Tara Brach - Meditation: Coming Home to Presence

Episode Date: June 3, 2014

2012-12-12-Meditation-Coming-Home-to-Presence

The direct way to presence is through being awake in the body. You can sweep the awareness through the body, perhaps beginning in the area of the eyes, and simply softening the eyes, feeling the flesh around the eyes, softening, the brow smooth. You might sense that you can smile into the eyes, relax, receptive, slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling. relaxing the jaw. And imagining and sensing a smile spreading through the heart, smiling into the heart,

not to cover over anything but to make room for what's here. So the eyes are smiling, the mouth, the heart. You might imagine and sense the space opening around the heart area, spreading open, wider and wider to allow the shoulders to relax back and down. And then just bringing the awareness inside the shoulders, loosening, softening, sense if there's a natural untangling or dissolving that's possible. Relaxing the arms, softening the hands and letting them rest in an easy, effortless way. Bringing the awareness inside the hands, softening a bit more.

And just feeling the tingling and vibrating and aliveness inside the hands. Let there be an openness in the chest and then softening down into the belly. You can imagine that same curve of a smile spreading through the belly, loosening, softening, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and then this one and again, you can feel the illusion. the aliveness deep in the torso, just as a cup can be filled with water. This body can be filled with awareness, feeling the aliveness from the inside out through the legs, letting the awareness fill the feet so you can feel places of pressure, warmth where the feet

contact the floor or touch each other, tingling, vibrating, sensing a rootedness, right, deep into the earth so that you might imagine and sense the earth, this energy flowing up into the body through the feet, through the base of the spine, just flowing up through the body, widening the lens so you can feel this whole body simultaneously as a field of sensation, discovering in the midst of this field of sensation the stream of the breath, very receptive, gentle attention, just noticing the inflow and the outflow of the breath. You might notice the breath of the nostrils, just the whisper of the breath as it enters and leaves. Very delicate attention. Alternatively you might feel the rising,

and falling of the chest, perhaps the inflating and settling of the belly as the breath comes in and out. Or for some experiencing the breath through the whole body. So with the in-breath, it's as if every cell can be felt as expanding and with the out-breath of letting go, releasing, settling. Just notice where it's easiest and most pleasant. to rest with the breath. Letting this life breath be in the foreground,

still aware of the sounds around you, the field of sensation, aware of the quality of presence, sensing with the breath that you can mentally whisper hear, really sense that actuality of heerness, moment to moment, breath to breath. When you notice the mind's drifted, Consider that a moment of waking up.

Just appreciate that you noticed. Let that be a time to pause and re-relax, opening the attention to include sound, re-relaxing in the body wherever tension might have accumulated, perhaps the shoulders, softening, softening the hands, loosening and softening the belly, and gently arriving again. again, sensing the inflow and the outflow of the breath, the kind of home base, sensing the heerness of moment to moment attention, noticing where your attention is right now. And if the mind's been in a virtual reality and thoughts, let this moment be one of relaxing open again. Let the senses be awake. When we're thinking we're not, we're not, we're

aware of the sounds that are right here, listening to the sounds in the room and beyond, re-relaxing in the body if there's a contraction or tension in the shoulders, softening the belly, relaxing the heart. And as you bring a soft and gentle attention to the breath, sense the possibility of relaxing with the breath.