Tara Brach

Radical Compassion - Part 1 (retreat talk) (2017-04-30) - Compassion is the medicine we most need as individuals and a species to heal suffering and free our spirits. The essence of compassion for ourselves and others - what I call Radical Compassion - has three key elements: it is an embodied experience (a felt sense of tenderness), it is inclusive all beings, and it naturally moves us to act from a caring heart. This two-part talk explores the alchemy of Radical Compassion and guides us in awakening this intrinsic expression of our evolutionary potential. 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

Meditation: Breathing Our Way to Peace and Freedom (2017-05-10) - This meditation guides us in collecting attention with an intentional long deep breath, and awakening a full relaxed presence as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm. Resting fully in this presence is the gateway to deep peace and inner freedom. 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

Relaxing the Over-Controller - Part 2 (2017-05-03) (retreat talk) - We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling our experience. These two talks look at the emergence of the fear based "over-controller," and explore a wise way of witnessing the suffering that comes with over-controlling, and awareness practices that naturally relax and awaken us to our whole and natural Being. 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

Meditation: Know That You're Here, Right Here (2017-04-29) - Given the first morning of the 2017 IMCW Spring Retreat, this meditation guides you through a body scan, opens to sounds, then expands to the body as a field of sensation. With no closing bells, it can serve as a way to start a longer meditation sit, or to start your journey for the day.

Relaxing the Over-Controller - Part 1 (2017-04-26) - We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling our experience. These two talks look at the emergence of the fear based "over-controller," and explore a wise way of witnessing the suffering that comes with over-controlling, and awareness practices that naturally relax and awaken us to our whole and natural Being. 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

Meditation: The Center of Now (2017-04-26) - This meditation awakens our senses and then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Ask the Friend for Love - Prayer, when cultivated consciously, energizes and guides us on the spiritual path. This talk investigates the difference between wanting, with its narrow fixation, and the prayer that arises out of our deep heart's longing. We explore how living prayer, the prayer that arises from consciously inhabiting longing, can carry us home to loving presence. As John O'Donahue writes, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. 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

Meditation: The Heartspace That is Home - "No matter how far you've wandered, this heartspace - this awake tender awareness - is only a half-breath of remembrance away." This meditation awakens attention to the space of awareness. It is a favorite from 2015. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Sure Heart's Release - (a favorite from 2015) - The pathway to our awakened heart includes deep recognition of our barriers to love, and as we open, the courage to express our love. This talk includes a reflection and practice that can support us in inhabiting our full capacity for loving presence. 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

Guided Heart Meditation: Loving Presence - This meditation introduces the loving-kindness (metta) heart practice. After brief instruction, it begins with scanning the body, filling it gradually with the image of a smile. The meditation continues with a loving-kindness practice - sensing loving presence of someone easy to love, our own being, then offering care to others. (from 2015 fall IMCW weeklong silent retreat)

Soul Recognition: The Practice of Namaste (2017-04-05) - In our daily trance we experience ourselves and others through a filter of wants, fears, stories and beliefs. Drawing on an engaging story from the legends of King Arthur, this talk explores how we can see past this conditioning by learning to see - in ourselves and others - vulnerability, goodness and awareness itself. Sometimes called "soul recognition," this seeing is the essence of "Namaste" - realizing and honoring the sacredness that shines through all beings. 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

Meditation: Awakening through the Inner Body (2017-04-05) - When we attune to the inner body, we discover a field of energy and aliveness that is the portal to pure presence. This meditation guides our attention to the inner body, opens to the play of sound and invites us to rest in the awake awareness that includes and is the grounds of this living world. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Healing Addiction: De-conditioning the Hungry Ghosts (2017-03-22) - This talk examines the suffering that arises when due to unmet needs for love and safety, our desire becomes narrowed and fixated on substitute gratifications. We then explore how we can bring mindfulness and self-compassion to the habits of obsessing, over-consuming and hurting ourselves and others that keep us from true happiness, connectedness and peace. 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

Meditation: Loving Presence - with smile body scan (2017-03-29) - This guided meditation helps cultivate the heartspace that can hold our life with tenderness and grace. We begin by using the image and felt sense of a smile in a body scan, and then open to the spacious presence that includes the changing moment to moment flow of experience. The meditation closes with a few minutes of offering loving blessings to our inner life, dear ones in need and all beings. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Taking "The Exquisite Risk": An Undefended Heart (2017-03-22) - Poet Mark Nepo uses the phrase "exquisite risk" to describe our willingness to be fully alive, open, available, living true to our heart. This talk explores the challenges and blessings of taking the exquisite risk, both in becoming more intimate with our inner life, and in engaging with others from full authenticity. 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

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Full Presence (2017-03-22) - This guided practice begins with a conscious breath that relaxes the body and mind, and then a body scan to awaken to the aliveness of the present moment. We then open into the natural awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, feelings and sensations, and practice "relaxing back" when the mind gets lost in thought. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease when you join her email list.

Reflection - The Compass of Our Heart (2017-03-15) - When we are remembering our deepest intention in any situation, our lives become aligned, and we can act with grace, compassion and wisdom. These reflections will help you remember your intention when caught in conflict, and in a larger way, allow the truth of impermanence to carry you into the very source of longing - loving awareness itself. NOTE: from the end of "Realizing Your Deepest Desires" - full talk podcasted and at: https://www.tarabrach.com/realizing-deepest-desires/. 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

Realizing Your Deepest Desires (2017-03-15) - This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion, grasping and conflict, so that our aspiration becomes a compass of the heart that can guide us in living with wisdom and compassion. 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

Meditation - Letting Thought Clouds Come and Go (2017-03-15) - This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.

Healing Trauma: The Light Shines Through the Broken Places (2017-03-08) - Most of us have encountered trauma either in our own direct experience or with someone in our immediate circle. This talk examines the shame and suffering that arise from trauma and how meditation practices can support a path to full spiritual healing. We focus on practices that help us access a sense of love and safety, and then increase our capacity to bring presence to the unprocessed, unlived life in the body. (Note: For many who suffer from PTSD, therapy is invaluable and these practices are not considered as a substitute.) 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

Meditation: Getting Lost and Coming Back Here (2017-03-08) - This meditation establishes a sense of presence, of being Here, through a body scan and awakening the senses. We then notice when we're lost and relax back into the wakeful stillness - the Hereness - that is our true home. Our practice concludes with the beautiful poem "Lost" by David Wagoner. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Listening to the Song - Part 2 (2017-03-01) - Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges. In this two-part series we examine the blocks to listening and the practices that cultivate this essential domain of human potential. Our focus is both on the transformational power of listening in our personal lives, and also the necessity for deep listening if we are to bring healing to our wider society. 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

Meditation: A Sky-Like Mind (2017-03-01) - This meditation begins with listening to sounds as a portal to spacious awareness. In addition to guiding attention to naturally occurring sounds, Tara plays chimes and gongs to deepen the experience of receptivity and openness. The meditation progresses to include all experience - sounds, sensations, thoughts, feelings - in the vast, transparent, timeless space of awareness. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Listening to the Song - Part 1 (2017-02-22) - Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges. In this two-part series we examine the blocks to listening and the practices that cultivate this essential domain of human potential. Our focus is both on the transformational power of listening in our personal lives, and also the necessity for deep listening if we are to bring healing to our wider society. 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

Reflection: Heart Wisdom of Your Future Self - By connecting with your future self, this reflection guides you in accessing the deep wisdom and unconditional love of your own awakening heart. "I returned to the river. I returned to the mountains. I begged - I begged to wed every object and creature. And when they accepted, God was ever present in my arms. And He did not say, 'Where have you been?' For then I knew my soul – every soul – has always held him." excerpted from: When I Was the Forest – Meister Eckhart https://thevalueofsparrows.com/2012/12/05/poetry-meister-eckhart/ 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

Being Truthful (2017-02-15) - The grounds of happiness, loving relationships and a just and flourishing society is honesty. And yet our current times are characterized by a plethora of deception - both societally, and often in more subtle ways, in our personal lives. This talk examines the deep conditioning we have to deceive others, and to avoid facing and acknowledging our own vulnerability. We then explore how we can commit ourselves to deepening our truth telling, and in so doing, creating a climate of integrity and trust that can lead to a more compassionate world. 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

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

Trusting Our Awakening Heart (2017-02-08) - The more we trust that our awareness and heart are awakening, the more we find ease, grace and true empowerment in our lives. This talk explores two pathways of deepening our sense of belonging and trust: direct presence with the pain of separation, and turning toward the loving presence that is increasingly manifesting through these human forms. "...we need people who are able to respond from the heart - not from an angry or egoic reactivity, but from real wisdom." 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

Meditation: At Home in the Moment (2017-02-08) - This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the "smile down" and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying Yes to the life that is here.

Love, and Death - Retreat Talk (2016-12-29) - To live our lives fully, we need to embrace the natural unfolding of birthing and dying. Yet we are deeply conditioned to resist loss, to pull away from fear and grief. Through a powerful Inuit story shared by Clarissa Estes, this talk explores how our practices of presence can open us to what we avoid, and free us to love without holding back. 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

Retreat Meditation: A Liberating Awareness - Embodying Full Presence (2016-12-30) - This vipassana meditation establishes fertile grounds for presence by gladdening the mind, a mindful body scan, collecting the attention and including all that arises in a kind, clear presence.

Darkness of the Womb - Four Key Steps in Transforming Suffering (2017-01-25) - We can either repeat old fear based patterns, or our suffering can awaken us to a deeper wisdom and greater love. This talk explores four principles in relating to difficulty that move us towards healing and freedom - both personally and as a society.

Meditation - The Return to Presence: Rest Your Mind In What Is (2017-01-25) - It's natural that our attention wanders, and the more we relax back, the more that becomes our habit…returning to presence. This meditation opens with conscious breathing and awakening through the body. We then rest in open awareness, and when the attention drifts, guide ourselves to rest our minds, over and over, in the aliveness and presence that is right here. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Your Awake Heart Is Calling You (2017-01-18) - As individuals and societies, we are pulled by both the insecurity of our evolutionary past, and by our awake heart, our capacity for mindfulness and compassion. This talk explores the ways we can listen to and respond to the call of our awake heart, by training ourselves to open to vulnerability - our own and others - and widen the circles of compassion. 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

Meditation: Awakening Compassion with Tonglen - Our hearts awaken as we let ourselves be touched by the suffering within and around us. They shine as we respond with care to what has touched us. This meditation uses the breath to guide us in letting in and contacting suffering, and offering out our love. With practice this meditation enables us to realize the truth of our connectedness and the luminous love that is intrinsic to awareness.

Meditation: A Witnessing, Kind Presence (2017-01-18) - Starting with scanning through the body and awakening the senses, we then rest in presence, with the breath as a home base. The meditation invites an openness to whatever arises, and a gentle kind attention if we encounter physical or emotional pain. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Dissolving Trance with RAIN (2017-01-11) - One of the pervasive expressions of trance is identifying with a limited and separate sense of self. This talk contrasts the self-trance to our intrinsically open, awake and loving awareness. We then explore how the mindfulness and self-compassion in the RAIN practice can directly dissolve trance and reconnect us to our true nature. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Meditation: Cultivating a Relaxed Attention (2017-01-11) - In this meditation we engage a relaxed and alert attention by scanning through the body, opening to sound, and resting in the awareness that includes all the senses. This presence is stabilized with the use of a home base, for many the breath, and reminders to "relax back" when the mind naturally drifts. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Heart Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence (2016-12-31) ~ We each have an intrinsic capacity for loving presence, and there are powerful ways of paying attention that bring this potential alive. This meditation uses the image and felt sense of a smile to bring a relaxed receptivity to the body. We then engage with our future self (our Being when our heart is fully awake) and explore what it means to embody the fullness of that wisdom and love. (given on the last afternoon of the 2016 IMCW 5-day New Year's silent retreat)

Refuge in Truth, Love and Awareness (2017-01-04) - The three archetypal refuges of truth, love and awareness are interweaving pathways home found in most spiritual traditions. This talk looks at our habitual pursuit of substitutes to feel happy, and reflects on how we awaken through each true refuge. The talk ends with a living ritual anyone can participate in that helps us remember these refuges as we move through our lives. 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

Meditation: Quieting the Mind (2017-01-04) - We open with a reading on silence, and then relax our bodies, calm our minds and rest in the inflow and outflow of the breath. This simple meditation on relaxing with the breath ends with a verse on the blessings of quieting our mind. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Don't Know Mind - Thoughts, and more broadly, conceptual knowledge, cannot lead to the direct realization of truth, of reality. While thoughts are an essential part of surviving and thriving, spiritual awakening only becomes possible when we step out of the trance of thinking. This talk invites listeners into the radical openness and freedom of not-knowing. (a favorite from 2009-06-10)

Meditation: A Listening Presence with Smile Body Scan (2016-11-10) - Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. This meditation emphasizes the anchor of listening, and guides us to relax through our bodies, filling them with the image of a smile. In this receptivity we find a homecoming to full presence and peace.

Question and Response: Heart Practices - (2016-11-05) - follow-up to the guided heart practice: Taking in the Goodness. Tara replies to questions from retreatants. ~ from the IMCW Fall retreat

Heart Meditation with Instructions: Taking in the Goodness (2016-11-05) - previously published without lead-in instructions. ~ from the IMCW Fall retreat 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. "What's it like when you communicate your appreciation of goodness to another person?"

The Revolution of Tenderness - Part 2 (2016-12-21) - These two talks explore our capacity to be tender - sensitive and responsive to ourselves and others. This capacity marks a radical evolutionary shift from a self-centered existence shaped by fear, to a life lived from the realization of our collective belonging and the preciousness of all life. The talks examine the conditioning that inclines us toward dissociation and emotional reactivity, and the practices of presence that evolve our heart and awareness.

Meditation: Breathing into Presence (2016-12-21) - The breath can be our gateway into the boundless awareness that holds all life. This meditation begins with a breath that calms our nervous system, and then invites a relaxed presence with the breath and sensation that open us to the "universe breathing." Resting in awareness, we realize the wakefulness, peace and vitality of pure presence. "The whole universe is the body breathing..." Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

The Revolution of Tenderness - Part 1 (2016-12-14) - These two talks explore our capacity to be tender - sensitive and responsive to ourselves and others. This capacity marks a radical evolutionary shift from a self-centered existence shaped by fear, to a life lived from the realization of our collective belonging and the preciousness of all life. The talks examine the conditioning that inclines us toward dissociation and emotional reactivity, and the practices of presence that evolve our heart and awareness. from Tara's talk: Pope Francis invites us to "live the revolution of tenderness," which is expressed through closeness, compassion and service... 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

Meditation - Awake Awareness is our Home (2016-12-14) - This meditation guides us in awakening our awareness by opening to all our senses and recognizing the alert presence that is always, already here. By relaxing back into the presence over and over, we become familiar with the reality that is truly our home. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Spiritual Reparenting (2016-12-07) - When we are not sufficiently nurtured in childhood, we are inclined toward anxiety, depression, addiction and other forms of suffering. In a deep way, we do not feel at home with others, and are disconnected from our own body, heart and spirit. This talk explores how meditation offers "spiritual reparenting" as we learn to bring interest, understanding and love to our own inner vulnerability. This process of healing extends to our relationships with others and our larger society - by reaching out to widening circles with interest and care, we bring increasing harmony and peace to our world. "How do we love ourselves into healing?" 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