Tara Brach - Meditation: Awake, Relaxed and Open

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

This meditation includes a full body scan, and then opens the senses to all experience, allowing life to be just as it is. The training is a relaxing back, noticing the sounds that are here, feeling the aliveness of the body sitting here. We call on the two wings of wakefulness and openness, noticing what's happening moment-to-moment with a kind, allowing attention. We rest and relax back, discovering the presence that's here – our senses awake… in wide open awareness… awake, relaxed, open.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. I'd like to invite you to take a moment to really settle in. Just be aware of inviting yourself into presence. You might close your eyes or lower your gaze. And as you turn your attention inward, notice what's here. Notice what's happening. Let the intention be to be awake and relaxed. And as you close your eyes and come into stillness, you might take a few very conscious, long, deep breaths.

So let's inhale deeply together and expand it in breath, inhaling, and then a slow out breath, slow enough so you can feel the sensations of letting go. releasing, releasing, letting go. That's it. And then again, inhaling deeply, filling the chest, filling the lungs. Exaggerate like a full, full breath. And then a slow-out breath, slowly releasing, letting go, letting go. One more time, inhaling deeply.

And a gentle, slow release, softening down the length of the body, letting you. go, letting go. And then as the breath comes back into a natural rhythm, just notice the possibility of relaxing, relaxing with the inflow, relaxing with the outflow. Notice the quality of presence that it doesn't take much to experience yourself as more here. Bring your presence, your attention to the heart. And just sense whatever mood is with you tonight, the state of your heart right now. You might feel a mood of anxiety or tiredness, stress, openness, curiosity, sorrow, cheerfulness. Just sense what's here. Maybe there's a numbness. Maybe you can't sense what mood is here. That's fine too.

There's just some honest connecting with the heart. And as you listen, as you attend, listen in for your deepest intention for being here. What is it that you really long for or hope for or drawn to? One of the signs of a deep intention is you'll feel sincere. There'll be a resonance. What matters to you? It's from that place of caring, whether it's about awakening or presence. whether it's about loving more fully, relaxing more deeply, we just feel ourselves the caring

and we'll chant together from that quality of heart. If you'd like to bring the palms together it can kind of deep in the sense of heart presence. We'll chant the mantra Ome, which is a universal sound current of connectedness. We'll chant it three times. So again, inhaling deeply to begin. You might take some moments just to scan through the body and notice if there's any areas of particular tightness or tension.

Just bringing your awareness to those places and sense how the awareness itself can make it possible for tension to loosen, to sense the space around and inside of the space around and inside of whatever is there. It's helpful to bring awareness to the area of the brow. We're often not aware of how we scrunch and tighten the brow. The more we're thinking, the more tension is there. Just to soften let the brow be smooth, the eyes soft. You might even imagine you can smile into the eyes and sense the corners of the eyes uplifted a bit. Feeling behind the eyes, a little more space and openness. Let the jaw be unhinged.

You might experiment a slight smile at the mouth, very slight but real. You might even feel a smile on the inside of the mouth and see if you can notice the experience of sensations in the tongue, gums, teeth, lips, let it come alive, let your awareness fill your shoulders. It's very easy for many of us to feel a kind of clenching or tightness there. See if you can let whatever you feel in the shoulders float in awareness. You might even imagine a kind of dissolving from ice to water, water to gas. So you can begin to sense the aliveness in the shoulders, the movement of energy. the space of awareness inside the shoulders, letting the hands rest in a very easy and effortless

way. And experiment by softening the hands, softening the hands and feel them from the inside out. Let your hands be filled with awareness so you can sense the space and aliveness, the movement of sensation inside the hands. Let the chest be open and feel the awareness that fills the whole chest cavity. You might notice areas of tightness or clenching around the heart. Just let that too float. See if you can sense the space inside the tension, the space it floats in. sense how the whole chest cavity is filled with space and aliveness. Scanning down into the belly, you might soften the belly some.

Let this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath and then this one. And again, waking up the awareness deep in the torso, standing down into the pelvic region. So you can feel the awareness filling your whole body. whole torso, hips, buttocks, genitals. Feel the space and aliveness that's right here inside you. Feeling the awareness inside the legs. Again to sense the sensations from the inside out and the legs right down into the feet. Feel that you could place your whole awareness inside the feet. Experience the tingling and vibrating in life that's there. You might feel the pressure and firmness of the earth beneath you and sense this living earth as a vibrating living field

of energy that you're part of that's flowing into you, that you belong to. So that if you widen the lens now you can feel this whole body as a field of aliveness. Just let everything happen. Tingling, vibrating, pulsing, warmth, pressure. tightness, flow, letting this life live through you, continuing to widen the attention to include sound, just listening. So you're not listening just with your ears but your whole awareness, listening. Let the sounds wash through you, close in sounds, even the more distant sounds, so that

you're listening to and feeling the whole moment. how much you can relax with the changing flow. The two wings of awareness are recognizing, so you're noticing what's happening, wakeful. And the other wing is an openness, a full allowing. So just rest in this wakeful openness. of the changing sounds and sensations. And if it helps to steady your attention to feel the breath in the foreground, just a light attention with the inflow and the outflow. And please let that be an anchor for you to help you know that you're here. It's quite natural that you'll discover your mind as wandered. Let that be an opportunity to relax

back right into the present moment. That's the simplicity of this training, a relaxing back, noticing again the sounds that are here, feeling the aliveness of the body sitting here, bringing these two wings of wakefulness and openness, just noticing what's happening moment to moment with an allowing attention, a kind attention. And again, as you return into presence of the breath, as a support, then come gently to rest with the next in-flow or outflow. You might discover even more deeply now the stillness that's here, this alert, inner presence, wakeful, allowing, just rest as this wakeful openness, discovering how this

changing flow lives through you. No matter how much the mind has gotten distracted, you can start fresh in any moment of your meditation and of your life. Just to notice what's going on right now and with a genuine quality of gentleness, interest, relax back, rediscover the sounds, that are here instead of the sounds of the thoughts in your mind. You might re-relax in the body, let go a little in the shoulders, soften the hands, relax the belly, relax your heart, you rest and relax back, rediscovering the presence that's here. Senses awake, wide open awareness.

In a moment. Awake, relax, open.