Tara Brach - Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness - This meditation includes relaxing and awakening through the body, widening the lens to include sound and then letting life live through us, receiving all that arises in open awareness.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Going through the body and noticing if there's any areas of tension or tightness. Just bringing a gentle awareness to whatever you might notice. See if there can be a natural softening or letting go. It's helpful to feel the area around the eyes. The more we're thinking, the more the little muscles around the eyes tighten. Just intentionally soften the eyes.

You might imagine orbs floating in a pool of water. Let the brow be smooth. Relaxing the jaw, letting it be unhinged. Let the tongue spread and felt the lower peat. the lower palate. See if you can feel right down to the base or the root of the tongue. Just relax there. Aware of the sensations and the gums and the teeth and the lips. Letting the lips be in a very slight smile, a half smile, allowing the shoulders to relax back and down a bit. The chin floating parallel to the ground. Softening at the bottom at the

back of the neck. Let the awareness fill the shoulders. If you feel tightness or tension or holding there, you might imagine the shift from ice to water are kind of melting and then water to gas. Can you sense the movement of sensation inside the shoulders? Going the hands to rest in a very easy, very effortless way. You might soften the hands and then soften even a little more and then feel them from the inside out.

Do you notice the movement of sensation inside the hands kind of tingling or vibrating? You can bring the same sensitivity or intimacy with sensation throughout the whole body, letting the chest be open. And feeling from the inside out the region of the heart can help to smile into the heart, to visualize and have a felt sense of a smile spreading through the heart area, not to cover over but to make space for what's actually there. What's the inside out experience in the region of the heart? Can you feel the movement of energy or sensations there?

the aliveness that's there. Relaxing down the torso, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again, feeling the awareness deep in the torso, feeling the belly from the inside out. Again you might allow the curve and felt sense of a smile to fill that region and then to feel the energy that's there.

What's it like? Is there movement, aliveness? Still the slight smile at the mouth, still the hands soft and easy, letting the awareness fill the pelvic region. Again you might allow that curve and image of a smile to fill a part of your body and then feel from the inside out the life that's here, the play of aliveness, hands still soft. Can you sense the length and the volume of your legs? Can you feel the feet from the inside out?

And is there movement and aliveness of sensation there? It happens when you widen the lens now to feel this whole body simultaneously a field of sensation, not stopping anything, not controlling anything. It's letting this whole life live through you. receiving life and awareness.

This whole changing dance, tingling and vibrating, tightness or flow, pleasantness or unpleasantness, spaciousness or density, all received in awareness, ever-changing, creative, alive. Including in this dance of aliveness, the symphony of sound, and listening in a global way, letting sound wash through, receiving sound, sensation,

feelings, just relaxing back, letting everything happen, letting this life live through you. At the point you'll notice that your attention's drifted, which is just the nature of attention to go into thoughts. So the practice is when you notice, you notice, that to gently relax back again, right, into this presence that's right here, perhaps listening to the sounds and the space around you, perhaps re-relaxing a bit the body, softening the shoulders, the hands, the belly, arriving again in that awareness that receives this play of sensation, the silence that's listening to sound, relaxed and awake, moment to moment. Sometimes it helps to inquire, am I dreaming right now?

Am I in a trance of thinking? Without any judgment, if you notice the veil of thoughts, again, relax back, sense the difference between any thought or story and the liveliness that's right here, these sounds and these sensations, the felt sense of experience in the heart, relaxing back into the awareness that's receiving this life moment to moment, letting this life live through you as a way of closing, gently bringing the attention to the area of the heart and just sense what your intention is as you end the formal meditation.

and enter these next moments of your life. Enter your day, your evening. Enter whatever's unfolding. What's the quality of heart and presence that you want to remember? What's the quality of heart and presence that you want to remember?