Tara Brach

Meditation: Vipassana – Opening Our Hearts to Life as It Is - This meditation awakens the senses with a mindful scanning of the body, establishes an anchor for presence, and invites us to arrive again and again, deepening the pathway home. When difficult or intense experience arises, the practice is to learn to open to what is here with a clear, allowing and kind attention (a favorite from the archives).

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 (2019-07-10) - Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom. "Don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you.” ~ Rumi Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations 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: Befriending Your Inner Life (2019-07-10) - This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention, and the gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us - Part 2 - 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 that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world. "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." ~ Rumi Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations 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: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness - 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 blessings to our inner life and all living beings. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 1 - 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 that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world (a special talk from the archives). Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations 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 Our Full Aliveness - We cut off from our aliveness when we are lost in thoughts and on auto pilot. This meditation arouses a receptivity to sensation from “the inside out,” opens the awareness to sound, and then invites a full resting in receptive, dynamic presence. Join Tara's email community, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

The Courage to Love - Part 2 (2019-06-19) - The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

Meditation: Wakeful, Open Awareness (2019-06-19) - When we awaken our senses, we can sense in the background a wakeful openness that is our true home. This meditation guides us by first attending to the space, aliveness and awareness that fills the body, and then by sensing how interior and exterior space is continuous, and suffused with the light of awareness. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

The Courage to Love - Part 1 (2019-06-12) - The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations 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: Effortless and Wakeful Presence (2019-06-12) - Striving in meditation only creates more tension in our psyche and a solidified sense of self. This meditation invites us to awaken our senses and relax back into the presence that is always and already here. From presence we spontaneously notice and allow the changing flow of experience, and sense the openness and wakefulness of our natural awareness.

An Appropriate Response: Living from an Awake Heart (2019-06-05) - Much of our suffering comes from reacting to stressful situations with fear or aggression, rather than responding with wisdom and care. This talk explores the pathway of shifting from reacting to responding: this includes learning to pause, awakening the wings of mindfulness and kindness, and reconnecting with our deepest intention.  Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice.

Meditation - Breath by Breath: Relaxing with Our Life (2019-06-05) - The breath can be a powerful portal to presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing with the breath, including the breath in a body scan, and then allowing the breath to serve as an anchor when the mind gets lost in thoughts. As we settle with the breath as a home base, we find we can then open to the changing waves of experience with increasing balance, clarity and ease. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - Plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

Part 3 - Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame (2019-05-29) - Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part 1 focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part 3 on where we have locked into anger, blame or hatred of others. Each includes guided reflections that can support us in directly awakening beyond the confining thoughts and feelings of blame. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations 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: Opening to Life (2019-05-29) - This guided meditation includes a mindful body scan, and awakening all our senses to our moment to moment experience. We relax open to the presence that is unobscured by thoughts, letting life be just as it is.  Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Trusting the Gold (retreat talk) (2019-05-08) - This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self.  We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness and wakefulness of our Being. Our trust grows as we increasingly glimpse, embody and live from our natural Being. NOTE: this talk is from the Spring 2019 IMCW 7-day Silent Retreat. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations 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: RAIN on Self-Blame (2019-04-17) - One of the greatest roots of suffering is being at war with ourselves. This meditation, based on the acronym RAIN (recognize-allow-investigate-nurture), guides us in releasing the armoring of blame, and relating to our inner life with greater understanding and compassion. For more resources on RAIN: www.tarabrach.com/rain/.

Compassion Towards All: Moving toward a Plant Based Diet (2019-05-15) - For most of human history it’s been “normal” to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and the impact it has on climate change (second only to fossil fuels.) In this short talk Tara shares her personal story of transitioning to a vegan diet, and invites listeners to investigate, without judgment, their own choices in this domain. (note: given at a special class on "Loving Life with a Plant-Based Diet." Tara was joined by guest speakers, Mark Tercek and Brenda Sanders, and hosted by Jonathan Foust. Full video available at Tara's Facebook page and soon at IMCW.org.)

Meditation: Choosing Living Presence - A meditation on being present with our living, breathing life (includes chanting the Om’s in community – a favorite from Tara’s Wednesday night archives). Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness (retreat talk) - 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 (given at the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat). How I yearn to belong to something, to be contained in an all-embracing mind that sees me as a single thing. And I yearn to be held in the great hands of your heart. Oh let them take me now. Into your hands I place these fragments, my life, and you my God spend them however you want. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke