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Chapter 1: What is the purpose of this guided meditation?
Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brach Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrach.com, where you can also join our email list.
Now, let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence.
Chapter 2: How can I prepare my body for meditation?
Namaste. Find yourself into a posture that is upright. So you're sitting tall and in a way that can help you to feel alert. And also sitting in a way that's balanced, not leaning to either side, forward or back. And then a way that's relaxed. So while you're holding yourself upright, you're letting whatever can relax, relax.
As you close your eyes and let your attention go inward, you might feel the movement of the breath at your heart.
Chapter 3: What should I focus on during the meditation?
And become aware of whatever you notice in the heart area. And listening inwardly, ask yourself, what really brings me here right now to meditation? What is it I am longing for? What's my deepest intention in meditating? And listen for what feels most sincere. What is it your heart is longing for? What's the quality of presence or way of being in the world that matters to you?
invite you to continue listening and just sense what happens in your body as you listen to the sounds around you including the alarm including other sounds you might detect a listening attention so you're listening into the space around you
Chapter 4: How do I cultivate a listening presence in meditation?
Aware perhaps of the soft sounds in the room. Listening in a global way, letting everything wash through you. see if you can listen not just with your ears but your whole awareness noticing how sounds appear spontaneously and there's nothing to do with listening completely receptive listening to the sounds of these words
the spaces between the sounds receptive, open, listening listening to the most distant sounds you can detect And sensing the vastness of awareness that includes even the most distant sounds. And so with that same listening, receptive attention, You can listen inwardly. Listen to and feel the sensations in the body. Listen to and feel the movement of the breath.
not controlling anything simply resting in that listening presence receiving moment by moment the changing flow of experience you might explore how intimately you can listen to and feel the breath Choosing to attend where the breath is easiest to feel might be the inflow-outflow at the nostrils. Or perhaps it's the rising-falling at the chest.
Or maybe you feel the breath most distinctly a kind of expanding and releasing at the belly. Or maybe you're feeling your whole body breathing even in a cellular way like a balloon that expands, collapses some. that receptivity of listening experiencing the moment-to-moment flow of the breath and notice the possibility of relaxing with the breath
that as the breath comes in, you can open to receive. And as it goes out, there's a relaxing outward, a letting go. A relaxed, receptive, interested attention. Resting with the breath as a raft might rest and move with the waves.
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Chapter 5: What techniques can help me return to presence when distracted?
At some point you might notice the attention has drifted and rather than that receptive listening attention that rests with the breath, the mind is off in thoughts about the future or the past, some commentary. Not a problem. The noticing is part of waking up.
and the pathway back home to presence is a kind of relaxing back reopening the attention from the thought and listening again listening to the real sounds that are coming and going right here instead of the sound bites in the mind, the thoughts re-relax open perhaps letting go a little through the body softening the shoulders a little, letting go there
softening the hands so they rest in a very easily effortlessly relaxed way. Letting the chest be open and the belly soft so the breath is free to go deep into the torso. And resting again in the next in-breath or out-breath with the receptivity of listening, with the intimacy of close-in contact. And as you rest with the breath, notice the quality of presence that's here.
It's a sense of here-ness, a knowing that you're right here in the center of now. It doesn't matter how often the mind drifts, each time there's an awakening from thought and a returning, a gentle shepherding of the attention back to the breath, you're deepening your familiarity with the pathway home. Relax open again.
relaxing through the body to see what wants to let go a little right now relax your heart and then gently arrive again with the inflow and the outflow of the breath Breath is a kind of home base to help you develop a steady presence. And if the breath is in any way difficult, you can rest with sounds, just listening to sounds.
Or you can rest the attention with the sensations in the body, the hands, the feet, rest of the body. the point is to know that you're right here you might sense the quality of here-ness senses awake listening to and feeling your moment-to-moment experience this breath and now this one and again relaxed and alert
a relaxed, receptive attention sensing the quality of here-ness, what's right here these sounds feeling the aliveness in the body and sensing that background of presence and for these last few moments letting everything be just as it is no need to rest in the breath just allowing the life to come and go relaxed and alert
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Chapter 6: How can I extend compassion and care to myself and others?
as a way of ending our meditation together you might feel the quality of presence that's here as heart presence or heart space and by listening to and feeling the area of the heart And sense as you listen inwardly whatever prayer or wish or blessing most resonates to offer to yourself right in these moments. you're offering care from this heart-space to your own human heart.
And sensing this heart-space as boundless, extending in all directions everywhere, feeling all beings as part of your heart and offering your prayer, your wish, for all beings