Tara Brach

Conscious Prayer: Finding Refuge in Loving Presence (Retreat talk) (2016-05-11) - Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging. (from the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat) 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: Basic Body and Breath Scan - (2016-05-07) - from the first morning of the IMCW 2016 Spring weeklong retreat, Tara offers a short introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath, sounds, then resting in awareness. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

RAIN of Forgiveness (2015-05-05) - The capacity to release the armoring of hatred and blame is intrinsic to our evolving consciousness. This talk explores the process of authentic forgiveness, and how we can use the mindfulness-based tool of RAIN to heal and free our hearts. 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: Collecting and Quieting the Mind (2016-05-04) - Our conditioned mind is filled with distractions, including worry-thoughts that continually create anxiety in the body. This meditation guides us in relaxing the body, and then establishing the breath as a home base. By gathering and collecting the attention, the mind can settle and allow for a relaxed, wakeful presence. Free download of Tara's new 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Meditation: Spacious Clear Awareness (2016-04-20) (23 min) - This meditation begins with a breath that calms and collects the attention, and then a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. Finally, we relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, clear awareness.

Listening with an Awake Heart (2016-04-27) - True listening both nurtures and expresses evolving consciousness. This talk explores our ego-based conditioning to have an agenda or defendedness that prevents deep listening, and the strategies that evolve our capacity to listen fully to ourselves and others. When our listening is openhearted and full, it enables deep understanding and connectedness, and provides a transformative healing space for those who receive our listening attention. 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: Awareness - Listening To and Feeling the Moment (2016-04-27) - This meditation awakens a relaxed open presence through the body. We then widen attention to include sounds, and then relax back and fully inhabit the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of life. Free download of Tara's new 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list. 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

Love is Always Loving Us (2016-04-20) - This talk draws on Christian mystic Henri Nouwen’s book Return of the Prodigal Son. We explore the primary ways we leave home - leave presence, connection, beingness - and the pathways of deep attention and love that enable our return. The emphasis is on “letting in love” as a key and often missing element in practices that heal and free our hearts. Through the talk there are several reflections that lead to receiving the blessings of love and discovering that we are the source of that loving.

Meditation: Spacious Clear Awareness (2016-04-20) - This meditation begins with a breath that calms and collects the attention, and then a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. Finally, we relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, clear awareness. 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

Releasing Self-Blame - Pathways to a Forgiving Heart When we are stuck in blaming, disliking or hating ourselves, we are unable to love our world. This talk explores what underlies our addiction to self-blame and the teachings and practices that loosen aversive self-judgment and help us cultivate a forgiving heart.

Meditation: Vipassana - Practice of Seeing Clearly (2016-04-13) Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath - or some other sensory anchor - and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention - sensations, emotions, sounds - meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.

Healing Self-Doubt (2013-10-30) - Siddhartha Gautama’s last challenge before enlightenment was doubt, and to some degree, most of us live with limiting beliefs about our own worthiness and goodness. This talk looks at the tenacity of self-doubt and the power of mindfulness, investigation and compassion in releasing its grip.

Meditation: Awakening an Intimate Presence (2016-04-06) - This guided meditation cultivates a relaxed, gentle presence with whatever expressions of life are arising in the moment. We begin by releasing and opening through the body, and then include all sensations, feelings and sounds in an intimate, allowing presence.

Embodied Awareness - Pain and Living Fully - Part 3 (2016-03-30) - The experiences we most value - feeling creative, loving, vital - require being awake in our bodies. Yet when faced with physical pain, our conditioning is to pull away from our bodies, and get lost in thoughts. This talk offers guidance in working mindfully with different levels of pain, as we cultivate our capacity to live from an embodied presence and open heart. 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 Pathway of Deep Listening (2016-03-30) - Listening is an ideal template for awareness itself - it is naturally receptive, open and awake. This meditation invites a deep listening to and feeling our lives, and opens us to the realization of the flow of changing experience and the background awareness that is the source of our 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

Reflection: RAIN - A Guide for Embodied Presence (from 2013-03-23) - We have deep conditioning to disconnect from our body’s awareness and, in so doing, leave the site of our creativity, love and vitality. This short meditation uses the acronym RAIN as a guide in re-inhabiting our bodies and our full aliveness. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Short Reflection: This Living Body - Our Portal to Freedom (2016-03-23) (12:15 min) - Our habit is to leave home - the aliveness of our body - and seek happiness through avoiding unpleasantness and chasing after pleasure. This short talk and reflection point to embodied presence as the gateway to genuine openheartedness and 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

Embodied Awareness - Embracing the Unlived Life - Part 2 (2016-03-23) - When we disconnect from the aliveness of our body, we are in a trance that prevents us from living and loving fully. These two talks examine our habits of dissociation - including the cutting off that comes from trauma - and the suffering of “unlived life” that this creates. We then look at how practices of mindfulness and compassion, guided by the acronym RAIN, enable us to re-enter our bodies, and discover the creativity, love and wisdom that naturally flow from embodied awareness. 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: Living Presence (2016-03-23) (20:01 min) - The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body - bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life. 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 thanks and love, Tara

Guided Reflection: Awakening through Conflict (from a talk given on 2014-04-23) - (13 min) “We live in a field where our emotions are an open loop – we affect each other. When we’re with someone who’s blaming, we tighten. Anger makes us tighten. When we’re with someone who’s open and caring, we become more open. It’s very, very powerful what’s possible when we put down the blame and we connect with our own being.” A guided reflection: If we learn to release blame and deepen attention to our embodied experience, conflict can become a portal for more loving, alive relationships and awakening into the fullness of our 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 thanks and love, Tara

Practical Dharma for Stressful Times (2016-03-16) - When we are caught in a stress reaction, we are in a trance that cuts us off from our creativity, full intelligence and capacity to be loving. This talk explores the flags of the stress-trance and three meditative strategies for shifting from fight/flight to attend/befriend. (at end is “Love the One You’re With” by Steven Stills) Tara was traveling this week and asked this very timely talk from November 07, 2012 be posted.

Meditation: Touching Peace - with a Smile (2015-08-19) - Tara is traveling this week, so asked that this "smile meditation" be posted.

Embodied Awareness - Embracing Unlived Life - Part 1 (2016-03-09) When we disconnect from the aliveness of our body, we are in a trance that prevents us from living and loving fully. These two talks examine our habits of dissociation, and the suffering of “unlived life” that this creates. We then look at how practices of mindfulness and compassion, guided by the acronym RAIN, enable us to re-enter our bodies, and discover the creativity, love and wisdom that naturally flow from embodied awareness. 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 thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: RAIN - Entering the Wilderness (2016-03-09) - This short reflection, guided by the acronym RAIN, engages mindfulness and compassion as we open to life that we’ve been pushing away. By including unlived life, we reconnect with the fullness of our being, with vibrant, loving awareness. 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 thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: Embodied Awareness (2016-03-09) - This meditation reconnects us to the vibratory aliveness of our bodies, and the space of awareness that suffuses that aliveness. We inhabit embodied awareness in the moments of non-doing, of simply resting as wakeful openness, of pure 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 thanks and love, Tara

Bodhichitta - The Awakened Heart - Part 2 (2016-03-02) While the brightness and warmth of our hearts is always here, like the sun when blocked by clouds, our intrinsic love can be obscured. These two talks explore how we become arrested in a confining story of separate self, and how remembering love releases us from this trance. The first talk emphasizes inner pathways of freeing our heart and the second talk explores awakening bodhichitta actively in relating with each other. "To love someone is to learn the song in their heart and sing it to them when they have forgotten." Arne Garborg 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/donate/. With thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: Awakening the Heart - Giving and Receiving Loving Blessings (2016-03-02) - Our hearts awaken as we express and receive love in an embodied, conscious way. This guided practice brings our attention to dear ones in our life, and explores how we discover deep communion through offering and letting in love. "To love someone is to learn the song in their heart and sing it to them when they have forgotten." Arne Garborg 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/donate/. With thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Open Wakefulness (2016-03-02) - This meditation begins by relaxing through the body, and connecting with inner aliveness and space. We then include sounds and sense the openness of life. At the center of the practice is a relaxing back, and inhabiting spacious awareness. The meditation ends as we experience the heart from the vantage of spacious awareness, and offer prayers to our inner life and all life.

Bodhichitta - The Awakened Heart - Part 1 (2016-02-24) - While the brightness and warmth of our hearts is always here, like the sun when blocked by clouds, our intrinsic love can be obscured. These two talks explore how we become arrested in a confining story of separate self, and how remembering love releases us from this trance. The first talk emphasizes inner pathways of freeing our heart and the second talk explores awakening bodhichitta actively in relating with each other. "Exploring what allows the heart to wake up..." "...being loved into being more who we are is a moment of blessing. What is a blessing? A blessing is a reminder or homecoming into more realness - more love. We're blessed when we remember." Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list. 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 thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: Blessings of Love (2016-02-24) - A blessing is whatever reminds us of the sacred loving presence that shines through all of us. This meditation is a transformational practice in receiving and offering blessings. First we connect with the vulnerable tender place within us that longs to feel loved, and call on loving presence to bless us. By imagining and allowing ourselves to receive love, our hearts become open and filled with light. We then bring that inner loving presence fully alive as we offer blessings to other beings. 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. "...being loved into being more who we are is a moment of blessing. What is a blessing? A blessing is a reminder or homecoming into more realness - more love. We're blessed when we remember." "Part of what keeps us from realness - in that small self identity - is the avoiding of what's here." 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 thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: The Center of Now (2016-02-24) - The portal to presence is awakening through the body from the inside out, and then opening to include sound in field of aliveness. This reveals the awake space that everything’s happening in; the space that lets everything be, just as it is. It’s in that full allowing that we discover the center of now, that pure still presence that is the very source of our being. The meditation ends with an offering of prayer as that presence is experienced in the domain of the heart. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list. 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 thanks and love, Tara

The Power of Inquiry in Spiritual Awakening - Part 2 (2016-02-17) - In spiritual life, inquiry arises from our deep yearning to understand reality, and it involves bringing an interested, engaged attention to our immediate experience. These two talks explore how inquiry serves emotional healing by focusing on difficult “stuck” places, how inquiry enables us to become more intimate and understanding of others, and in the deepest way, how inquiry can reveal the deepest truth of what we are…our true nature. The talks include several guided reflections that can enrich your meditation practice and serve spiritual awakening. "If we don't bring inquiry from the neck down, we cannot untangle the tangles. Our emotional life lives in our body, so inquiry needs to be embodied. One of the misconceptions of inquiry is that it's analytic - that it's conceptual... it's not. Inquiry is shining the light of awareness to what's actually happening - moment to moment in our bodies." Tara's website: www.tarabrach.com Join Tara’s email list: http://eepurl.com/6YfI 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 thanks and love, Tara

This guided meditation includes a full body scan, and the recognition of the formless awareness that includes and is source of all experience. By recognizing that awareness we discover the silence and stillness that is the ground of all experience. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Reflection: The Power of Inquiry - Untangling Emotional Tangles (2016-02-10) - This short meditation helps us get unstuck from emotional difficulty with the practice of Inquiry. We use the acronym RAIN as a guide, starting with Recognizing and Allowing what is arising, and then systematically Investigating (through inquiry) the limiting beliefs and reactive feelings that are challenging. The meditation ends by offering Nourishment to our vulnerability with kindness, and discovering the shift in our own being…in our identity…that expresses increased freedom. (From the end of Part 1: The Power of Inquiry in Spiritual Awakening)

The Power of Inquiry in Spiritual Awakening (2016-02-10) - Parts I and II - In spiritual life, inquiry arises from our deep yearning to understand reality, and it involves bringing an interested, engaged attention to our immediate experience. These two talks explore how inquiry serves emotional healing by focusing on difficult “stuck” places, how inquiry enables us to become more intimate and understanding of others, and in the deepest way, how inquiry can reveal the deepest truth of what we are…our true nature. The talks include several guided reflections that can enrich your meditation practice and serve spiritual awakening. "True inquiry doesn't land on an answer. It opens to a mystery that's meant to be lived."

Meditation: Inhabiting Awake Awareness with Intro (2016-02-10) - This meditation begins with collecting attention with the breath, and awakens us to the experience of aliveness and inner space by scanning the body. We then open to receive all the senses in awake awareness, and to inhabiting that boundless receptive awareness that is our home. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: Inhabiting Awake Awareness(2016-02-10) - This meditation begins with collecting attention with the breath, and awakens us to the experience of aliveness and inner space by scanning the body. We then open to receive all the senses in awake awareness, and to inhabiting that boundless receptive awareness that is our home. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Three Attitudes that Nourish a Liberating Practice (2016-02-03) - A key spiritual inquiry is, “In this moment, what most serves awakening?” Rather than a particular style of meditation practice, it is our way of relating to our experience - our attitude - that frees our hearts. This talk explores the attitudes that are an expression of our innately open, wakeful and loving awareness, and that carry us to realization.

Meditation - Space, Aliveness and Letting Be (2016-02-03) - This practice guides us into the openness of awareness, and then invites a deep resting, a letting be. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Part 2: Three Blessings on the Journey - Drawing on a wonderful teaching story from the Upanishads, these two talks explore the role of forgiveness, inner fire and looking at our own minds, in finding freedom. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: Center of Now (2012-02-01) - Tara is on retreat, so asked for a meditation from the archives to be posted.

Part 1: Three Blessings on the Journey - Drawing on a wonderful teaching story from the Upanishads, these two talks explore the role of forgiveness, inner fire and looking at our own minds, in finding freedom. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Morning Meditation Instruction with Question and Response (retreat) (2015-12-29) - "Discover what’s happening here, beyond the veil of thinking.” Tara gives additional instructions and responds to questions after the morning meditation at the 2015 IMCW New Year retreat.

Widening the Circles of Compassion (retreat talk) (2015-12-31) - The archetypal figure of the Bodhisattva ("awakening being") reflects our potential to realize our connectedness with all beings, and care for this living world with an open tender heart. This talk explores the four types of patterning that keep us stuck in the pain of separation and the key heart practices that evolve us on the bodhisattva path. "Compassion arises when you see the truth behind the veils." 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 thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: RAIN of Compassion (retreat) (2015-12-29) - This new version of the acronym RAIN is a powerful way of bringing compassion to the life within you, and to attuning and deepening compassion for others. (from the 2015 New Year's retreat - a guided heart meditation)

Gateways of Remembrance: The Three Refuges (2016-01-06) - This talk explores the traditional refuges of awareness (buddha nature), truth (dharma) and love (sangha) that are at the heart of Buddhism, and found in many spiritual and religious traditions. It includes a look at our false refuges - strategies that seek to comfort and gratify, but are temporary fixes - and moves into reflections that help us remember, trust and live from our true nature. (Concludes with a ceremony tying red cords in remembrance of the refuges.)

Meditation: Relaxing Open (2016-01-06) Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don't try to figure anything out. Don't try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest. - Tilopa

The Power of Mindful Investigation (from 2010-09-22) - We each have a deep interest in reality–in understanding what is true and who we are. In Buddhist teachings, our interest, and its expression in wise investigation, energize the path of awakening. This talk explores how mindful investigation can free us from emotional suffering, nourish loving relatedness and create the conditions for deep spiritual realization. (Tara is on retreat this week, so she asked to share this talk from 2010.)

Meditation: Letting Life Be (from 2010-09-22) - Tara is teaching retreat this week, so wanted to share this meditation from 2010 with you.

Meditation: Seeing the Goodness (2015-12-23) (6:11 min) - When we focus on what we appreciate in others, our very attention helps allow that person to shine (a practice meditation from the end of the "Secret Beauty - Solstice talk").