Tara Brach - Meditation: Presence and Breath (2018-08-15)

Episode Date: August 16, 2018

Meditation: Presence and Breath (2018-08-15) - This simple meditation guides us to wake up awareness of the body, and rest with the movement of the breath. We are invited to discover the presence that arises as we come home to our moment-to-moment experience. The practice ends with a short prayer, connecting with what most matters to our heart.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. ...of the breath and letting yourself bring your attention to the heart area. Sometimes it helps to imagine and sense your breath coming in and out of the heart. There's an inquiry that is invaluable when we're practicing, and it's invaluable in life. And that is, what is it that really most matters to me?

What is it I really want for meditation? What does my heart long for? Take your time as you reflect on this to feel what's most sincere. It takes some presence to really contact what matters to us. Kind of if you were at the end of your life looking back, what would it mean to have these moments really be lived in a way that was true to you, true to your heart? How do you want to be?

What are the qualities of your being that you most want to manifest, live from? As we begin to sense what matters to us in our own individual language, we can also sense our shared prayer that our practice awakens our heart in a way that can touch other people and ripple out and bring healing to our world. In the stillness, you might gently begin to scan through the body, letting your awareness wake up through your body. It helps to feel the area of the eyes and soften the eyes.

When we're thinking a lot, the brow tends to. to get tight, all those little micro muscles tighten. So let the brow be smooth, the eyes soft. You might even sense you're smiling into the eyes, letting the outer corners lift a little. And just notice the sensations that you can receive and perceive in that area. In a similar way, you might have a slight smile at the mouth.

Let the jaw be unhinged. Let the tongue fill the lower palate. And notice if you can relax down to the root of the tongue. Just try that. Receptive to the sensations in the tongue, the gums, the teeth, the lips. See if you can sense tingling and vibrating through the face, around through the scalp, the skull. Let the shoulders fall away from the neck.

sense the space inside the shoulders, the awareness that fills the shoulders. And notice if there can be some natural letting go, just allowing whatever tightness that might be there to float in awareness, receptive to the sensations from the inside out in the shoulders. You might be aware of energy flowing down through the arms right into the hands. You can check and sense if the hands are resting in an easy, effortless way and perhaps soften the hands right now and soften again and feel them from the inside out.

Can you notice the vibrating or tingling inside the hands? This is a kind of intimate presence. And just as the cup is filled with water, this whole body can be filled with this living presence. You might let there be an openness to the chest. And feel the heart from the inside out, the region of the heart. Very receptive, listening and feeling the energy and the sensations there, including the back, the sensation, the shoulder blades, trabezius muscles, the whole sheath of the upper back, descending down the torso, feeling the belly from the inside out.

You might take a moment to let this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath right now, and now this next breath. And again, waking up the awareness in the belly, standing backwards to feel the mid and lower back, filling the pelvic region with awareness. Very receptive to the aliveness, the energy and sensations there. Sensing the legs aware of the length, the volume, the space inside the legs, feeling the feet. And the inside out, the tingling and vibrating there.

If you open the lens of attention now, so you can sense this whole body as a feet, field of dancing sensation, letting everything move, change, vibrate, flow, not opposing anything, not controlling anything. Noticing in the midst of this field of sensation the particular flow of the breath, no need to control the breath, just receiving the in-flow and the outflow, just as it is. very relaxed presence, you might notice the inflow and outflow primarily at the nostrils, or maybe it's the rising, falling at the chest, or some the movement at the belly.

You might even feel it in a cellular way, this whole body breathing, expanding with the in-bred, deflating with the out-breath. Noticing the quality of presence that's here as you simply rest in the in the breath, the breath like a raft in waves, still aware in the background of the changing sounds, perhaps other sensations in the body. Letting this life breath be a kind of home base to steady the mind and quiet the mind, to let you know that you're right here. For some, if the breath feels hard to find, you can put your hands

right on your belly and just feel the movement of the inflating and the deflating. Let this be a kind of anchor to help you be right here, moment to moment, breath by breath. And if for some reason the breath isn't a pleasant or easy home base for you, it's quite fine to listen to sounds and let that be your home base, are to rest the attention and sensations in some parts of the body like the hands or the feet. And for some it can be a combination of the breath and feeling the hands tingling. The purpose of having a home base is so when you drift off into thoughts, you have a way of remembering, oh, okay, I'm often a virtual reality.

Come back. You have a place you can land softly again, right here, this next next next in breath or out breath, coming home to presence. It's valuable to periodically pause and ask yourself, where is my attention right now? And if you discover you've been drifting in thought, what matters is the quality of presence you bring as you return. So rather than judge and plant the seeds and the seeds of the presence you bring as you return,

the seeds of the future with judgment, just be grateful to notice, ah, okay, this is an opportunity of homecoming. It's an opportunity to relax back into presence. And you might relax by opening the attention to sound, so you're listening in a kind of receptive, spacious way. You relax the body a little. Maybe you can let go some more in the shoulders. Maybe you can soften your hands. Remember that half smile. Relax your heart and gently land again in the breath.

Or whatever your home basis, the breath or sounds, the sensations, moment to moment, breath to breath. The purpose is not to stay with the breath. but to sense the presence that's right here. The breath is a tool to help you with that. But the presence is what frees us. This awakeness that's right here, quality of openness, a tender receptivity to the changing flow,

moment to moment. One of the gifts of practicing presence is it helps us helps us remember what matters to us as we move through our life. So as we close this meditation, you might again feel the breath at the heart, just sense what's most important to you. What it is you want to remember as you move through the rest of this day and the day to come, what are the qualities of heart and mind that you want to embody? and live from. And as you reflect, you might gently bring your palms together and let it be a

prayer for your own healing and freedom, that you remember what's important. And then feeling this shared heart space that includes all beings in our shared prayer that all beings experiencing that remembrance of loving presence, that all beings live from loving presence. that together we help to bring true peace and well-being and healing to our planet.