Tara Brach - Meditation: Present Heartspace

Episode Date: August 31, 2017

Meditation: Present Heartspace - This meditation establishes an embodied presence with the gentleness of a smile-down scan, then opens us to the heartspace that includes the changing waves of experience. It ends with a short lovingkindness meditation that offers prayers for relief of the current great suffering from floods in Texas, India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. One of the most beautiful descriptions of mindfulness is a present heart. We can awaken that quality of presence, gentleness, care by beginning with the image and the felt sense of a smile. You might imagine great wide, open space, endless blue sky, and the curve of a smile spreading through it.

Visualize and sense that receptivity and openness as you let the mind and that sky merge. So you sense the mind as an open, receptive space filled with the curve of a smile, sensing the possibility of softening your eyes and letting that curve of a smile spread through the eyes you might even sense the outer corners lifted a bit the brow is smooth

inviting a half smile to the mouth and see if you can sense the inside of the mouth smiling you might let the tongue fill the lower palate relaxing down to the root of the tongue the eyes smiling, the mouth, and smiling into the heart, inviting that curve and felt sense of a smile to spread through the heart and chest area. Noticing how it doesn't cover over anything, it creates an openness to feel the life that's here. The eyes soft, mouth smiling, the heart smiling, letting that openness widened.

and out and out and out. So there's space for the shoulders to gently fall away from the neck so you can feel inside the shoulders, perhaps sensing a melting or dissolving ice to water. You might imagine that. Feel that.

And water to gas. Letting the hands rest in a very easy, effortless way. softening the hands softening again and even again letting the awareness from the inside out receive sensations

the dance of tingling or vibrating again sensing the openness at the chest and feeling from the inside out the heart sensing the aliveness of sensation there whether it's tightness or flow

numbness, our real sensitivity, feeling from the inside out, the movement of sensation as it happens in this space of awareness. You can scan down to the abdominal area and again visualize and sense a smile spreading through the belly. Again this receptivity, openness that can allow us to feel from the inside out the life that here, again gently receiving with awareness the changing sensations. Scanning down, aware of the pelvic region and again visualizing and sensing that curve of a smile, where of the openness that creates and the aliveness that you can receive with awareness. of the length, the volume of the legs,

feeling the awareness inside the feet, receiving the sensations, the aliveness there, and widening the perspective in a way that includes this whole dance of sensations simultaneously, not opposing or stopping anything. I might include in this dance of aliveness the changing play of sound, close-in sounds, including these words that come and go,

the sounds in the space of the room, perhaps the more distant sounds that you can perceive so that you're listening to and feeling this entire play of life, sensing how all of life is received in open, edgeless awareness. Before too long, you might notice how the mind drifts, it contracts into thought forms, mental commentary. It's totally natural. And when we see that or recognize that,

the practice is to relax back again, come back to our senses, aware of the play of sounds, aware of the aliveness of sensations, aware of whatever mood or emotion might be in our heart, including whatever is arising, and a very gentle and receptive awareness in a very present heart space, if it helps to anchor your attention by having the breath in the foreground,

just as a way to steady the mind. Let that inflow and outflow be the waves that you attend to, relaxing with the movement of the breath, aware of the larger play of sensation and sound in the background right here, receiving this moment-to-moment experience in an open and present heart space, clear, kind, present. You can begin fresh in any moment. You discover the minds wandered and there's a sense of contraction or reaction, just start fresh. You might sense that smile in the mind, the eyes, the mouth, the heart, relaxing, aware of the changing sounds, the sensations that are right here,

including whatever is arising in a present heart space. If something feels a little difficult, sometimes the words, this too, very gently whispered to yourself, can help create the space to include what's arising. Letting life come and go moment to moment. We close with a loving, kindness, reflection, sensing this present heart space can hold your life, what you might call your small self, and sensing whatever wish or blessing you'd like to offer to yourself from this place of presence and care. Whatever most resonates in this moment, sensing this heart space is really continuous shared heart space, our collective

field of love and caring, and sensing how it really embraces and including. includes all beings everywhere. So we close sensing the beings everywhere that are struggling right now, particularly including those who in the United States and Texas are struggling with the floods and similarly in East Asia with the horrific aftermath of monsoons, holding all these beings as well as beings everywhere who need our prayer. So we close by feeling that tenderness, that wish that suffering be relieved, that wish that that all beings everywhere might find the healing they need, that all beings everywhere might be held in love and kindness, filled with love and kindness, that there might

be safety and peace for all beings. May all things everywhere awaken and be free. Namaste.