Tara Brach

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence (2016-10-26) - 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. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Bre...

Reflection: Deepening the Truths We Share (2016-10-19) - Our capacity for love grows as we practice deepening the truths we share with each other. This short reflection offers guidance in how to bring your presence and heart to truth telling. From "Seeking What's True — Within Ourselves, Beyond our Self, With Each Other - Part 3"  

Seeking What's True  – Within Ourselves, Beyond Our Self, With Each Other – (Part 2 of 3) (2016-10-19)- The ground of the spiritual path is realizing the nature of reality and living our lives from this awakened heart and mind. The first of this three-part series examines the process of radical self-honesty – the non-judgmental recognition of what's going on inside us, and especially what has been...

Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying Yes to the Moment - When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body, and tense against our moment to moment experience. This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by  saying "yes." Through relaxing back and saying "yes," we discover our heart's cap...

Meditation: Awake, Openhearted Awareness (2016-10-12) - This meditation guides us in recognizing the formless awareness that is always here, but often outside of conscious awareness.  As awareness awakens to realize itself, we come home to our primordial nature—boundless, lucid, tender presence. Listen to the full talk: Seeking What's True — Within Ourselves, Beyond our Self, With Each Other (part...

Seeking What's True - Within Ourselves, Beyond our Self, With Each Other - Pt 2 of 3 (2016-10-12) - The ground of the spiritual path is realizing the nature of reality and living our lives from this awakened heart and mind. The first of this three part series examines the process of radical self-honesty - the non-judgmental recognition of what's going on inside us, and especially what has been out...

Meditation: Breath and Presence (2016-10-12) - For many, relaxing and attending to the movement of the breath provides a powerful anchor for presence. This guided meditation guides us in establishing the breath as a homebase, and then invites a clear and receptive attention to the changing waves of experience. This attention naturally unfolds into a full, tender, inclusive presence. Your support e...

Seeking What's True: Within Ourselves, Beyond our Self, With Each Other  - Pt 1 of 3 (2016-10-05) - The ground of the spiritual path is realizing the nature of reality and living our lives from this awakened heart and mind. The first of this three part series examines the process of radical self-honesty - the non-judgmental recognition of what's going on inside us, and especially what has been out...

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open Awareness (2016-10-05) - 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. Your support enables us to continue...

Spiritual Empowerment (2016-09-28) - When we are trying to control life, we are removed from presence, and act in ways that separate us from others and solidify the experience of being a insecure self. This talk explores our often unconscious strategies of seeking power, and the ways that mindful and compassionate awareness reconnects us to the source of true empowerment. When empowered we are tap...

Meditation: Receiving This Life in Awareness (2016-09-28) - In our everyday life we are conditioned to feel that life is happening to us, or that we are the doer. This meditation deconditions that self-centrality by bringing attention to the aliveness in our bodies, and then opening to receive the entire play of sounds, sensations and feelings in awareness. Your support enables us to continue to o...

Realizing Our Undefended and Awakened Heart (retreat talk) - It is our evolutionary and spiritual potential to release unnecessary habits of violating other tribes, individuals and unwanted parts of our own being. This talk explores three essential facets of the pathway to awakening: Leaving the fortress of aversive judgment, entering the wilderness of our embodied being and encircling this life w...

Meditation: Listening to and Feeling Our Life - 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.  

The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Working with Attachments and Addictions - In Buddhist cosmology the torment of intense desire that can never really be satisfied is depicted as the realm of Hungry Ghosts. This talk explores the attachments and addictions that so many of us struggle with, and the teachings and practices that can liberate us. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freel...

Retreat - Morning Instruction - RAIN - Q and A (2016-08-27) - Tara gives morning instruction on retreat including R.A.I.N. (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nourish), then responds to questions from retreatants. Includes a question on resourcing when working with trauma. Recorded at the 2016 IMCW Women's Retreat.

Trusting Our Hearts (2016-04-06) - Trust in our basic goodness directly effects our capacity for intimacy with others, creativity and living fully.  This talk explores the ways that our caregivers and culture undermine that trust, primarily by giving us messages that we are "not enough" or flawed.  We then explore the meditation practices that remind us of our loving hearts, and of the goodness th...

Meditation Instructions and Guided Meditation from Retreat (2016-08-27) - Tara gives morning instructions about how to deepen our meditation, then leads us in a guided meditation.

Reflection: Your Future Self - Accessing the Wisdom of Your Heart (2016-08-24) - When we are cut off from our natural love and wisdom, there's a way home. This meditation guides us to a visit with our future self, and reveals a pathway to our awakened, evolved consciousness. The more we practice this pathway, the more we realize and trust the loving awareness that is always and already within us....

Letting Go: The Freedom of Awake Awareness (2016-08-31) - We know we need to let go of harmful habits like obsessive worry, blame and over consuming to experience true well-being, yet much of the time we are stuck and judge ourselves for being out of control. This talk explores what's so difficult about letting go and how we can't will it but we can be willing. We then explore the shift to awake a...

Meditation: Awakening Our Energy Body (2016-08-31) - This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness.   Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at...

Your Future Self: Turning Towards Your Awakened HeartMind (2016-08-24) - Our lives are shaped by our evolutionary past - the fears and wants that arise from a separate self sense - and the pull of our evolutionary potential - our awakened heart and mind. This talk explores the power of these pulls, and the teachings and reflections that make us most available and responsive to the calling of our f...

Meditation: Coming Home to Openhearted Awareness (2016-08-24) - In daily life we often leave ourselves, get lost in thoughts, and cut off from a direct, openhearted experience of our life. This meditation reconnects by opening all the senses, turning towards the awareness that is here, and resting in the awakened heartspace that includes and tenderly holds our moment to moment experience. Your sup...

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us - Part 2 (2016-08-17) - The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way tha...

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness (2016-08-17) - This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer...

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us - Part 1 (2016-08-10) - The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope - through these three elements - in a way...