Tara Brach - Meditation: Coming Home to Your Breath

Episode Date: July 25, 2014

2014-07-23 - Meditation: Coming Home to Your Breath

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Make yourself comfortable, allow yourself to find that sitting posture where you can feel upright so there's a sense of sitting tall, but not stiff. See if you can close your eyes and in sitting upright. Find ways to relax yourself. be at ease, letting the life that's here pass through. There's the outer listening and then an inner listening. Just let your attention go inward and just take a moment

to listen to your heart right now. We start with a very simple inquiry which is really what brings us, what's our intention for the evening. There's a real power and just sensing, well, what matters to me? You might have a mechanical response, well, I want to relax more, I want to be less stressed or more open with others, and then just keep listening and sense really what matters most. What do you feel most sincere about?

What do you most want to have guiding your life? What's the quality of attention, the quality of heart, the quality of consciousness? We'll chant together the mantra om, just this simple sound curtain of connectedness. If you'd like to gently bring the palms together to deepen that sense of heart presence, please do. Feel the life within you. Chanting from the heart, we'll inhale together

and we'll chant three times. Taking some moments now to bring the awareness fully inside the body. Just feeling the body from the inside out and you might begin in the brow area. around the eyes and just soften some. Sense that the brow can be smooth. Might even sense that you can smile into the eyes,

corners of the eyes up a bit. There's a receptivity and an ease all around the eyes, behind the eyes. With the jaw be relaxed. A slight smile at the mouth. Just feel the aliveness inside the mouth. tongue, gums, teeth, lips. Feeling the sensations throughout the face. Sensations filling the whole head.

Right down into the neck area. You might sense how the throat fills the neck. Just feel the aliveness, the sensations in the throat and neck area. Feel the shoulders from the inside out. And see if there's a natural letting go that happens as you bring the awareness. bring the awareness there. We tend to hold so much an unconscious tension there. Just see if you can let what's in the shoulders float a bit in awareness, unravel, dissolve some, letting the hands rest in a very easy, effortless way, feeling the awareness inside the

hands. Can you notice the tingling or vibrating in the hands right now? I explore softening a little more in the hands and feeling from the inside out the increasing sensitivity in life. You can bring the same intimate attention through the whole body to feel this aliveness. Just as a cup is filled with water, this whole body can be filled with awareness. Let the chest be open and just feel from the inside out the movement of energy through the chest. You might sense that you could smile into the heart. Just imagine the curve of a smile spreading through the heart and chest. Not to cover over anything but to help

discover that receptivity and openness to what's here. Laxing through the belly, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and then this one and again, sensing more aliveness, more energy deep in the torso, extending down through the whole pelvic area, just feeling the life from the inside out, currents of energy, tingling, vibrating, scanning down through the legs, to feel the sensations in the upper legs, the lower legs, and then letting the awareness fill the feet. So you can feel the places of pressure, warmth, temperature, where the feet contact the floor, your ankles are crossed,

and then feeling in an interior way, the vibration and aliveness of energy in the feet, widening the lens to include the hands, and then to include the whole body, just simultaneously let the whole body be experienced as a field of sensation, not opposing anything, or resisting,

truly saying yes to the life, life that's here, letting it be all that it is, and widening to include sound, letting the sounds wash through you, listening not just with your ears but your whole awareness, the same receptivity that comes with listening. You can receive the sensations that are here so that you're listening to and feeling the whole moment. I discover in the midst of this field of aliveness the simple sensations of the breath, very receptive attention, receiving, listening to and feeling the movement of the breath. So the breath is in the foreground, nursing the wave of the breath, arising, passing. You might notice the breath, the nostrils, discover the breath more

easy to attend to the chest, or the belly, the rising, falling at the belly, or perhaps you find it most direct and easy to experience the breath through the whole body, the whole body breathing. Still aware in the background of the sounds, other sensations. Very relaxed, present awareness. You'll notice at some point that the mind has drifted and left the senses and gone into thoughts, kind of more virtual reality. It's quite natural. And when you notice it's an opportunity to strengthen the muscle of presence, to pause and then gently just relax back again, right here. Come back home into the aliveness that's right here. Perhaps again feeling the body, maybe even relaxing a little in the shoulders or the hands, feeling the breath. No.

knowing that you're right here, this moment and this one and again. If something arises other than the breath that wants attention, it could be some ache or pain in the body, some fear or tension in the heart, then letting that be in the foreground with a gentleness and a care, just attending to what's here. Feeling it in the body is a constellation. constellation of sensations. When it's no longer strong, when that wave no longer is

asking your attention, you can come back and rest in the movement of the breath again. In this way there's an openness to whatever is arising and there's a stabilizing and steadying the attention by having the breath as a home base. If the mind's been wandering, you might appreciate this as a moment of of waking up. Just with some interest, pause for a bit and just sense, okay, that was thinking. And re-arrive, you might notice the sounds around you, relax back and feel the aliveness of the body, relaxing with what's here, as you feel ready, perhaps gently resting again in the movement of the breath. This last part of the meditation, you might let the sense of relaxation or letting

go deepen in your body and sense the possibility of relaxing with whatever you're experiencing moment to moment. Sensations and other parts of your body, the movement of emotion, play of sound, relaxing with this changing flow of life.