Tara Brach - Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath (2021-04-14)

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath (2021-04-14) - This guided practice has a short period of relaxing the body, and establishes the breath as a home base for attention. We practice arriving again and again, deepening the pathway of homecoming. The meditation ends with lovingkindness for ourselves and our world.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. The length and nice full in-breath and full out-breath. And as you do that, sense that you're breathing in and out of your heart. Become aware of your heart, what we might call the state of your heart.

It's whatever you feel in the heart area. and with a kind of listening attention. Listen for what your deepest intention is in practicing meditation right now. What is it your heart longs for? What matters? In the stillness, you might scan through your body and notice if there's any areas of particular tightness or tension

and sense what might want to let go a little right now. You might want to soften and smooth the brow. Let the eyes be soft. The jaws unhinged. Sense the tongue filling the lower palate. Maybe a slight smile at the mouth. You might allow the shoulders to fall away from the neck.

Just sense from the inside out, the shoulders, whatever. you feel in terms of tightness or tension and see if you can let it float a bit in awareness. Naturally untangle and loosen, softening the hands and softening again, feeling the hands from the inside out, the tingling and vibrating there, and let the chest be open. Scanning down the torso, let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again. Waking up from the inside out in this living body, feeling the touch points where your hands contact each other or your legs

or your bottom is on the cushion or chair. the feet on the floor and feeling from the inside out this whole body all at once this energy body this living field of sensation and discover in this changing dance of sensations the simple movement of the breath

not controlling in any way and just discover the sensations of the breath, the inflow and outflow, feeling this whole body breathing, and yet resting the attention wherever the breath is most predominant. Perhaps the inflow outflow at the nostrils or maybe the rising falling at the chest or the belly. Maybe you feel the whole body breathing even in a cellular way like a balloon inflating, and deflating. There are many places in meditation we can rest our attention.

The breath is perhaps the most common, a kind of home base, sense that you're receiving the breath, as if you could listen to it and feel it at the same time, knowing the breath is coming in with the in-breath, and knowing the breath is flowing out with the out-breath. Notice how much you can relax with the inflow, as if you're relaxing open to receive and relax with the outflow, letting go.

If you find it hard to find the breath, you can gently place your hand on your belly and just feel the movement of the breath by feeling the movement of the belly, expanding, deflating. At some point there'll be a noticing that there's no longer an attention at the breath. The mind has moved to some commentary, some planning, some visualizing, some virtual reality. And the practice is to appreciate when there's that waking up and noticing and to simply relax relax, open the mind again.

Perhaps noticing the sounds that are right here in the room instead of the sounds in the mind. Perhaps re-valaxing a little in the body and gently shepherding the attention back to the next in-breath or out-breath, rising breath or falling breath. Again, relaxing with this home base, noticing the difference between the presence that's right here,

here and being inside any virtual reality, any thought bubble. It's totally natural for the attention to wander. And what's important to know is that every time we notice it and gently arrive again right here with these sounds and these sensations and this breath, we're deepening the pathway home, we're increasing our capacity to arrive in presence. So no judgments about leaving. Each time is an opportunity to practice coming back right here, right now, noticing where your attention is and if the mind has drifted,

again, letting it be an opportunity for homecoming, listening, re-relaxing a bit, perhaps the shoulders can let go a little, let the hands be soft and relax your heart. And then again sense the movement of the breath and rest with the inflow and outflow of the breath as a raft might rest in the sea, breath by breath. And for these last few minutes, letting go of the breath as an anchor or home base and simply allowing whatever arises to be here, aware of the changing sounds, feelings, and letting life be just as it is.

We close in a simple way with loving kindness from your own awake awareness, offering whatever wish you'd like to right now to the life within you, whatever wish or blessing or prayer resonates. And feeling that boundless heart space, that boundless and loving awareness that's our source. And feeling the earth, our mother, and our laps and all beings everywhere offering your prayer, your care to this living world.