Tara Brach - Meditation: Embodied Spirit

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Meditation: Embodied Spirit - Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Please make yourself comfortable. Find the position that you feel will most support you in being awake. You're alert and here. And also really at ease, really comfortable, relax.

and as you settle in, you might either close your eyes or let the eyes be downcast so that your attention can go inward, bringing your attention inward. And noticing what it's like right now. To help you arrive, you might become aware of this body breathing. It's helpful to take a few long, deep breaths. So you might begin by inhaling, filling the chest in the lungs. And then a slow out breath so you can actually feel the sensations of releasing the breath and again inhaling deeply filling the chest and the lungs and a slow smooth out breath letting go letting go and one more time inhaling deeply and that slow exhale softening down the length of the body releasing letting go and then letting the breath come back

back into its natural rhythm, observing the breath, feeling the breath, just as it is. And noticing perhaps that there's more presence now, you can continue to deepen this presence by awakening through the body, waking awareness through the body. You might feel the head, the scalp and the skull and sense if there's any of there's an tingling, aliveness that you can detect and let the awareness sweep through the brow. So you can soften the eyes and let the brow be smooth. Relaxing all the little micro-muscles through the face, there's no requirement to have an expression. Just letting everything relax.

The slight smile perhaps at the mouth can help you to connect with a real, feeling of gentleness, kindness. You might feel inside the mouth, the tongue, let the tongue spread through the lower palate, feeling the tip of the tongue behind the teeth, feeling down to the root of the tongue, and then widening to feel all the sensations in the mouth. You might imagine the throat filling the neck and then gently let the shoulders fall away from the neck. and fill the shoulders with awareness. You might imagine inside the shoulders a dissolving of ice to water and water to gas. And with deep receptivity, just feel the aliveness in the shoulders.

There's still maybe some tightness or tension, it's quite natural, letting it float in awareness. Just to feel the life as it is right here from the inside out. aware of the length and the weight and the volume of your arms. See if you can feel your thumbs from the inside out, letting the sense of their tingling and aliveness be right here, and the forefinger from the inside out, and the space between the thumb and the forefinger,

and the middle finger from the inside out, the ring finger, the pinky, feeling all the fingers flesh and bone, and the spaces between, them, feeling the space between the palms and the backs of the hands. So you can feel your hands as a kind of field of sensation, tingling, vibrating, and alive. Little particles dancing, vibrating. Let there be an openness to the chest.

Feeling inside the chest, feeling the area of the heart, and just noticing the sensations there. Feeling the breath moving the chest. Feeling the breath deepening into the torso and letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath? Now this one, deep into the torso and again. See if you can keep the belly soft and fill the belly with awareness. Feeling from the inside out, aware of the aliveness that's here, from the inside out,

extending the awareness to fill the pelvic region and then sensing the length and volume and weight of the legs and feeling inside the feet the tingling and vibrating there and widening the lens and sensing this whole body is a field of sensation vibrating tingling places of tightness or tension places of tightness or tension place of flow, heat, cool, everything moving, alive, not stopping anything. And you might include sound, the peering, disappearing of sound. So you're listening to and feeling this ever-changing flow of experience. And when the mind drifts, it naturally well, when there's a noticing of that to gently

reopen the attention and re-arrive, listening to the sounds that are actually right here. And feeling the aliveness, changing dance of sensation right here, resting in the awareness that's listening to and feeling the changing flow, noticing what's happening. And if there's been that shift into virtual reality, choosing to arrive again, listening, letting go through the body wherever there's some tightness or tension and then receiving the aliveness, the sensations that are here in awareness. In the foreground, there's a changing flow of sound, sensation, feeling. and in the background

an alert stillness awake awareness our own formless nature