Tara Brach - Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence - When we are stressed, our body and mind contract, and energetically we resist the life in the present moment. This meditation helps de-condition the stress reaction by guiding us to relax open from thoughts, relax physical tension, and gently relax back over and over into living presence.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Gently bring your attention to your breath. Just take a moment to collect and settle. As part of arriving to remind yourself of what matters to you, what brings you to practice. to mindfulness practice, sensing your own sincerity, what your intention is for being here. We truly arrive in presence by relaxing back.

Relaxing back. There's such a forward momentum to our mind and our energy. I'd like to invite you to sense the possibility of relaxing back by scanning through your body and just sense what place in you wants to let go a little right now. Where is there tightness or tension that might naturally release? So you can relax back into more openness, ease. As you scan, you might sense the shoulders because that's a very habitual place of tensing

when we're on our way somewhere else. and just sense that there can be a natural way of letting whatever knots or tightness that's there float in awareness. Untangle, ice to water, water to gas, relaxing back. You might consciously soften the hands and let those micro-muscles of tightness just soften and open so you can relax back from the instant inside out and feel the aliveness and space inside the hands.

Let there be an openness to the chest. It's feeling the heart area, softening, relaxing. So whatever tension or anxiety is there can be held in a larger space. You can relax back and inhabit a more spacious presence in that region, loosening, softening in the belly, widening the lens and sensing this whole body, this energy body, this field of sensation, relaxing back and letting everything happen just as it is,

let the senses be awake so that in this relaxed openness you include the sounds, the changing sensations, relaxing back and just listening to and feeling the whole moment. You'll notice before you, too long that the mind re-tightens, re-contracts into thought forms. And that's just an invitation to relax back again. Relax open the attention. Listen to the sounds that are here. You can re-relax in the body when you notice tightness, softening the shoulders, feel the life that's there,

softening the hands, relaxing the heart, relaxing back to rest in the awareness that includes this whole changing flow of sound and sensation, feeling, emotion, relaxing back again and again into presence. No matter how far the mind has wandered, you can relax back in any moment. This is true in your meditation practice and through daily life. Just to notice where you've been and re-relax. Reopen the attention to the aliveness that's right here, moving from the head to the heart, listening, feeling the moment.

Explore for yourself what it means to relax back into reality, into presence. See if it's possible in this process of relaxing back. I was bringing a very gentle, kind quality of heart to the life that's here.