Tara Brach - Meditation: Basic Body and Breath Scan - from retreat (2016-05-07)

Episode Date: May 14, 2016

Meditation: Basic Body and Breath Scan - (2016-05-07) - from the first morning of the IMCW 2016 Spring weeklong retreat, Tara offers a short introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath, sounds, then resting in awareness. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. As part of arriving, you might sense your intention, your aspiration, towards presence, towards awake, awareness, open-hearted awareness, and as a way of perhaps collecting and gathering the attention, extending the in-breath and the out-breath. Just taking a few long, deep breaths,

inhaling and filling the lungs. And then that slow-out breath where you can feel the sensations as they leave the nostrils, relaxing outward. And again, inhaling deeply, fully, and a slow out-breath, letting go, letting go. And once again, inhaling deep, exhaling slowly. And then as the breath comes back to its natural rhythm, just feeling the possibility

of relaxing with the inflow and the outflow of the breath. Taking some moments to scan through the body and sense what might want to let go a little. Soften. Be more at ease. You might soften the eyes and the areas around the eyes. Let the brow be smooth. Unhinging the jaw. Just relaxing down to the root of the tongue. Feeling the mouth from the inside out, the sensations that are there. Letting the shoulders fall away from the neck.

Relaxing from the inside out. Just softening. See if you can see a flow or feel a kind of movement of sensation inside the shoulders. are dissolving. Let the hands be soft. And see if you can feel the hands from the inside out, the tingling, the vibrating that's there. Let there be an openness to the chest. Again, from the inside out, bringing the awareness inside the chest, inside the heart area, just to feel the life that's there.

Softening the belly, being aware of the sensations and aliveness in the whole abdominal region. in the awareness inside the pelvic region, feeling the sensations, energy that's there. You might sense the length and the volume of the legs and feel the feet from the inside out, tingling, vibrating, widening the lens to include this whole field of bodily sensation. With a receptive, listening kind of attention, you might sense. the stream of the breath as part of this living field of sensation. And sensing the quality of presence that's here right now, the awareness that's including the sensations, the movement of the breath, relaxed, awake awareness, sensing this moment-to-moment

experience right here. Let your practice be very simple. Naturally the mind will drift off and whenever you notice that just to relax back, reopen the attention back into this aliveness that's right here, this space of awake awareness, this moment to moment changing experience of breath, body. Like keeping the foreground, your home base. For many it's the breath. might be the whole body sensations, it might be sound, just keep relaxing back into this living experience moment to moment right here.