Tara Brach - Meditation: Living Presence (21:35 min.)

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

This meditation guides us to awaken to our senses through scanning through the body and then listening to sounds. When distracted by thoughts we relax open again and again, learning to rest in the formless awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all passing experience.   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 deepest essence. Namaste. I sense right now what wants to let go a little bit, noticing where there might be holding or tension,

feeling this body breathing and letting the awareness of the breath be at the heart, as if you could breathe in and out of your heart and asking yourself, what is my intention for practicing right now? my intention for meditation, for being here. What's the deepest intention? And if you've never done this before or done it 10,000 times,

just sense where your sincerity is. What is it you care about? In the stillness you might imagine a wide open sky around you. And since that sky filled with the curve, of a smile, that openness and brightness and felt sense of a smile, filling the sky, and allow your mind to merge with that sky. So the whole mind is filled with that felt sense of a smile, lit up, open, receptive, edgeless, and sense that you can smile right into the eyes so the outside corners of the

eyes are lifted slightly, the brow is smooth, the eyes are soft, sensations are floating, tingling, vibrating in the whole region of the eyes. You can feel the aliveness there and the space that it's floating in. It sense a very slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling. You might sense the tongue filling the lower palate. down to the root of the tongue. And again, notice the whole constellation of sensations. Pulsing, tingling. See if you can sense the aliveness that's floating in space there. The eyes smiling, the mouth. You might visualize and feel a smile spreading through the throat.

Sense the throat filling the neck, the sensations, vibrations, energy that's moving in that region, allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck, the shoulders be filled with awareness, feeling from the inside out the vibration, the movement of energy. If you notice tension or tightness, can you let that float in awareness? Notice what changes, sense of anything's holding still, that the hand. rests in a very easy, effortless way, softening the hands and softening again. And what do you notice from the inside out? What are you aware of?

Can you feel the movement of energy, pulsing, vibrating? Can you sense the space the energy's floating in, moving in, appearing out of, dissolving into? Again, the eyes soft and smiling, the mouth smiling, throat and smiling into the heart, visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile spreading through the heart and chest. Not to cover over what's happening but to make room for it. Sounds, sensations, sensing the heart space that can include what's here. scanning down to feel the abdominal area, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again you might visualize and sense that curve of a smile

spreading through the belly and feeling from the inside out noticing the life that's here. You can bring that same image and felt sense of a smile to fill the pelvic region. opening your attention in a full way to the life, to the whole movement of sensation and aliveness that's there. Space and aliveness. I might feel down into the earth that we're on as again this vibrating living organism. Just allowing this earth energy to flow up through you, fill you, sensing yourself as part of this whole, living earth body, vibrating and alive, including an awareness, the sounds that are here, listening not just with your ears but your whole awareness, listening to and feeling the whole moment

and completely relaxing with what's happening in the foreground, this changing, vibrating world of form. And in the background, that formless presence, that alert, inner stillness that's awake, space that everything's happening in. At some point you'll notice the mind's gone off in a trance of thinking. It could be a dramatic train ride into the past or future or more subtle veil of commentary or thoughts. Either way, without any judgment, more with interest and friendliness, relax, open. Again, listening to the sounds that are right here, feeling the life that's right here. Might feel the inflow and outflow of the breath, aware in the background of that presence.

that wakeful openness that's really our home. Let your practice be simple to just notice the drifting and gently relax back to the senses, to presence. Coming back you feel a sense of fear or physical unpleasantness to bring a lot of kindness. We can love ourselves back into presence. friendly, gentle, easy, resting again and again in the life of the moment. No matter where the mind has traveled, you can begin fresh in any moment.

That's in your meditation and in life. The key is the quality of heart. Bring a real gentleness to bring an interested attention. What's happening right now? and we relax open and rest in the changing experience that's right here. As a way of closing this meditation, you might review your experience over these last 15, 20 minutes, since where you've been, where the attention's been, perhaps what's been challenging, holding whatever's there with a real allowing acceptance.

What might you have learned? What do you appreciate about your experience? What might you want to remember? Closing with an inward vow of respect for this process of waking up our hearts and minds.