transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] 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. We awaken to a full presence most directly by relaxing and waking up through the body. You might scan through your body and just sense if there is areas of obvious tightness or tension. See what wants to let go or relax a bit right now. It's helpful to soften the eyes and let the brow be smooth. You might sense a half-smile at the mouth, relaxing the tongue right at the root, letting the tongue rest in the lower palate easily. Filling the shoulders, letting the shoulders fall away from the neck. And just relaxing a bit from the inside out. It can help to imagine a felt sense of melting. Ice to water. Water to gas. Let the hands rest in a very easy, effortless way. And you might experiment with softening the hands and then just feeling them from the inside out so you can sense the aliveness there. See if you notice the tingling, the vibrating. Let there be an openness to the chest and feeling the heart area from the inside out. Perhaps you can feel the breath at the heart. And just relaxed attention noticing the sensations and aliveness in the heart. Scanning down and feeling the abdominal area, loosening, relaxing. See if you can let this next in-breath be received in a softening belly. This breath. And now this one. And again. Feeling the sensations in the belly, the aliveness there. Continuing to scan down, feeling the pelvic region from the inside out, sense of energy and aliveness there. You might sense the length and the volume of your legs. Bringing the awareness inside the feet, feeling the sensations inside the feet, tingling, vibrating. You might explore opening the attention to feel simultaneously all the sensations in this living body. And just let everything happen, not opposing or resisting. This whole dance of changing sensations, tingling, vibrating, perhaps heat or cool, tightness or flow, just letting it all be as it is. Discovering in the midst of these sensations the sensations of the breath wherever you feel it most predominant. Perhaps it's the inflow, outflow at the nostrils, the rising, falling at the chest, maybe it's that inflating and settling at the belly. Or for some, it's the sense of the whole body breathing, this opening, expanding, contracting, even in a cellular way. Wherever you are resting with the breath, you can let the breath be a kind of home base or anchor for your attention. Let the breath help to stabilize the attention so that you know you are here. And for those who find it difficult to rest with the breath, you might feel the field of bodily sensations as your home base. Or for others, perhaps, the sounds that are here. We choose a home base in our sensory awareness so that when the mind drifts, as it naturally will do, you will notice it more quickly and have a way to gently relax back to what is right here again. That's kind of a friendly portal to presence. Letting your breath or your home base be in the foreground. Relaxing with the inflow, relaxing with the outflow. Just noticing what it's like moment to moment. We continue with the breath or other home base in the foreground unless some other strong experience arises that's calling our attention. You might be with the breath but feel some strong pressure or squeeze or stabbing or tingling in some part of your body. And in those moments we let go of the breath or our primary anchor and open to whatever is presenting itself. Feel it directly. Notice what it's like. Notice how it changes. And when it's no longer compelling, we come back to resting again in the movement of the breath or our chosen anchor. In the same way, you might have a strong emotion come up, feeling of fear, excitement, happiness, sorrow, and again, to let go of the breath as your primary focus and open to include what arises. The waves of emotion come through, feel it, as sensations, a constellation of sensations in your body. If it feels difficult to experience, bring real kindness so that you are energetically saying yes to the waves that are moving through you. And when they no longer call the attention, again we come back to rest in the inflow and outflow of the breath or whatever anchor we have chosen. In this way, the breath serves as a way of helping us to remember to be here, and yet we open to whatever part of life is expressing with a receptivity, an interest and a kindness, coming back to the breath when nothing is strong or predominant. A relaxed, steady attention, seeing clearly what's happening moment to moment, and regarding experience with interest, with kindness. The moments of noticing that the mind has drifted are really moments of awakening. This is when you have the choice to gently relax back into presence, landing again with the in-breath or out-breath or with your primary anchor of sensations or sounds and know that you are here. Seeing clearly the moment-to-moment experience regarding what arises and passes with a gentle, open presence.