Tara Brach - Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care (16:05 min.)

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

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.   Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music

Welcome friends to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our essence. Namaste. 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, eyes or lower your gaze, please do. And 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, 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, that curve of a smile, blue sky in all directions. Just sense the receptivity of the smile. 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,

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'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. It's 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, and the feelings in 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 like 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.