Tara Brach - Meditation: Relaxing, Breathing, Opening (2015-08-05)

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

Meditation: Relaxing, Breathing, Opening (2015-08-05) Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Greetings. I'm Tara Brock and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the talks and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To make a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org. Thank you. Let your attention gently scan through your body and just notice if there's any part of your body that might want to relax a little more, let go a little more. You might sense that you can let go and soften a little on the shoulders. Let the hands rest in an easy, effortless way. Softening the hands,

letting the chest be open, and the belly relaxed, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one. And again, contact points, the places of pressure or warmth, where you're sitting on your cushion or chair, where your hands contact, your legs or each other. The feet touch the floor and then widening the attention.

So you can feel this whole body, this energy body, as a dance of sensation, relaxing with a moment to moment experience of aliveness. See if you can feel this whole energy body simultaneously, a field of aliveness, discovering in the midst of this field of aliveness the simple movement of the breath, the inflow and outflow of the breath, noticing where the breath is most easy to detect, perhaps where the breath feels most pleasant. So you might gently rest. your attention with the inflow outflow at the nostrils, perhaps feeling a coolness as the breath comes in the tip of the nostrils. Are for some the rising, falling of the chest, expanding and settling at the abdomen.

Or maybe you're feeling your whole body breathing in a cellular way that like a balloon, just an opening, opening, inflating and deflating, settling, settling. For some, the most direct, notable way to feel the breath is by gently putting a hand on the belly and to feel the expanding and deflating of the belly and let that be an anchor a way to stay right here with this changing breath. So feel free to explore that. When we let the breath be a home base, we're not controlling our attention.

It's not a striving, rather it's a receptivity. Moment to moment receiving the sensations of this breath with a soft, close-in attention, seeing how much you can relax and simply notice what the breath feels like, moment to moment. You might notice if the in-breath, is longer than the out breath. And if there's a pause in between,

not controlling the breath. It's letting yourself be breath. At some point you'll realize that your mind has gone somewhere else. And the key to deepening practice is to realize that and not add on any judgment, but rather pause, Just invite yourself back, starting completely fresh, a gentle landing again on this next in-breath or out-breath, rising breath or falling breath.

See if you can feel the breath with your whole body's awareness. Just this moment, the in-flow and outflow. Continuing to have that life breath in the foreground, you might also sense in the the background, the whole play of bodily sensations, the sounds around you, letting the breath be your home base and anchor, but if some other strong experience calls your attention, perhaps you find there's some anxiety that's here or some unpleasant sensation in the body, or perhaps a real wave of excitement, happiness, to let go of the breath, let it recede

and let whatever's predominant be here, saying yes to the life that's arising, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, including what's here with a friendly and interested attention. And when it no longer calls your attention, then gently arriving again, in the breath, resting the attention with the movement of the breath. Notice where your attention is right now.

And if it's been drifting in virtual reality and thoughts, then just to sense this possibility of choosing presence, of relaxing back again, right here, relaxing with the breath, letting the senses be open and awake. the difference between thinking, being inside a thought and the vividness and realness of what's right here, moment to moment. We'll close the meditation by feeling your heart and feeling this life breath at your heart so that as you breathe in, your heart can be nourished by the energy and a lot of aliveness that's around you. Let yourself be touched by this life and as you breathe out

sensing, letting go into that heart space that's vast beyond words, letting go into the openness and tenderness of your true being.