Tara Brach - Meditation: Opening to Life (2019-05-29)

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Meditation: Opening to Life (2019-05-29) - This guided meditation includes a mindful body scan, and awakening all our senses to our moment to moment experience. We relax open to the presence that is unobscured by thoughts, letting life be just as it is.  Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. You settle into stillness, you might feel the breath at your heart and bring a listening attention to the heart. Begin with the inquiry of what really brings us to meditate. What is your deepest intention?

attention right now for practice. What is it that your heart most longs for? Dropping that question like a pebble into water and then just resting back and listening, feeling into it, what's most important to you, sensing into where you feel most sincere, what you really care about. And also sensing our shared care that these practices of present, help to bring awakening of heart in a way that ripples out to bring healing to our world. It's from that place of caring that we come together as community Sangha with a simple chant.

The mantra, Om, is that sound current of connectedness. You might bring the palms together to really center right at the heart. We'll chant three times. We begin by taking a long, deep in breath. In the stillness we can begin to scan through the body, waking up and relaxing. It helps to bring a slight smile to the mouth so that we infuse our practice with a sense of gentleness and kindness. You might feel that slight smile and feel the inside of the inside of the practice.

the mouth smiling. You might notice that the muscles in the face can be relaxed. You can feel them, perhaps some tingling or vibrating. You might soften the eyes and let the brow be smooth. Allow the shoulders to drop away from the neck and bring the awareness inside the shoulders. And filling the shoulders with awareness. And sense if you can let whatever tightness or tension might be there, let it float in awareness. Feeling the shoulders from the inside out, softening, perhaps sensing a dissolving or releasing. You can sense the arms and perhaps sense the weight and length and volume of the arms. You feel them from the inside out again as a living dynamic field of energy.

Let the hands rest in a very easy and effortless way. You might notice what happens when you soften the hand and then soften again and feel them from the inside out. Can you detect the tingling and vibrating that's there? Feel the thumbs from the inside out. sensing the space that fills the thumbs and feel the forefingers from the inside out, the tingling and vibrating there and the space between the thumb and the forefinger, alive with presence.

Feeling the middle finger from the inside out, the space that fills the fingers, the aliveness there, and the ring finger, sensing the volume. and space inside, and the small finger, the pinky, softening and feeling from the inside out to feel the tingling and vibrating. And perhaps you can feel all the fingers, flesh and bones and the spaces between them. And can you imagine and feel the space between the palms and the backs of your hands and then the whole hands, fingers, vibrating and tingling. floating in awareness.

Just as a cup is filled with water, this whole body can be filled with awareness. Again, that smile, that slight smile at the mouth, you can smile into the heart, visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile spreading through the heart. This is not to paper over but really to sense the space that it can include what's here. And feeling the space and aliveness inside the chest, the aliveness of the heart, the lungs, the space in the whole chest cavity, letting the hands be soft, smile at the mouth, smile at the heart. And you might visualize and have the felt sense of a smile spreading through the midsection, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly,

This breath and this one and again, feeling from the inside out, the space and aliveness that fills the belly. You can imagine and a sense that felt experience of a smile spreading through the pelvic region. Again, feeling from the inside out the space, the aliveness of sensation in that region and perhaps Perhaps you can visualize and sense the curve of a smile like a vase at the base of the spine. Just imagine, since this whole earth, all this earth energy pouring up through that vase, that smile into the body, you with aliveness, filling the legs, the length, the volume, the weight of the legs with that experience of awareness and aliveness.

the feet, tingling, vibrating. So if you open and feel the whole body simultaneously, you can sense the body as a pure field of vibrating sensation, awake space, including the vibration of sound, sensing how sound, sensation, feelings are all arising from and moving in this vast awareness. with acts in the back into this wakeful openness that spontaneously knows sound, sensation, feelings. Just letting everything happen. Awareness allows it all.

In the midst of this aliveness you might sense the simple movement of the breath. This can be a way of finding a steadiness and ease, simply resting in the breath, aware of the inflow and the outflow, relaxing with the inflow and the outflow, perhaps at the nostrils, or maybe the rising, falling at the chest, inflating, deflating at the belly, or the whole body, even in a cellular level breathing. And if something else arises that calls your attention a strong feeling or sensation, sound, Let go of the breath and just include that wave of experience. Saying yes, allowing it to be there.

You might even whisper this belongs if it's difficult. Letting experiences come and go. And when you find that the mind's been lost in thought and you become aware of that, gently relaxing open again into your senses, listening to sounds, feeling the aliveness through the whole body, relaxing the heart, and then resting in the life breath or if you'd prefer resting in that open wakefulness, bringing presence to whatever waves are here, letting life be just as it is. Every time you practice that movement from being lost in thoughts to coming back to presence,

you're really strengthening the pathway of homecoming. So when you notice the mind's drifted, rather than any judgment, just bring a real friendliness, interest. Ah, thinking, thinking, what's really here? Relax the attention open and you can again sense the possibility of listening to the life that's here, intimate contact with sensations and aliveness in the body, and a kind attention to the life of the heart. If something difficult has arisen, you can breathe with it and really bring care, friendliness. It's okay. Letting life be just as it is, moment to moment, a relaxed,

kind, open presence.