Chapter 1: What is the purpose of this meditation session?
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. Namaste.
Chapter 2: How can I set my deepest intention for meditation?
You might close your eyes, let your attention go inward. Feel the movement of the breath. And see if you can sense and imagine and feel the breath at the heart as if you're breathing into the heart and out of the heart. We begin with a reflection on the question What is my deepest intention? Right this moment, what's my deepest intention for being here, for practicing meditation?
Chapter 3: What techniques can I use to relax and soften during meditation?
You might even think of it in a broad way, your intention in your life, as if you were at the end of your life looking back, what would matter? What's the quality of heart, of presence you want to bring to the world? Just reflecting and sensing what you feel most sincere about. sitting still and feeling the aliveness that's right here in the stillness.
Gently scanning the body with your awareness and seeing what might want to let go a little right now. Where is your tension that, when you meet it with awareness, can relax, soften?
Chapter 4: How can I become aware of tension in my body?
You might want to bring your attention to the region of the eyes. Let the eyes soften. Sensing a smile lifting up the corners, the outside corners of the eyes. Letting the flesh around the eyes be relaxed, the brows smooth. See if you can notice the tingling and vibrating in that region as you relax and soften. You might sense a slight smile at the mouth. Let the jaws be unhinged.
Letting the tongue fill lower palate. Relax down to the root of the tongue.
Chapter 5: What is the significance of breathing in meditation?
Feeling the gums, the teeth, the lips. Opening to the whole world of sensation in the region of the mouth. Letting the shoulders fall away from the neck, relaxing them back and down some. And sense your awareness filling the shoulders so you can feel from the inside out softening, relaxing. And perhaps you can sense the shift from ice to water kind of melting inside the shoulders. Ice to water.
And then water to gas. Again, as you soften aware of the aliveness that you can perceive, it's the movement of energy. Let the hands rest in a very easy, effortless way. And softening the hands. And try softening again. And feel from the inside.
Chapter 6: How can I cultivate awareness of sensations during meditation?
Can you notice the tingling, the vibrating, the pulsing? places of pressure, warmth where your hands contact your legs or each other. Just as a cup can be filled with water, this whole body is filled with awareness. I sense an openness of the chest. I'm feeling inside the chest from the inside out the region of the heart. What do you notice there?
Let's smile into the heart, visualizing and sensing a smile spreading through the chest. Creating the space for whatever's here to express. Pulsing, tightness, pressure, flow. scanning through the belly area, softening the belly. And then letting this next breath be received in that softening belly, this breath. And then again.
So you can feel the aliveness deep in the torso, this breathing body. Still a slight smile at the mouth. The hands are soft. Opening the attention and awareness into the pelvic region. And sensing the awareness filling that area. And feel from the inside out the dance of sensation.
Becoming aware of the legs, letting the awareness fill the legs so you can sense the length and the volume, the weight. Right down into the feet. Can you sense the tingling and vibrating? It fills the feet, toes. then if you widen the lens of perception to feel this whole body now as a field of sensation, all at once, not stopping anything, not opposing or controlling anything,
Including sound in this field of aliveness. Perhaps the close-in sounds. More distance. Sensing the vastness of awareness that can include even the most distant sound. The awareness that's listening to and feeling this changing flow of experience. Sounds and sensations move like waves.
In the background that great sea of awareness that includes and is aware of what appears and dissolves moment to moment. when the mind drifts into thought forms, which it inevitably does. The practice is when we notice to relax back, opening the attention again, noticing the changing waves that are right here, the sounds, the sensations that live through this body.
You might notice the inflow and outflow of the breath. Know that you're here, right here. The awareness that's listening to and feeling the changing flow. And if something arises, it's difficult to sense how that awareness can be infinitely tender, kind,
keeping it simple when the mind moves off into thoughts, relaxing back to the senses, sound, sensation, into the sea of awareness that's including the changing waves. your own presence, which is home.
waking up from thoughts relaxing back into the senses with thoughts which are a mental contraction come physical tightness so you might re-soften the eyes slight smile at the mouth relaxing the shoulders softening the hands and smiling into the heart, relaxing the heart. You might let your breath come to the area of the heart. feeling that heart space or presence that's here.
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