Tara Brach - Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness - Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Sit in a way that allows you to be alert and relaxed. See, you're upright as well as possible and yet you might scan through your body and see what can let go just a little bit right now. As you sense the movement of the breath, you might bring your attention to the heart area, imagining and feeling the breath coming in and out of the heart, and taking a moment to reflect on what brings you here, what brings you to practice meditation right at this moment, this time in your life,

what it is that your heart really longs for, and whether this is the first time you've asked yourself that or the 10,000th, sense of freshness in the inquiry, let it be absolutely the first time in this moment, that you're sensing into what you care about, what really matters, aware of the movement of the breath. You might lengthen the in-breath some, so it's a nice, full, deep in-breath, and then a slow out-breath, feeling the sensations as they leave through the nostrils, breathing in a nice, full, deep in-breath, and a slow out-breath, letting go.

letting go, full deep in breath, letting your breath be smooth, relaxed, out breath, and letting the breath be completely natural, feeling the natural movement of the breath, awakening awareness by letting our attention fully inhabit our bodies. In this practice you might bring your attention to your feet to begin. sense the possibility of entering your feet, bringing your awareness and attention completely inside your feet, as if you're living within your feet, feeling from the inside out, the tingling, the vibrating, the space that's there, continuing to breathe and feel your feet, inhabiting them fully, and begin to sense that you're feeling from the inside out, your anxious,

ankles and lower legs, continuing back to the calves, feeling the volume of the ankles and the lower legs, feeling from the inside out the sensations of aliveness that are there, aware of the knees and sense that you can fill the knees with awareness, inhabiting the knees, feeling from the inside out, and beginning to sense that your knees can feel soft inside, sensing the space, vibration in the knees, inside both knees. See if you can balance your awareness, sensing the space inside both knees at the same time and feel the stillness of a balanced mind, letting the awareness fill the thighs all the way, fronts, the backs, the volume of the thighs.

So from the inside out you're feeling the sensations and vibrations, the space inside your thighs. See if you can feel the inner space of your thighs, your upper thighs and the inner space of your lower torso at the same time. Then allow your awareness to fill the pelvic area inhabiting your pelvis. Let your awareness, your full attention settle within the pelvic region so you can feel from the inside out, the aliveness that's there. Moving up the body, see if you can inhabit the midsection, the area between your ribs and your pelvic region, including the solar plexus under your ribs. See if you can inhabit this whole area, softening and letting the area

fill with awareness from front to back, side to side. Can you experience yourself living fully inside this midsection area, really inhabiting the region. And now filling the chest with awareness, inhabiting your chest all the way through to your upper back, out to the sides. You might sense your awareness sitting in your heart, feeling from the inside out, the aliveness of your heart. Notice what happens when you bring your awareness inside your shoulders, inhabiting and living inside the shoulders, feeling from the inside out, tightness or flow, tingling, vibrating,

the aliveness and the space sits there. You can balance your awareness of the space inside both shoulders, experiencing them simultaneously, feeling the shoulders, breathing, and sensing the stillness of the balanced mind, feeling the length and the volume of your arms, letting your awareness fill your arms, feeling the tingling and the vibrating, the aliveness there. Letting that awareness spread through the hands right to the fingertips. So you're feeling the hands from the inside out, softening, receptive to the tingling, the vibrating, the space and aliveness inside the hand.

Just notice what it's like to live inside the hands. You might imagine the throat filling the neck and allowing your full awareness to fill the cylinder of your neck, inhabiting your neck from the inside out, and your awareness spread through the face, being aware of the forehead, round to the sides of the forehead, letting the brow be soft, smooth,

inhabiting the eyes, your closed eyes, letting them soften so they feel continuous with the rest of your face. You might feel that you're inhabiting the aliveness and space behind your cheekbones, inside your nose, all the way to the tip of the nose. You feel that you're inside the mouth inhabiting jaw, the mouth, the lips, the chin, the gum. the teeth, feeling from the inside out, the sensations, the dance of aliveness there, and then widening to inhabit your whole face. You experience yourself living within your whole face and then widening to inhabit

your brain, your whole brain, including the bottom, sides, the top, living from the inside inside out, inside your whole brain. Now inhabiting the whole body at once simultaneously, making contact with yourself everywhere in your body at once. And what's it like to experience yourself living within your whole body and breathing? Sense the space that's taken when you're living within your whole body, the space that's here. Let yourself relax with the aliveness in your whole body, at home, within your body, letting everything happen, this whole dance of aliveness, the space, it's happening in, the space inside,

the vibrations, the movement, let everything happen. And since now the space outside your body, the space in the room, aware of the space above and below you, in front and behind of you, both sides of the body, extending outward and outward, as far as you can imagine in all directions. And then feel that the space inside your body and outside your body is the same continuous space. You're inhabiting your body, yet you're permeable pervaded by space. might sense if you can that you are the space, the space that's interior to all sensations,

that holds all sensations, sensing how this space is effused with awareness, with wakefulness, being this awake, aware space as this life appears and disappears, arises and dissolves, changing flow of experience moment to moment, inhabiting the body, feeling the whole body all at once, sensing the aliveness and the space inside the body, the space that extends in all directions around you, sensing that as continuous space inside and out, continuous space, suffused with the light of awareness as a way of closing to be aware of the region of the heart and sensing that continuous space is heart space, the space of awareness that is filled with that tenderness that knows all of this living world as part of this heart. Sensing as you complete this meditation from

that presence, that heart space, whatever wish or prayer you'd like to offer, to the life that's right here, your own life, in this moment. Sensing the heart space that's here as vast and inclusive, including all beings, and sensing your prayer for all beings. Ramas Day and blessings.