Tara Brach - Meditation: Awareness - Listening To and Feeling the Moment (2016-04-27)

Episode Date: April 28, 2016

Meditation: Awareness - Listening To and Feeling the Moment (2016-04-27) - This meditation awakens a relaxed open presence through the body. We then widen attention to include sounds, and then relax back and fully inhabit the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of life. Free download of Tara's new 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list. 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. Let the attention gently scan through the body as a way of waking up from the inside out to the life that's here. You might first bring the attention to the region of the eyes. You might imagine smiling into your eyes,

letting the eyes feel a bit of an uplift at the outer corners. So letting a smile spread through the eyes. Let the eyes be soft, the brow smooth, just to feel the aliveness, a sense of openness, space, vibration, movement, slight smile at the mouth. You might sense the inside of the mouth smiling, and let the tongue relax and spread in the lower palate,

the root of the tongue relax. And again, feeling the liveliness in the tongue, the gums, teeth, the lips. You might imagine the throat filling the neck. Just to feel again the sensations and vibration in that area. Then letting that same image and sense, sense of a smile spread through the chest area. Just visualizing and sensing a smile, filling the heart.

This is not to cover over what's here, really to sense a space that can include our life. Letting that receptivity of a smile, the openness fill the chest area. Feeling the aliveness there and the space that's happening in. and letting that space widen out to include the area of the shoulders so the shoulders can fall away from the neck a little, relax back and down some. And you might feel from the inside out the aliveness inside the shoulders, if it feels tense, stuck in any way, just to imagine sensations floating in awareness, letting the hands rest in a very easy and effortless way, softening the hands and feeling the hands from the inside

out, perhaps the tingling, the vibrating, places of pressure, of warmth. Again, feeling that openness to the chest and then loosening down through the abdominal areas, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, this one again and again, you might visualize and feel that sense of a smile spreading through the belly, letting the awareness be experienced from the inside out of the sensations that are there, continuing to scan down the body, letting the awareness be experienced in the pelvic region. Again, from the inside out,

feeling the dance of aliveness, the whole play of sensation, feeling the length and the volume of the legs, feeling the feet from the inside out. You might sense the feet relaxing, spreading, widening, and just inviting receptively the whole energy of this earth to flow through you, through the feet,

to fill you, sensing your body as earth energy, a part of this living world. So as you widen the lens, you can feel this whole body as a dance or a field of sensation. What happens when you just let everything be just as it is, including the naturally occurring sounds, perhaps the close-in sounds in the room? So you're listening not just with your ears,

but with your whole awareness. aware of the more distant sounds, sensing this boundless space of awareness that includes all the sounds, the awareness that's listening to and feeling the play of sensation, relaxing back into the awareness that's listening to and feeling the whole moment. When you notice the mind has drifted, it's an opportunity to find that pathway back to presence, to practice that pathway, without any judgment with interest, with friendliness, re-awakening the senses. You might relax a bit in the body and just feel the aliveness here. Relax open the mind to include the sounds that are coming and going.

Sensing the space of awareness that everything's happening in. Being that aware, awareness that's listening to and feeling the moment. In these final moments, gently bringing your attention to the heart, bringing the light of awareness to what's right here in your heart, that you're listening to and feeling into the heart space that's here, sensing if your heart could express itself what your intention is, as you close this formal meditation and move into whatever's next. What's your intention? What's your wish? Your longing? Your prayer.