Tara Brach

Writing and Haiku as Spiritual Practice (Tara Brach Interviews Natalie Goldberg) -

Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness - This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being, and can be held with tenderness and love (remastered favorite from the archives).

The Power of Spiritual Hope (2021-07-21) - The openness to possibility is essential on a path of awakening and freedom. In this talk we explore what makes up mature or spiritual hope, and how two meditation practices of presence can nourish our hope.

Meditation: Nourishing Happiness with RAIN - While RAIN is regularly used for untangling suffering, it is also a powerful tool for deepening our access to positive states like happiness, gratitude, wonder and love. This meditation guides us in nourishing the goodness that is an intrinsic part of living and essential in realizing our full aliveness. The practice ends with a poem by Naomi Shahib Nye.

Mindful Leadership: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Michelle Maldonado (2021-07-14) - The principles of mindful leadership are relevant for all of us—they bring out the best of who we are in our work, with our family, with our friends. Especially in these times of mistrust and dividedness, our world desperately needs each of us to cultivate the qualities of focus, presence, care, respect, clarity, and curiosity that mark a true leader. Michelle Maldonado is a brilliant teacher of mindful leadership, and she embodies the compassion and skillfulness she invites forward in others.

Meditation: Living Presence – with Body Scan (2021-07-15) - A key pathway to full presence is awakening through the body. This meditation guides us through a body scan, relaxing and receiving the play of sensations. We then deepen attention to the breath, and rest with the rhythmic waves of breathing, experiencing the background of the whole domain of physical aliveness.

Three Core Reminders for Spiritual Practice - This talk explores three powerful ways you can direct your attention when you find yourself emotionally stuck: Wake up from thoughts; feel your feelings and remember love. We explore both the habits blocking these basic movements toward freedom, and what nourishes them. Together they can serve to open your mind, awaken aliveness and heal your heart.

Meditation: Relaxed and Alert (2021-07-07) - This meditation begins with a period of relaxing and collecting our attention with intentional long deep breathing. We then deepen embodied presence, and widen to the awareness that includes sounds, sensations, feelings, breath, and all experience. When the mind drifts from this open, awake awareness, we gently return, re-relaxing and resting in an easeful, alert presence. Recorded at Tara's Wednesday night class, the meditation includes chanting of OM's and ends with a sense of melting into community.

Trusting the Gold: A Conversation - Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust - In this interview-style conversation, Jonathan asks Tara questions about key themes in her new book, Trusting the Gold. They include their own relationships and ways we work with our inner life and others, in cultivating the capacity to see basic goodness and realizing a mature and liberating quality of trust.

Heart Meditation: Taking in the Goodness (2021-06-30) - Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, "Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness." This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.

Shifting from Limbic to Liberating Intention - Becoming conscious of our intentions is the first step to truly aligning our life with our heart. This talk explores identifying when we are being driven by grasping and fear, and ways we can bring compassion to unmet needs and discover the deeper longing – the liberating intention – that guides us to freedom.

Meditation: The Heartspace of Gratitude - When gratitude for our life arises, we enter the sacred space of an open heart. This meditation guides us in arriving in presence and awakening the blessings of gratitude.

Fierce Self-Compassion - A conversation between Tara Brach and Kristin Neff - Kristin Neff is a pioneer in self-compassion research and a leader in bringing practices of self-compassion alive in our world. This conversation is on her latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion, which helps women awaken both receptive and active dimensions of compassion - tenderness and fierceness.

Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome (2021-06-16) - This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence.

Trusting the Gold - A Celebration of Tara's New Book, with special guest, Rick Hanson - The essence of the spiritual path is realizing, trusting and living from our natural awareness and love. This talk explores the two key pathways that help us awaken from the trance of identifying as a limited, separate self. It includes several guided meditations and a period of questions and response.

Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts (2021-06-09) - We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.

Meditation: Blessings of Love - A blessing is whatever reminds us of the sacred loving presence that shines through all of us. The image of receiving a kiss on the brow, and offering one, is suggested as a powerful channel for the blessings that awaken our heart.

Part 2 - Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit (2021-06-02) - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.

Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness (2021-06-02) - Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.

Part 1 - Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.

Meditation: Embodied Spirit - Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.

John O'Donahue writes, "We are so busy managing our lives, we forget this great mystery we are involved in." This talk looks at the ways we pull away from the mystery and the path of "beginner's mind" that enables us to encounter this living world with freshness, courage and wonder (Tara chose this talk to share from the archives).

Meditation: Yes to Life (2021-05-19) - In the moments we release all resistance, we relax open to inhabit the fullness of our Being. This meditation guides us to an embodied, openhearted presence that welcomes the changing flow of life.

Bridging the Divide: Learning to Tend and Befriend - One of the great sufferings facing us is the growing divide between humans with different views, different realities. This talk looks at several levels of divides—being at war with ourselves, creating separation in our personal relationships, and societal divides. We then reflect on how we can evolve consciousness from the trance of "Fight, Flight, Freeze" to the wholeness that arises with "Tend and Befriend."

Meditation: Being Here for Life (2021-05-08) - It's easy to race through our seasons and miss the mystery and preciousness of unfolding moments. This meditation invites us into an embodied, openhearted presence and includes a poem by Pat Schneider called "Instructions for the Journey."

Three Dimensions of Conscious Prayer - Prayer can be a creative, vibrant and infinitely tender part of our spiritual awakening. This talk explores the dimensions of embodied presence, sincere expression and silence that bring transformational power to our prayers.

Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence (2021-05-05) - We resist reality by tensing our body and contracting into thoughts. This meditation guides us into letting go of resistance by surrendering over and over into the aliveness and presence that is right here.

Méditation: Rencontrer la colère avec conscience - (de-TaraBrach-traduite-par-Dominique-Fugère) - Lorsque notre colère est contenue avec conscience, elle peut être une force, une énergie, pour répondre avec sagesse aux situations difficiles de la vie. Cette méditation nous guide pour aller à la rencontre de la colère personnelle et\ou sociale qui nous habite, avec l'aide de RAIN, l'acronyme du Reconnaître, Autoriser, Investiguer et Nourrir. Cette méditation est de Tara Brach. Elle est traduite et dite avec sa permission par Dominique Fugère (Québec, Canada).

Namaste: Honoring the Light in All Beings - The ritual of Namaste - bowing to the sacred in ourselves and others - helps us live from the loving awareness that is our true nature. This talk looks at how we suffer because we forget this basic goodness, and explores the pathways of remembering that carry us home.

Meditation: From Head to Full Being (2021-04-28) - When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being.

Belonging to the Earth (2021-04-21) - As a species, forgetting our belonging to our larger body of Earth is causing suffering for this entire living web. In this talk we look at what causes and sustains this trance of forgetting. We then explore the ways we each can awaken a sense of loving connectedness and active caring toward our natural world.

Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness (2021-04-21) - Our tension is a way of defending against the aliveness that is here and now. This meditation guides us in relaxing tension, awakening our senses and discovering the vitality and presence that express our natural being.

"Make Love of Your Self Perfect" - retreat talk (2021-04-14) - Like a dense fog, chronic self -judgment blocks the light of our true nature. This talk explores the challenges to loving the life within us, and the pathways of practice that lead to holding our own being and all life in a boundless tender heart (a talk from the IMCW Spring 2021 online weeklong silent retreat).

Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath (2021-04-14) - This guided practice has a short period of relaxing the body, and establishes the breath as a home base for attention. We practice arriving again and again, deepening the pathway of homecoming. The meditation ends with lovingkindness for ourselves and our world.

Radical Self-Honesty: The Joy of Getting Real - Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. This talk explores ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being that enables us to live with spontaneity, confidence, wisdom and love (a favorite from the archives). A quote by Elizabeth Lessor from the talk: "My prayer to god every day: Remove the veils so I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears."

Meditation: Relaxing into Living Presence (2021-04-07) - This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.

Part 2 - Fear of Aging: Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World (2021-03-31) - While it's natural to have fears of what's ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence (2021-03-31) - When we are stressed, our body and mind contract, and energetically we resist the life in the present moment. This meditation helps de-condition the stress reaction by guiding us to relax open from thoughts, relax physical tension, and gently relax back over and over into living presence.

Transforming Two Fears - FOF and FOMO (2021-03-24) - There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential - fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness.

Meditation: Embodying Loving Awareness (2021-03-24) - Love is often abstract, and not fully alive. In this practice, with the supportive image and felt sense of a smile, we are guided to awaken loving in our body, mind and whole being.

Fear of Aging - Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World – Part 1 (2021-03-17) - While it's natural to have fears of what's ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us. NOTE: The quoted prayer "And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well" is from 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, in her work "Revelations of Divine Love."

Meditation: A Kind and Allowing Presence (2021-03-17) - When we're stressed our hearts tighten and we try to control our life. This meditation guides us to relax the controlling and discover the open, tender awareness that allows life to be as it is.

The Power of Deep Listening - Part 2 (2012-03-10) - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It's what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening (2021-03-10) - Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem "lost" by David Wagoner.

The Power of Deep Listening - Part 1 (2021-03-03) - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It's what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Aliveness and Presence (2021-03-03) - This meditation guides us to wake up our senses and full aliveness through a body scan, and then to rest in the formless presence that is aware of this changing dance of life. We close with a poem by Robert Hall.

Namaste: Seeing the Truth of Who We Are (2021-02-24) - A gift of evolving consciousness is the capacity to recognize and honor the sacred awareness that lives through our own and all beings. This capacity is blocked by our identification with our "mask" or ego self, and not seeing past other people's masks. In this talk we reflect together on some key filters of superior/inferior and good/bad that shape the trance of a narrowed identity, and then explore how mindfulness and kindness free us to inhabit the vastness of our natural awareness. We close with tasting the possibility of bringing the spirit of Namaste to ourselves, others and all beings.

Meditation: Continuous Space Suffused with Awareness (2021-02-24) - By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.

Awakening Our Body's Awareness – Part 2 (2021-02-17) - Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.

Meditation: A Welcoming Heartspace (2021-02-17) - Our pathway to peace and happiness is through opening, with tenderness, to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation guides us first to be awake in our body and senses, and then to include the changing flow of life in a spacious, kind heart. We close with a short verse from poet Dorothy Hunt