Tara Brach - Meditation: Coming Home to Openhearted Awareness (19 min.)

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

In daily life we often leave ourselves, get lost in thoughts, and cut off from a direct, openhearted experience of our life. This meditation reconnects by opening all the senses, turning towards the awareness that is here, and resting in the awakened heartspace that includes and tenderly holds our moment to moment experience (a special favorite from the archives).

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. The stillness and the presence bring a gentle attention to the region of your brow, the area of the eyes. Let the eyes soften and let the brow be smooth. Begin to notice as you relax and soften the energy and aliveness.

it's there. You might bring a slight smile to the mouth. Let the tongue spread and fill the lower jaw, relax down to the root of the tongue. And with a receptive presence, just to feel the sensations and the gums, the teeth, the lips. Let your awareness fill the shoulders. And it helps to let the shoulders relax back and down some, relax away from your shoulders. And then feel them from the inside out. You might sense some melting or dissolving. Ice to water, water to gas, receiving the aliveness, the flow. And if there's tightness or tension in the shoulders,

letting that float in awareness. allowing the hands to rest in an easy and effortless way, and explore softening the hands. And then feeling from the inside out the aliveness, the movement of energy is softening again. A receptive, intimate presence. Let the chest area be open. And see if you can fill the heart with awareness.

a delicate or tender receptivity that is aware of the sensations, the energy in the heart area, laxing down through the abdominal area. And then let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath. Now this one. And again, this one. Feeling the awareness inside the belly. Receiving the life that's there.

with a receptivity, sensitivity, for allowing life to be just as it is, standing down so that you relax, soften through the whole pelvic region and sense the energy from the inside out, receiving the life that's there, the changing dance of sensation. Again, the hands are soft. belly is soft. You feel down the length and the volume of the legs,

right into the ankles, the feet, letting the awareness fill the feet, receiving the changing sensations that are there. You might imagine the vast body of the earth extending down and out around you and that life energy, that vastness and aliveness and aliveness flowing into you, filling you. So you can begin to sense this body is a field of aliveness,

resting in the awareness and includes the whole dance or play of aliveness, tingling and vibrating, heat and cool, tightness and flow, perhaps pleasantness, unpleasantness, all received and then open, still allowing awareness, sensing the subtle sounds that appear and disappear, the close-in ones in the room, including these words that arise, dissolve, the spaces that appear between sounds, listening not just with your ears, but with your whole awareness, including the more distant sounds, sensing the more distant sounds, sensing the boundless space of awareness that includes even the most distant sounds you can detect.

A silence that's listening. Last silence that's listening to and feeling the whole moment to enbe this awake openness, of the changing ways of sound and sensation. At some point there'll be a recognition that the mind has contracted away from that openness, openness and is in a tunnel or train of thought. Not a problem, it's just the habit of mind. So when there's awareness of that,

the pathway back is to again notice the aliveness that's right here. Directly contacting the breath and sensations. You can always re-relax through the body and feel the aliveness in a very intimate, immediate way. Relax open the mind and listen to the sounds that are here. And then again, sensing the space of wakeful openness that everything's happening in. Relaxing back, just resting and being that awareness.

Noticing the changing waves moment to moment, completely allowing, receptive, receptive. Right here, waking up from thoughts, coming back home to the senses. Now with a gentle attention, notice how awareness is experiencing the heart right now, how awareness is experienced whatever mood or emotions here

from that open, receptive space of awareness, sense what it's like to feel the movement of emotion or mood, the sensations of the heart area, just letting it be exactly as it is. So you're resting in this open-hearted awareness, this heart space that includes this human heart. And from the space of open-hearted awareness, sense whatever blessing feels natural

to offer to this human heart. And from this tender, vast heart space, sense, whatever blessing feels natural to offer to all beings, may we recognize this awakened heart space as our deepest nature. May all beings awaken and be free.