Tara Brach - Meditation: Homecoming to Wakeful Presence (2020-06-03)

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Meditation: Homecoming to Wakeful Presence (2020-06-03) - This meditation begins with us standing in mindful movement, guiding us in awakening awareness in the body. Then in sitting practice, we open all our senses, resting in the wakeful presence that can include the changing waves of our life.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Many people have been asking me over these last days that have been so painful just for simple direct ways to kind of wake up out of the reactive trance and come home into our bodies and our hearts and our intuition and our wisdom. And so today we'll start in with our meditation, a homecoming to wakeful presence, and we'll start off by standing up. So, wherever you are, if you will, please come to your feet and just find some space where you can stand and you can move your body around a little bit.

And I invite you to stand in a way where your feet are shoulder width apart and then close your eyes. Take a few full breaths, feeling yourself standing here, breathing, and then bring your attention to your feet. See if you can relax your feet and let them widen so you can feel and imagine and sense your connection to the earth beneath you. Just become rooted a bit. And as you do, feel up into the knees and soften the backs of your knees. Now placing one hand, on your lower belly and the other on your sacrum. See if you can soften your belly. Just like a two-year-old might with an undefended belly. You know, we regularly contract. So it helps us to soften over and over again. The belly is where we digest life

experience. So especially when there's a lot of life experience racing through us to soften, to open. And keeping your palms there, you might invite the tailbone to relax toward the ground. You may feel only a small movement, that's fine. Still breathing deeply into the belly, softening. And now allow your palms to float in space back to the sides. Allow your shoulders to fall away from the neck. And then relax the back of your neck and the occipital ridge at the base of the skull. There might be just a mental suggestion of lengthening. And you may notice the chin goes parallel to the floor. The palms are floating in space, opening to all your senses. Aware of the space around you and the sounds. Again, this body standing here, breathing.

Now rotating the palms so they're facing out. And as you breathe in, inhale, and raise the arms up, raise them up, so they'll all the way stretch up above the head. Rotate the palms out and then exhale down. Exhale down, moving slowly. And again, inhale, sweep up. And exhale, sweep down. Continuing at your own pace, matching the in-breath with the sweeping up, the out-breath. with the sweeping down and see if you can move slowly enough so you can feel as if you are moving

through water feel the sensations of moving through the air now with this last in breath sweeping up keeping the arms up exhale continue to breathe naturally now stretching up and then very very slowly in micro movements begin to allow the arms to lower. Let them float slowly down. As if someone was watching you right now they could barely perceive the motion and you with your eyes closed feeling the hands from the inside out floating through space, vibration, sensation. And when you've completed and the arms are down again in the stillness feeling aliveness. You feel feeling your body as a field of sensation, tingling, vibrating, and with mindfulness, moving slowly,

but opening your eyes because you'll probably need to see as you move, please come sitting down for the remainder of our meditation. In the seated posture, sitting alert, upright, scan gently through your body and notice if there's anything that wants to let go a little more right now, pay particular attention to the shoulders, perhaps sensing the possibility of relaxing back and down a bit more, feeling the shoulders from the inside out, letting there be some dissolving or melting there, feeling the aliveness in the shoulders, allowing the hands to rest in a very easy and effortless way, and noticing if you soften the hands, and then soften again.

How much aliveness you can feel, sensing that throughout our body the more we relax, we're actually relaxing our resistance to feeling the life that's here. We're opening to the flow of life, letting the chest be open, and sensing that we can relax the heart. Feel the aliveness, the sensation, the emotion,

the life in the region of the heart. Again, softening the belly, that undefended belly. Sense from the inside out the life that's there. Relaxing through the pelvic region, down through the legs. Again, the feet soft, awake, feeling the sensations and aliveness there. And widening to feel this whole body simultaneously. This whole dance, of sensation, widening some more, listening to the sounds that are here, listening to the space that you're in, letting the senses be wide open, listening to and feeling the whole moment. You might be aware of changing sounds of sensations in the body, perhaps emotions or moods in the heart, and also aware in the background.

of that alert, inner stillness, that wakeful presence that's a source of your being, the source of intuition, wisdom, and love, in the quietness now resting in that presence, sensing the possibility with whatever waves arise of saying yes, of allowing them to be, kindness with clarity. it's natural that the attention will drift. When you notice that, choosing presence, gently shepherding the attention back to the life of the moment,

listening to the sounds that are here, perhaps relaxing in the body where there's been tightening, shoulders, perhaps the hands, the belly, feeling the life of the body, and relaxing your heart. including whatever tenderness, emotion, mood is here. Yes, to the waves of life. Be the ocean that includes the waves in this awake presence

that's your deepest nature. As a way of closing, you might bring your presence to the area of the heart, listening inward with your intuition, with kindness, sense, anything within you that might need care. that might need attention. And then take some moments to offer some gesture of kindness, some message, some prayer, some wish for your own well-being, whatever most resonates in this moment. And then sensing that caring heart space as without boundary, as including our whole world, as including our hurting and suffering world.

And sense spontaneously whatever prayer, whatever wish, most resonates for our world right now. In closing, please feel your heart and heart space joined in belonging to collective heart space that wishes our world healing, peace, justice, and freedom.