Tara Brach - Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care  - This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet, Dorothy Hunt, "Peace is this Moment Without Judgment."

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Take a few moments to set yourself in a way that will allow you to be really comfortable. You feel a sense of balance and alignment, ease, and also alert that you can be awake. so relaxed, awake. As you find your position, if it helps you to close your eyes or lower your gaze, please do. Just notice your attention going inward.

Notice what it's like right now. Sense your experience. And as a way of collecting and gathering your attention, you might be aware of the breath, perhaps extending the breath, letting the in-breath be longer, counting to four or five, and then matching it with a slow-out breath. Maybe we can breathe together, inhaling deeply, filling the chest in the lungs. And that slow-out breath, releasing, relaxing outward, letting go.

And again, a nice full in-breath, a slow-out breath, a slow-out breath. out breath, feel the sensations of letting go. And one more time, inhale deeply. And with the out breath, softening down the length of the body, letting go, letting go. And then letting your breath come back into its natural rhythm. So you're observing the breath, relaxing with the breath. One of the ways that we can really create a sense of full presence is bringing a quality of kindness and gentleness, friendliness into our bodies. And the image of a smile can help us in that. You might imagine the sky filled with a great smile, like that curve of a smile, blue sky in all directions

and just sense the receptivity of the smile and let your mind merge with that sky so the smile is filling your mind and just sense what it's like to have a mind filled with the atmosphere of a smile you might feel a smile spreading through the eyes lifting the outer corners of the eyes Let the brow be smooth, feeling a smile at the lips, a very slight smile at the lips, the inside of the mouth smiling.

And feeling your face from the inside. Just sense the friendliness that comes from that sense of a smile. Allowing for more relaxing of the micro muscles in the face. allowing for the shoulders to fall away from the neck, feeling the hands from the inside, letting them rest in an easy, effortless way, and softening a little and softening again, letting there be an openness to the chest and you can allow that image and felt sense of a smile to spread through the chest, through the heart area. Just sensing that this friendliness of a smile makes room for what's here, not pushing away

anything. It's an allowing presence. Letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This one. And then again, you might visualize and sense the curve of a smile through the belly. Just spreading. Again, creating a friendly space that allows you to feel the life that you. that's here with gentleness, acceptance.

And feeling that gentle, allowing presence spread through the torso, and through the legs, through the feet. So if you widen the attention, you can sense the atmosphere of a smile, the area around you, allowing your whole body to be at ease. So resting in the awareness, that's friendly, allowing, present, noticing the life that's here moment to moment, noticing the movement of the breath, noticing the play of sensation, the feelings and the heart, letting your intention be to include whatever arises in this friendly, kind, gentle presence.

If you notice the mind drifting into thoughts, when you become aware of that, simply relax open and sense the thought, a changing movie or changing cloud, moving through the sky of awareness. And if there's tightness or tension, some conflict, some difficulty, you might explore reestablishing that sense of embodied meta or friendliness by letting there be a smile in the eyes, softening the eyes, slight smile at the mouth, and feeling the face from the inside, sensing the expression as one of friendliness, feeling a smile in the heart, sensing the heart space that includes what's here. Not pushing away anything, not holding on to anything. This is from the poet Dorothy Hunter. She writes,

Peace is this moment without judgment. That is all. This moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome. Peace is this moment without thinking it should be some other way. that you should feel some other thing, that your life should unfold according to your plans. Peace is this moment without judgment, this moment in the heart space, where everything that is is welcome. In these last moments you might notice what it's like

when there's a heart space that truly welcomes whatever is here.