently landing with the in-breath, the out-breath, rising breath, falling breath,

to further quiet and especially if you've been moving as you settle. You might imagine your mind melting into your body, re-softening, re-relaxing, the areas that habitually tense up, aware of the aliveness inside you, where of the sounds, listening to and feeling the whole moment. And a choice point is to come and settle again,

resting with your anchor, your home base. For some, if the mind is fairly settled, to really rest in this awake presence. And if something strong calls your attention as you're sitting, strong physical pleasantness or unpleasantness, emotional pleasantness or unpleasantness, if it's calling your attention, Then we let the anchor recede and open to what's right here, to recognize, helps to name,

to name, just a light mental note, and most important to feel in the body, the experience. It helps to breathe with it, to breathe with it. Remember these qualities of interest, friendliness. See if you can relax with what's happening. And when it no longer calls your attention, come back to the changing flow of sound and sensation, aliveness, or more to the stability of having in the foreground your primary anchor, whatever best serves you.