Tara Brach - Meditation: Awake and Alive

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Meditation: Awake and Alive - This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world. TUnNbZ2CdBvG0zsBjT88

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Setting your attention go inward, you might feel your body breathing and sense the breath coming in and out of your heart. Paying attention to your heart, you might ask yourself, what is my deepest intention for being here right now, for practicing meditation. And listen, what is the longing of the heart? What is it that matters to you in your life?

In the stillness, let your senses be awake. One of the most direct portals to presence is very conscious awakening through the body. So you might gently scan through the body, perhaps for us bringing the attention to the eyes and letting them soften. It can help to feel and imagine a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners of the eyes, let the brow be smooth, and sense the sensations, the aliveness in that whole region,

softening and feeling what's here. In the same way, you might feel a slight smile at the mouth, even sense a smile on the inside of your mind, mouth, letting the jaws unhinge, the tongue fill the lower palate, relaxing down to the root of the tongue, and opening to feel the sensations that fill the tongue, the gums, the lips, the whole mouth, softening and feeling aliveness, letting the sensitivity spread through your whole face, feeling the scalp and the skull. feeling the whole head from the inside out, allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck,

feel the sensations that arise in the neck, throat, and inside the shoulders, letting awareness fill the shoulders. You might imagine a dissolving from ice to water, ice to water. And can you imagine water to gas, softening and feeling the aliveness, You might sense the length, the volume, the weight of your arms, letting your hands rest in an easy, effortless way, softening the hands. Maybe softening again, feeling from the inside out

as you soften the aliveness that's right here. Let there be an openness to the chest. And you might imagine and feel that curve of a smile spreading through the heart. spreading through the chest, softening and allowing yourself to feel the aliveness, the energy inside the chest. A receptive, interested presence, softening resistance, opening to aliveness, scanning down the torso, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. this breath, now this one, and again.

Feeling from the inside out, receptive to the sensations and aliveness that fill the belly. Again, softening the eyes, smiling into the eyes, slight smile at the mouth, smiling into the heart. Hands are soft. Belly is soft. scanning down to feel the pelvic region from the inside out, relaxing and opening to the aliveness, sensations and energy that's there. Aware of the legs, the length, volume, the weight,

feeling from the inside out, the aliveness of sensation, feeling the feet, filled with awareness, filled with sensation, until your rootedness of the feed into the earth so you can sense this whole vast earth body and that energy flowing up through the sea, through the body, flowing up to fill you with awareness and energy

so you can sense your body as a field of sensation, relaxing back and letting everything happen, tingling, Vibrating, places of flow or tightness, pleasantness or unpleasantness, space or density, this whole dance of sensation, including sound in this dance of aliveness, to you relaxing back and listening. You're listening not just with your ears, but with your whole awareness, with your whole awareness listening to you. and feeling the moment, the whole moment. So there's an awareness in the foreground of the changing flow of sound and feelings, sensations, and in the background, that vast, open wakefulness, resting in awareness,

relaxing with the changing flow of experience. letting everything be just as it is. And when you notice that you've left this open wakefulness, when the attention's gone into thoughts of the future or the past, when you notice that, you can just gently relax open again, reawaken the senses. You might listen again.

You might soften in the body, the shoulders, The hands, slight smile in the mouth, soften and open to the aliveness. Once again, listening to and feeling the whole moment. You might find that meditation means turning back to presence, opening to presence again and again, choosing presence, letting the here and now be your refuge, reawakening the senses, listening to and feeling just what's here. And if it's difficult, calling on the kindness of awareness, perhaps sending the message

this belongs, feeling it as sensations, noticing how it changes, choosing to stay moment to moment, listening to and feeling the moment. In these last few moments, calling on the presence of your heart and offering whatever blessing or wish you'd like to offer to yourself, whatever prayer of care. Then in that heart space, including other beings in this world, holding the the world in your heart and sensing your prayer of care for all beings.