Tara Brach - Meditation – Cultivating a Relaxed Attention

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Meditation – Cultivating a Relaxed Attention - In this meditation we engage a relaxed and alert attention by scanning through the body, opening to sound, and resting in the awareness that includes all the senses. This presence is stabilized with the use of a home base, for many the breath, and reminders to "relax back" when the mind naturally drifts.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Let your attention go inward. You might feel the movement of your breath and gently let the attention rest with the breath, just collecting and settling a bit. You might imagine you could feel the breath right at the heart,

beginning to bring the attention fully to the heart. We open our meditation and our time together with a simple reflection on intention. What is your deep intention for practice right now? For meditating? What is it your heart really longs for? Taking some moments to sense what matters to you, what really brings you here, letting yourself feel a sense of sincerity, a kind of heart-presenting. of heart presence. A most key gateway into presence is being awake in this body.

We begin with a gentle scan through the body. I like starting at the brow. You might smile into your eyes since the outside corners of your eyes lifted slightly in a smile and let the whole area around the eye soften, let your brow be smooth, bringing that same curve and receptivity of a smile to the mouth, slight smile. This sends a message to the whole nervous system to be at ease. You can even sense the inside of the mouth smiling. Let the tongue relax right down to the root. Sense yourself feeling the tongue, just filling the lower jaw, and feeling the whole region of the mouth filled with sensation, aliveness, sensing the throat, filling the whole area of the neck, and feeling the sensations there, allowing the shoulders

to fall away from the ears and see if you can feel the shoulders from the inside out. You might imagine a melting from ice to water, feeling the movement of sensation, ice, to water and then water to gas, letting awareness fill the shoulders, feeling the aliveness there, letting go of knots and tension. Let the hands rest in a very easy and effortless way, perhaps some of the thighs or knees, touching each other in the lap, placing the awareness inside the hands and then soft the hands, soften again, see if you can feel the whole vibration and sensation, the field of aliveness that's there inside the hands, let there be an openness at the chest.

You might imagine and feel the curve of a smile spreading through the heart area and sense the space that's there, the movement of sensation, pressure, tingling, vibrating, pulsing, loosening and softening around the navel, the belly, so that this next breath is received in a softening belly, this breath and this one, and now this one. Letting the awareness fill the belly, feeling this whole region as a field of sensation. keeping the hands soft, slight smile at the mouth, eyes smiling, receiving the breath deep in the torso, bringing the awareness to fill the pelvic region, again feeling from the inside out the aliveness that's here, the movement of sensation, awake and aware,

filling this whole torso with presence, letting that presence flow down through the legs, feeling the length and the volume of the legs, feeling the feet from the inside, the tingling and vibrating there, and feel a rootedness into the earth so you can imagine and sense the earth body, the sky, the atmosphere, this whole realm of sensation and aliveness. Imagine it flowing up and filling your body so your body is part of this larger body. Just letting life live through you now. Aware of this whole field of changing sensation, vibration, tingling, warmth, cool, tightness, or flow, just letting everything happen, including the sounds that are appearing and disappearing.

You're sensing this whole play of sound and sensation, feeling and in the background that alert inner silence, the stillness, the presence that's aware, sense what it's like to notice your own presence. Just relax back and be that presence. At some point you'll notice the mind's talking to itself, that there's been a drift into thoughts which is quite natural. And it's natural that presence will notice that at some point. So when there's an awareness of thinking to just gently pause,

notice that there's been a virtual reality going on, and relax open again, aware of the senses, of the sounds that are right here, the sensations and aliveness that's here, and to help stabilize this presence, you might gently let the attention rest with the movement of the breath, relaxing with the inflow, relaxing with the outflow. And if the breath isn't the best home base for you, you can rest with sounds or with this

whole field of bodily sensations. We rest with something that's arising in the present moment to help us stay anchored with the life of the here and now. It's natural for the mind to drift and what will really train your heart and mind in a liberating way is the way you come back, to relax, open the attention when you realize you've been lost in thought. Be aware of the senses of sound, sensation, the feelings in your heart. Relax with what's here. Relax with your senses away. awake moment to moment. It's a relaxed attentiveness that brings you home. So we'll close by bringing that relaxed attentiveness to the region of the heart. You might

again sense the smile, letting that curve and gentleness of a smile spread through the heart in the chest area and taking some moments to feel your own human life. and offer whatever prayer or wish you have for your own well-being, a mental whisper that you send right to your heart. You might experiment with offering that wish again and seeing if you can deepen the sense of presence and sincerity as you offer kindness to yourself, letting it in, and feeling the tenderness and spaciousness. of this awakening heart, including others that are here practicing with you and in the

cyber field and really all others, all living beings. Just sense what prayer you have that most resonates for living beings everywhere. May all beings be happy. May all beings everywhere touch a great and natural peace. May all beings everywhere awaken and be free.