Tara Brach - Meditation: Living Presence – Awakening with a Smile (18:45 min)

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

This practice uses the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, include sound and relax back into the awareness that is the source of all experience. By letting life be just as it is, we become pure living presence – wakeful, open and tender.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. We'll begin our meditation together in a simple way. The invitations to turn your attention inward, let yourself become still, and begin noticing what the experience is inside you. This body lives in the present,

moment. And when we wake up our attention inside the body, you can rest in a very vast and still quality of presence. And gently scan through the body and you might begin by noticing if there's any areas that are asking for attention in your body, places of tightness or tension that you might gently soften in, do a little letting go. The image and the felt sense of a smile can help deepen the quality of presence and ease through the body. I invite you to just visualize a big, open, blue sky, vast sky. And imagine the curve of a smile just spreading to through that sky, open and inviting, and then let the mind and that sky emerge so this mind

is wide open and filled like the sky with a smile, sense the curve and it felt sense of a smile, just filling your mind, brightness, receptivity, openness. You might visualize and imagine that curve of a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners of the eyes slightly. Can you sense the brow becoming smooth, a softening around the eyes? See if it's possible to have a slight smile at the mouth and the felt sense of the inside of the mouse smiling. Can you let the tongue fill the palate, relaxing the tongue. And notice what happens if you relax right down to the root of the tongue.

The jaws unhinged. What are the sensations like that fill the whole area of the mouth? The gums, the teeth, the lips. You sense the space that fills the mouth, the aliveness of sensation. You might visualize and sense the smile spreading through the throat and just sense the sensation. and aliveness that lives there.

The eyes are smiling, the mouth, the throat. You might imagine and feel that felt sense of a smile spreading through the heart. This is not to paper over what's there but really to open you to the space that's there, that has a room for whatever is arising, sensing that smile spreading through the heart and notice what are the sensations, the feelings there, sensing from that smile of widening and an opening from the chest, concentric circles, rippling outward, so that there's more space even around the shoulders, that the shoulders can relax back and down. And can you imagine the awareness filling the shoulders? So you can feel the space inside the shoulders

sense the aliveness of energy inside the shoulders. And if there's areas of tightness, knots in the shoulder, you might imagine them floating in awareness, perhaps a bit of the melting of ice to water and water to gas. And can you sense the length and the volume of the arms? The space inside the arms and the aliveness there. You might notice what happens if you soften the hands and then feel the hands from the inside out. And you notice the space inside the hands, the vibration, the tingling, the movement of energy inside the hands.

Again, sensing the openness at the chest, that smile that can spread through the heart area. And scanning down, you might vision. visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through the belly, softening, relaxing, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath, and now this one, and again, sensing the space and aliveness that fills that whole region of the belly. From the inside out, the eyes are smiling, soft, the mouth, hands, hands are soft, the smile and the heart and the belly soft, then visualizing and connecting with the felt sense of a smile spreading through the whole pelvic region, opening

to the space and aliveness there, feeling the length, the volume of your legs, placing the awareness inside the feet and feeling the space, vibration, aliveness there, sense the rootedness and connection to the vast earth below and around you. Just imagining and sensing this flow of aliveness from the earth and through this body is pouring through so that if you widen your attention you can sense this body as a field of sensation, a field filled with tingling and vibrating, perhaps heat, or cool, swirling, heaviness, lightness, currents of energy and points of light and the dark sky, living presence, sensing how this field of aliveness also has the vibration

of sound. You're listening not just with your ears, but your whole awareness, an edgeless, boundless field of awareness that includes even the most distant sounds, listening to and feeling the whole moment, completely relaxing with the changing flow, letting everything be just as it is. It's natural that the attention will drift off into thoughts and when there's a noticing of that the practice is to gently relax back again to to, listen, listen to this changing symphony of sound, maybe re-relax the obvious areas of tightness in the body, softening the shoulders, the hands, living presence, listening to

and feeling the changing flow, moment to moment. close by bringing the attention, the sense of living presence to the heart. And again just sensing that smile and the space that's here in the heart, the aliveness, the tenderness, perhaps the vulnerability, for some may be a sense of numbness and others' angst. whatever's there to regard with gentleness. We close by offering to this heart of ours, whatever prayer, blessing resonates in this moment. And feeling the tenderness of heart space

that's really timeless and vast, holding the world, all beings in our heart, we offer our blessing to all. and sense your wish, your prayer that holds all beams.