Tara Brach

Learning to Respond, Not React - When stressed, we often react with looping fear-thoughts, feelings and behaviors that cause harm to ourselves and/or others. This talk offers three interrelated strategies that can serve us when we're triggered by stress, and help us find our way back to our natural wisdom, empathy and wholeness of being. By de-conditioning habitual reactivity, we are increasingly...

Meditation: Cultivating an Intimate Presence - 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.

Radical Love: Part 1 - Reflections that Awaken our Heart (2020-08-05) - Radical love arises from the purity of our awake awareness, and cuts through the delusion of being separate and not OK. It comes from and brings out our intrinsic goodness. These talks explore the barriers to this embodied, inclusive and active loving, and include reflections that can help us to free our own hearts and bring t...

Guided Meditation: Openhearted Presence (2020-08-05) - This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.  

Meditation: Tonglen - Discovering the Boundless Space of Compassion (2020-07-25) - This short version of the Tibetan Tonglen practice guides us in courageously opening to the suffering within us and all beings, and allowing that suffering to be held in the formless heartspace that is our true belonging (recorded during Tara's livestreamed Satsang QA session).

Your Awake Heart Is Calling You - 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 (a favorite...

Meditation: A Witnessing, Kind Presence - 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. (original recording 2017-01-18)

Love and Fear During Times of War: An Interview with Lama Rod Owens (2020-07-22) - This is a time of darkness and war. Fear lies at the heart of much of the violence we are experiencing. How do we befriend our fear and offer it permission to teach us how to move through it into a state of freedom? How do we use our fear to connect to the fear so many other people are experiencing? Ultimately, how...

Meditation: Gateway to Natural Presence (2020-07-22) - We enter a full presence through awakening our senses, and awakening to the awareness that is aware. This meditation guides us as we arouse an embodied presence, let go of any controlling, then discover the natural spaciousness and wakefulness that is the essence of what we are.

The Sacred Art of Listening - Just as presence is the heart of meditation, so deep listening is at the center of all conscious, loving relationships. This talk explores how our wants and fears block listening, ways we can deepen our capacity for listening, and the healing that unfolds when we truly feel heard by another (a special talk from the archives). What happens when you're really listening?

Meditation: Listening to Life (2014-11-12) - The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting ou...

Meditation: Healing Shame (2020-07-01) - This meditation brings the clarity and self-compassion of RAIN to the suffering of self-aversion and/or shame. It helps us see the conditioning that shaped what we judge about ourselves, and helps us remember who we are beyond our habitual and painful self-narrative. This helps us to look with fresh eyes at our conditioning, and align our life more fully wi...

The Heart Crosses the Abyss - Three Inner Trainings (2020-07-08) - In the moments when we either resist or get possessed by our strong emotions, we are in a trance, and cut off from openhearted awareness. This talk explores the truth that "it's not what's happening, it's how we're relating." We look at three key trainings that help us relate to difficult emotions with a wise and compassionate pres...

Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness - This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: to open 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.

Shame, Healing and Transformation (2020-07-01) - Being at war with ourselves blocks us from evolving our consciousness and living from our hearts. This talk distinguishes between toxic and healthy shame, as well as shame about our individual self and our group identity. We explore how, with self-compassion and courageous honesty, we can respond to negative, painful feelings about ourselves in a wa...

Meditation: Calling on Our Inner Bodhisattva (2020-07-01) - We each have within us the very source of wisdom and love. This meditation calls forward that essence, our awakening heart, so we can seek guidance and nurturing for the parts of us that need a healing attention. 

Spiritual Hope (2020-06-24) - Spiritual hope opens us to possibility and energizes us to manifest our potential for love and wisdom. In contrast to attachment or egoic hope, which is the grasping for what will benefit a separate self, spiritual hope arises from trust in the openhearted awareness (bodhichitta) that is always and already within us. This talk explores how, as individuals and as a soc...

Meditation: Body and Spirit (2020-06-24) - 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 from Mary Oliver. 

Sustaining Our Caring (2020-06-17) - All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically re-enlivened movement for racial justice and equity, this talk looks at ways of remembering what matters and consciously nourishing our care. 

Meditation: Embodied Metta (2020-06-17) - Lovingkindness becomes full when it is energetically experienced in our bodies. This meditation guides us in awakening the receptivity, warmth and openness of metta through our body, and then invites us to rest in the space of loving presence, as we open to whatever arises.

Meditation: Meeting Anger with Awareness (2020-06-10) - When anger is held in mindfulness, it can energize us to respond wisely to challenging situations. This meditation guides us in meeting personal or societal anger with RAIN - recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. [NOTE: this meditation was given at the end of Tara's "Anger and Transformation" talk on 2020-06-10.]

Anger and Transformation (2020-06-19) - The purpose of anger is to let us know there's an obstacle to our wellbeing, and to energize us to act. While natural and necessary for survival and thriving, this powerful energy often possesses us and leads to suffering. This talk explores how we can use the RAIN meditation in our personal and societal life, to meet anger with a mindful, compassionate pres...

Meditation: Inner Refuge of Calm (2020-06-10) - In times of great stress, it's crucial that we have pathways to quiet our minds, relax our bodies and rest in a calm, steady presence. This meditation guides us in using the breath, body scan and a home base of presence to find that inner refuge that can carry us through difficult times.

A Courageous Presence with Racism (2020-06-03) - Anti-Black racism is the core wound of American culture, and we each have a role to play in fighting racism, a medicine to bring to these times. This talk explores how we can offer an honest and courageous presence to key domains of this suffering. We then look at affirming that Black lives truly matter with our dedicated and wise action. 

Meditation: Homecoming to Wakeful Presence (2020-06-03) - This meditation begins with us standing in mindful movement, guiding us in awakening awareness in the body. Then in sitting practice, we open all our senses, resting in the wakeful presence that can include the changing waves of our life.