Tara Brach - Meditation: Open-Hearted Presence

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Meditation: Open-Hearted Presence - This meditation establishes a kind attention by bringing the imagery and felt sense of a smile into the body scan and then, with the breath as a home base, opens the attention to changing experience. We end with a brief loving kindness reflection.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. You might let your attention, the feeling of your breath, be at the heart area, kind of breathing in and out of your heart. Taking these moments to listen inwardly and ask yourself, what is my deepest, truest intention? right now for being here, for meditating.

What is it your heart most longs for? See, if you can feel where you're most sincere, it takes a few moments sometimes to even begin to listen in and sense what really does matter to me. Yet the more you're in touch with your intention, the more as you meditate, you'll be reminded again and again to be right here, to choose presence.

You might feel our shared intention that as we wake up these hearts and minds with meditation that that ripple out in a way that's healing for our world. And we'll come together as community with the chanting of oom as a way to express our heart, express our caring. You might bring the palms together in front of the heart. We'll chant three times. and begin by taking a nice full in-breath. Minds and bodies are most comforted and quiet most naturally

when there's a quality of benevolence of kindness, an atmosphere of caring. And you can invoke that with the image of a smile, imagining around you a vast, open sky, and then visualizing the cruiserizing the cruiseries, curve of a smile spreading through that sky, the receptivity and openness of a smile, filling that vastness, warm and inviting and imagine that your mind can merge with that open, vast sky of awareness.

So your mind is filled with the warmth and receptivity of a smile and you can sense how that's expressed at the eyes, the outer corners of the eyes lifted slightly, a smile spreading through the eyes, softening the eyes, letting the brow be smooth, and sensing a slight but real smile at the mouth. See if you can feel the inside of your mouth smiling. And as you do, let the tongue fill the lower palate. You see if you can relax down to the mouth, you can relax down to the mouth, to the root of the tongue. The eyes are soft and smiling, the mouth. You might visualize and have the felt sense of a smile at the throat.

You see if you can imagine it, it sends the throat filling the neck and the curve of a smile spreading through. And then visualizing and having the felt sense of a smile spreading through the heart, through the whole region of the heart. This isn't to cover over anything but really to create the space that makes it possible to feel the life that's here, smiling into the heart. The eyes are soft and smiling, the mouth and curve of a smile through the throat and spreading through the heart.

You might imagine and sense the rings and rippling out of the smile so that it's spreading through your whole body, that warmth and receptivity, allow your shoulders to fall away from the neck and see if you can feel from the inside out, the shoulders and maybe imagine a melting of ice to water, ice to water and water to gas, allowing the hands to rest in a very easy and effortless way, perhaps on the thighs or touching each other in the lap. Notice what happens if you bring the awareness and attention inside the hands, softening the hands and then feeling from the inside out. Can you sense the tingling there and the vibrating, places of pressure or pulsing, allowing

the chest to be open. Again, smiling into the heart area and feeling the aliveness, the space that fills the chest, and relaxing down the torso, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath and this breath and again allowing the belly to stay soft, loose, allowing the breath to receive deep in the torso, breath after breath, breathing into the softening belly, keeping the hands soft, slight smile at the mouth, feeling this whole body sitting here breathing, aware of the length and the volume of your legs, aware of the aliveness in the feet, maybe tingling, vibrating there.

So you can sense this whole body as a field of sensation. In the midst of the feel, the movement of the breath, letting the belly be soft, perhaps feeling the expanding and releasing at the belly of the breath. Breath to breath. Or for some it may be easier to feel the breath, rising, falling at the chest. For others, the inflow, outflow at the nostrils. Wherever it's easiest to feel the breath, just resting with it. the breath, relaxing open as the breath comes in and relaxing with the letting go and releasing

of the breath. It's usually not too long before you'll notice that the mind has drifted which is completely natural and as you practice you can sense the possibility of opening up or relaxing open from the thoughts. You're listening to the sounds that are here, perhaps re-relaxing, and you're just to the sounds, relaxing in the body a little, softening the shoulders, the hands, a slight smile at the mouth, and then arriving again gently, shepherding the attention back to the next in-breath or out-breath, rising breath or falling breath, or for whatever reason the breath is not

a good home base for you. Relax back with the senses, with perhaps sound, or maybe the sensations in your body, the sensations in your hands or your feet, finding some anchor, some sensory anchor that helps you know you're here, moment to moment, relaxed and wakeful presence. No matter how far the mind has drifted, you can always start fresh in your meditation and in your life by re-chewsing presence, reopening the attention to what's actually right here. So instead of the sounds of the thoughts it's the actual sounds right here, a receptive listening and you can always re-relax the body noticing what might want to let go right now.

You can sense and invite that smile, softening the eyes, smiling into the eyes and slight smile at the mouth, gently resting again with the breath or with whatever your home bases, whatever's right here in the senses to be experienced. Know that you're here, sense that quality of heerness and see how much you can relax into it,

surrender into it, as a way of closing the meditation, invitation, invite you to as we started to again feel the smile in the eyes, soft eyes, perhaps the outer edges lifted and a slight smile at the mouth and sense the presence of your own most awake heart and from that heart space offering to yourself whatever message of care most resonates right now, just sending that inwardly. Feeling that awake heart space as edgeless and open, as luminous and inclusive, so you sense all those who are sitting with you right now or sitting anywhere in this world and all those

who are not sitting but are moving, eating, walking, dancing, living, living their lives, their lives, all beings, all species, the earth are mother and all beings everywhere, part of your heart, offering your prayer of care.