Tara Brach - Meditation: Relaxed and Alert

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

This meditation begins with a period of relaxing and collecting our attention with intentional long deep breathing. We then deepen embodied presence, and widen to the awareness that includes sounds, sensations, feelings, breath, and all experience. When the mind drifts from this open, awake awareness, we gently return, re-relaxing and resting in an easeful, alert presence. Recorded at Tara's Wednesday night class, the meditation includes chanting of OM's and ends with a sense of melting into community.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. You may take some moments to feel the movement of the breath in the area of the heart and let your attention be at the heart, a kind of listening attention, listening inwardly, sense your deepest intention for practicing right now.

What is that your heart really longs for? What's the quality of presence or heart or awareness that really would feel like home, connecting with your own sincerity and feeling with others practicing that shared intention that are moments of meditation, might serve awakening and ripple out and really touch others in our world in a healing way. Be part of the healing.

You might gently bring the palms together, the heart, and we open together collectively as community. We chant the mantra Om, which is a sound current of connectedness. We'll chant it three times. And begin by taking a nice, full, in-breath. Let yourself be aware of the breath and intentionally extending the breath. So it's a long, slow in-breath. You might even count to five. And a matched, slow out breath, again, counting to five. Breathing in, counting to five. Breathing out, counting to five. And if you need to

make it shorter or longer. Either way it's fine, just extend it beyond your normal breath, continuing this matched in-breath and out-breath. As you breathe, you might sense if you're frowning and bring a very slight smile to the mouth. Staying with the breath, sensing with the in-breath that you can open and receive even in a cellular way and with the out-breath, a letting go. Nice, long in-breath. Slow, even out-breath. Relaxing with the breath. Opening with the receiving, the in-breath.

Letting go with the out-breath. If you find you've lost track of the breath, no problem. Just gently come back again. Nice, full, deep in-breath. Slow, smooth out-breath. Now, letting go of any... control of the breath. Just relax back and witness the natural breath. Letting the breathing be just as it is naturally. Sensing the quality of presence sits here with that presence,

scanning your body, noticing if there's any places of unnecessary tightness or holding, that you can just gently soften and relax. You might check the area around the eyes and see if you can soften the eyes and let the brow be smooth, letting go of any tension in the jaw. Again, that slight smile at the mouth. Maybe you can let the shoulders relax back and down some. Feel the shoulders from the inside out. Again, softening and see if you can notice the movement of energy, sensations, aliveness, and of tension remains in the shoulders. Sense if you can let it float some in awareness, softening the hands, letting them rest in a very effortless way, an easy way. And when you place the awareness inside them,

noticing the aliveness, tingling, vibrating, perhaps warmth, maybe the feeling of pressure and particular warmth through your hands contact, your legs or touch each other. Let there be an openness at the chest and feel from the inside out the region of the heart. Perhaps you might smile into the heart or imagine and feel the curve of the heart. a smile spreading through the heart. That's not to cover over, but really to make space for what's here.

What's the experience of aliveness in the region of the heart? Relaxing down the torso, the abdominal area, and letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, now this breath, then again, feeling from the inside out, the life in the belly. In a similar way, relaxing and opening down through the pelvic region. And the places of pressure and contact where you're sitting on your cushion or chair, where your hands touch your legs or each other,

contact where your feet touch the floor. And then from the inside out, sensing this whole body as a field of sensation, just feeling simultaneously this energy body all at once. And see how much you can let everything be as it is, pulsing or tinkling, or tinkling, places of noddedness and places of flow, pleasantness and unpleasantness, all arising, moving, passing in this open space of awareness, including the sounds that are here, resting in that awareness that's listening to and feeling the whole moment. Resting in the awareness, it feels the particular stream of the breath,

not controlling anything, completely receptive, as if you could listen to and feel the breath. It's the habit of our mind to get pulled away, get caught in thoughts or memories, planning, worrying, So if you notice you've been drawn away from presence, just gently relax back. No need to try to focus on the breath or in anything particular. Really, the pathway is to re-relax.

See if you can re-relax the body wherever there's obvious tightness. Relax open the mind, aware of and including sounds. relax back into that awareness that's listening to and feeling moment-to-moment experience. And sensing that presence is the most intimate expression of who you are, awake and relaxed, at home, in natural awareness. These last few moments, letting go again of thoughts, of anything that takes you away from this heerness right here, letting go into the aliveness that's here, relaxed and awake as a way of closing this practice.

I'd like to invite you to explore the transition if your eyes are closed to opening your eyes now. Still meditative, still relaxed and present. Just opening your eyes with soft eyes and a kind of receptivity taking in the forms and colors and the life around you, and continuing as you perhaps move your bodies and some of you stand or stretch to sense the possibility of continuing to attend with the relaxed quality of presence, to sensation, sound, each other, and life. Namaste.