Tara Brach - Meditation - Sitting Like a Mountain (2017-02-15)

Episode Date: February 16, 2017

Meditation - Sitting Like a Mountain (2017-02-15) - Meditation can empower us as we learn to access our potential for stability, strength and openness. This meditation calls on the image of a mountain as we awaken our body and mind to a full, vibrant presence. Meditation closes with a metta prayer. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara  

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. In the stillness, taking some moments to scan through your body and see if there's any part of your body that wants to let go a little right now. Just naturally release, soften, be at ease. We awaken attention through the body. with a simple scanning

and you might just start with the top of the head and feel the skull and the scalp just feel whatever tingling or vibrating you feel there brow be smooth and soften the eyes let the eyes be receptive like balls orbs floating in a pool of water it can help to sense a smile spreading through the eyes lifting the corners, the outer corners.

You sense if there's light or energy or aliveness in the area of the brow as you soften, letting the jaw be unhinged, the tongue filling the lower jaw, the root of the tongue relaxed. You might sense a slight smile at the mouth. And just feel the sensations and aliveness that fill the area of the mouth.

You can visualize and feel a... smile at the throat, feel the breath gently at the throat, let there be a loosening and a softening there and smiling into the heart, sensing a smile spread through the heart area. That's not to cover over anything but rather to create a space that you can actually feel what's there. You visualize and the felt sense of a smile. Just to notice the aliveness, tingling, energy in the air, of the heart and I sense that energy and openness spreading outward, radiating outward, so that even the shoulders are included, that you can relax the shoulders back and down some.

Feel the shoulders from the inside out, you might sense the movement or shift from ice to water kind of melting on the inside, ice to water. to gas, loosening loosely, feeling this space and aliveness and movement energetically, space, aliveness, and movement. Energetically inside the shoulders, let the hands rest in a very easy way, effortless, and softening the hands. And again, from the inside out, the felt sense of energy, sense how awareness is perceiving, tingling or vibrating from the inside out, and sensing an openness at the chest and feeling from within the heart as if you could be in the interior of your heart, let that area be filled with awareness, letting the awareness receive sensation

in the heart area, loosening and softening the belly. Let this, next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath and now this one and again, filling the energy in aliveness deep in the torso. You can visualize and have the felt sense of a smile spreading through the naval area and that helps to open to the energy that's actually there. You can bring that same visualization and felt sense of a smile and spread through the pelvic region. Let the awareness fill the pelvic region. I'm just receiving the aliveness there. The pressure and warmth where you're sitting on a cushion

or chair, feeling where the base of the spine really connects with the earth. I'm just sensing the aliveness and energy right down at the base of the spine. You might imagine and sense the energies of the earth flowing into you. You can imagine and sense the curve of a smile at the base of the spine, opening to that energy. Letting that energy flow up again, filling the pelvic region with awareness and aliveness, feeling the navel, opening that area, sometimes described as the dantian, it's kind of an energy vortex filling with energy and aliveness. letting that energy and aliveness flow up and fill the heart, illuminate, bring alive that whole

beautiful heart chakra, that energy center that's there, flowing up to the throat, feeling the brow alive, light illuminated, right through the top of the head, the whole flow of energy, moving up, out like a fountain, and flowing again down, the brow, throat, heart, navel. I'm just centering yourself at the navel, feeling the breath, feeling the aliveness that's there. You're sitting like a mountain, strength and steadiness and stability. of the liveliness, open and flowing, fully here, right here. From this stable, strong presence

right here that you can awaken all the senses, in the full range of bodily aliveness, vibrating, tingling, perhaps the flicker of light and shadow at the eyelids, open and receptive to the space around you, the sense or fragrances, and the sounds, the sounds, wash through you. If the mind gets distracted, goes off into thoughts of the past or the future, gently come back to the senses, the sounds, relaxing the body again and feeling the whole realm of bodily sensations as you sit on this earth like a mountain with that power and grace and stability and open to this changing life. Is yourself, am I dreaming right now?

Is this a thinking trance or am I here? And if the mind has drifted as it quite naturally does, to gently relax back, you might feel the contact points where your body is sitting on the cushion or chair, where your hands touch your legs or each other, feet on the floor, feeling the warmth and pressure of being connected to this earth, sense of gravity and the aliveness that lives through this form, this body,

this whole dance of sensation. Notice the difference between being here and this aliveness and any thought that might be in the mind movie, that's running. Sitting like a mountain, stable, strong, with this open presence that can witness and experience this changing life. The breeze and the light,

the changing weather, there's room for everything. As a way of closing, to gently bring the attention to the breath and the heart, is you're breathing and feeling your heart and as you do you might again sense a smile at the eyes a slight smile at the mouth and smiling into your heart and sensing for a moment how

your heart is experiencing life right now how is this human heart experiencing the different currents of your life right now and it's a sense a bit where the vulnerability or tenderness is fears, the hopes, and to offer some wish or blessing to your own heart, whatever most resonates in this moment. And it helps you to just gently put your hand on your heart.

So there's a real connecting, a real sense of offering care inwardly. Please explore that. Sensing the awareness and care that you're offering your own heart is really being, your true heart space that includes all beings. So we close together, feeling our hearts, holding all beings everywhere. May all beings everywhere be filled with loving presence, held in loving presence. May all beings everywhere touch a great and natural peace. May all beings be happy, know the joy of being alive.

May all beings everywhere awaken and be free. Namaste.