Tara Brach - Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (2020-09-02)

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (2020-09-02) - When we are in our daily trance, we are often leaning forward, on our way somewhere else. In this meditation we are guided to relax back into the awareness that is always, already here. We explore relaxing back through a body scan, and then with all our senses wide open. With practice we increasingly find our pathway home by relaxing the clench of doings, and resting in what is.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Let's begin our meditation and arrive together. I invite you, if you haven't already done so, to find your posture for sitting. You might close your eyes and make those subtle adjustments so that you're sitting in a way that's upright. alert, and yet it ease, relaxed. And then just allow the settling to happen naturally. One of the most valuable understandings of awakening is that we're not trying to get somewhere.

It's really more of a relaxing back into what's always and already here. So in that spirit, we'll scan through the body a bit and explore this relaxing back. And I invite you to begin with the region of the eyes. Let the eyes be soft. Let the brow be smooth. Our habitual thinking ends up contracting those little micro-muscles around the eyes. So just softening, letting there be a kind of resting. And notice with that, with the softening, the coming to aliveness, a sense of the sensation

and tiggling in the area of the eyes, perhaps the flicker of darkness and light, letting there be a slight smile at the lips. You might feel the inside of the mouth smiling and see if you can relax down to the root of the tongue and letting all the features of your face, the sensation, in the face, just be as it is. Just notice the aliveness that's naturally there. Resting. Aware.

Sense that you can allow the shoulders to fall away from the neck. Let the shoulders be filled with awareness. Notice if there can be a natural dissolving, ice to water, and then water to gas. relaxing and feeling the sensations and energy in the area of the shoulders. Let the hands rest in an easy and effortless way. And consciously soften the hands. And now soften again.

And see if you can feel from the inside out the play of sensation, perhaps tingling or vibrating, noticing how the more you relax, and soften, the more intimately you can feel the aliveness. Let yourself feel an openness at the chest, feeling directly into the region of the heart. And see if you can relax and breathe with the experience of your heart, a soft awareness, relaxing with what's here. Scanning down, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. this breath and now this one and again awakening awareness deep in the torso letting the

belly stay soft and noticing as you relax the whole abdominal area how much aliveness you can feel intimately directly letting the awareness fill the whole pelvic region, relaxing with the aliveness there, letting yourself become aware of the legs, the length, the volume, aware of where your feet contact, the floor, the warmth, the pressure, letting the awareness fill the feet, relaxing and feeling the energy, the sensations there. the possibility of widening the lens, so you can simultaneously feel the whole body, this energy body, this field of sensation, and let everything happen, tightness and flow, tingling, vibrating, warmth, coolness, and see how fully you can relax with the changing flow, widening the lens,

of awareness even further, including sound. So there's a relaxing back into the awareness that's listening to and feeling the whole moment. By now you might have noticed the attention drifting into thoughts, future, the past, commentary. Let that be an opportunity to practice relaxing back, to deepen this pathway of relaxing back, back into awareness, moving from the thoughts to perhaps listening, seeing what might want to let go a little bit more in your body, relaxing your heart, relaxing back again into the awareness that's listening to and feeling the moment. So there's a relaxing with the breath, relaxing with the sounds, relaxing with sensations,

exploring how fully you can relax with this changing river of experience, gently noticing where your attention is, and if the mind is drifted. Exploring again, this pausing and then simply relaxing back into the awareness that's always here, listening, listening to and feeling the changing flow, no need to control anything or to resist anything, noticing that when there's a relaxing with what's moving through, there's the freedom of presence, there's a mystery that's right here in the moments that we let go and rest in awareness. And for these last few moments, relaxing back out of thoughts

and sensing how deeply you can relax with the changing flow of life, letting life be just as it is moment to moment. You might ask yourself, when there's no controlling, no doing, no resisting what is here and then just rest in the mystery

that you discover