Tara Brach

Refuge in the Wilderness - Part 1 - When we live from our mental control towers, we are in a trance that confines our life. These two talks look at the primary ways we are conditioned to leave embodied presence, and the consequence of unlived life—being cut off from our vitality, intelligence and compassion. We then explore the teachings and practices that guide us to reconnect to our senses, and...

Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness - This meditation includes relaxing and awakening through the body, widening the lens to include sound and then letting life live through us, receiving all that arises in open awareness.

The RAIN of Forgiveness - 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.

Meditation: Vipassana – Practice of Seeing Clearly - 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 – se...

How to Stop the War Against Yourself - A conversation with Tara Brach & Dan Harris - It's possible to actually be addicted to self-criticism, especially as a way to keep yourself safe. But evidence shows that rather than safety, this pervasive habit in our society creates deep suffering. This conversation between Tara and Dan Harris dives into strategies to deal with your own self-hatred and culti...

Meditation: Opening to the River of Aliveness - 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.

Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness - The Power of Self-Nurturing - While we all need to customize meditation, this is particularly important for those living with PTSD or strong, potentially overwhelming emotions. This talk explores how trauma cuts us off from wholeness, and is accompanied by a deep and painful experience of shame. We look at the ways meditation can be adapted to cultivate sufficient sa...

Meditation: Relaxing into Presence or Sleep - This meditation can help us to access a relaxed attentiveness, or alternately, serve as a pathway to ease-filled sleep.

Meditation, Psychedelics, Mortality: A conversation with Tara and Roland Griffiths - Roland is a long-term meditator, a psychopharmacologist and professor at Johns Hopkins, and a leader in researching the clinical effects of psychedelics, including their impact on those struggling with cancer, depression or addiction. At the end of 2021, he discovered he had incurable stage 4 Colon Cancer. This co...

Meditation: The Silence That is Listening - 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 and let sounds wash through us. In this receptivity we find a homecoming to full presence and peace.

Trusting the Gold - Realizing Our Basic Goodness - Can you imagine a world where humans are able to look at each other and all of life, and see the light of the sacred shining through? This talk explores our potential for trusting the love and awareness that animate our living world. We investigate the suffering of othering, how the trance of separateness blinds us to our basic goodness, and then...

Meditation: Relaxing with a Smile into Living Presence - 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 t...

Tara shares a podcast from Dan Harris: The Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness - Part 1 - Dan Harris (host of Ten Percent Happier) flies to Dharamsala, India to spend two weeks in the orbit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This is the first installment of a five-part audio documentary series, something we've never done before now. Over the course of the episodes, we talk to His Holiness about practical...

Realizing Your Deepest Intention - The Buddha taught that this whole life – including our thoughts, feelings and actions – arise from the tip of intention. While our intentions are usually marbled with wanting and fear, when intention comes into the light of consciousness, it unfolds into its most pure essence. This talk explores ways that when we are stuck in reactivity, we can become aware of in...

Meditation: Awake Awareness is Our Home - 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.

Freedom Beyond Selfing - We spend many moments in a trance of selfing - preoccupied with the stories, wants and fears of what feels to be a separate self. The suffering is that this self-fixation obscures the depth and mystery of our being. In this talk we explore how to relate wisely to selfing, and discover the light and love that express our true nature.

Meditation: Letting Go and Letting Be - We leave presence by contracting into thoughts and resisting the changing flow of life. This meditation guides us in gently releasing thoughts and opening to this mysterious life, just as it is. Let go of what is past 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...

IntraConnected – Part 2: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel - In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, IntraConnected . They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms "Mwe" (me plus we.)  The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemp...

Meditation: "Yes" to Our Moments - When we open without resistance to the changing flow of aliveness, we discover the formless presence that is our true home. This meditation guides us through a body scan and then opening to all sounds, sensations and emotions with the energetic allowing of "Yes." We close with a poem by Danna Faulds, "White Dove."

IntraConnected – Part 1: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel - In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, IntraConnected . They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms "Mwe" (me plus we.)  The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemp...

Meditation: Body and Spirit - As we relax and awaken through our physical body, we discover the formless dimension of awareness or spirit that permeates all of life. This meditation includes a poem (the spirit likes to dress up) from Mary Oliver.

Our True Nature - Emptiness Dancing (retreat talk) - The most profound question in spiritual life is "who (or what) am I?" This talk explores ways of inquiring into the nature of awareness, and the blessings of embodying the realization of our radiant, empty essence. This audio talk was first offered at the 2011 IMCW Fall Weeklong Retreat, and it includes several guided reflections.

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open Awareness - Our habit is to try to manage our experience from a mental control tower. This meditation awakens us through the body, and then invites us to rest in that vast presence that includes the changing flow of life. When we inhabit that openness, there's a natural arising of peace, wakefulness and tenderness.

Embracing Life and Realizing the Nature of Awareness - Tara and Mingyur Rinpoche in Conversation - In this interview, Mingyur Rinpoche shares about his 4 1/2 years on a wandering retreat and the lessons he learned from a near-death experience. The two then talk about what it means to befriend panic as well as other strong emotions, and the qualities that express our intrinsic awareness. They also...

Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (from retreat) - We can't truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience. NOTE: Given on the 4th morning of the 2018 IMCW New Year's Retreat. It'...