Tara Brach

Meditation: Resting in Reality - This guided practice awakens attention to sensations, sounds, space and aliveness, and encourages a continued “relaxing open” from thoughts into the living stream of experience. We are learning to recognize and rest in the moment to moment flow, “being reality,” at home in what we are. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us - Part 1 - A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These three talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing." They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.” 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 with an Open Awareness (2018-01-17) - We begin with listening and then bring a receptive attention to experience the life of the body. We then open the attention to the whole field of sensations and sound, and rest in the openness and presence that includes all the changing currents of experience. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Winds of Homecoming: How Intention Frees our Heart (2018-01-10) - The Buddha taught that we live our lives on the tip of intention, it is the seed of our future. This talk explores the difference between “limbic” intentions driven by grasping or fear, and intentions that are the call of our awakening heart. You will learn how to identify and shift from a “limbic” to wise intention, and several different ways you can more readily and regularly access your deepest aspiration.  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: Space and Aliveness and Awareness (2018-01-10) - This meditation engages the breath in a way that it connects us with our energetic aliveness and the space that holds and is intrinsic to all life. A body scan using this breath opens us to the body as a field of aliveness. We then rest in the changing flow of experience, and the still presence that is our essence.

Three Gateways to Peace and Freedom - This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of truth, love and awareness. We look at the outer and inner aspects of each refuge, and then through guided reflections and a Refuge Ritual, deepen our commitment to the pathways that awaken our minds and free our hearts. NOTE: Includes a Refuge Ritual at the end of the talk - if you'd like to participate, you'll need some red string. We use "Classic crochet thread, size 10 in red" about 36 inches per person. Sing along - the Three Refuges chant sheet is available at www.tarabrach.com/three-gateways-peace-freedom/. 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

New Year's Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence - Loving presence is an innate capacity, and it can be cultivated. This meditation begins with a scan arousing a relaxed tender presence in the body, then brings loving attention to our inner life, and in widening circles, to our world. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Remembering and Choosing Loving Presence (retreat talk) (2017-12-28) - We are conditioned to go into a limbic trance—an emotional reactivity to life within and around us—that keeps us identified with a limited, separate sense of self. This talk helps us to identify the flags of trance, and to bring a healing attention that frees us to live our moments with creativity, wisdom and love. Includes the RAIN of Self-Compassion. (from the 2017 IMCW New Year's Retreat)

Meditation: Basic Body and Breath Scan – (2017-12-28) – from the first morning of the IMCW 2017 New Year retreat, Tara offers an introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath, sounds, then resting in awareness.

My Religion is Kindness – Part 2 ~ Authentic kindness must include the life within us. These two talks examine the movement from an armored to a free and loving heart. The first looks at how we can awaken from the trance of unworthiness and establish a genuinely caring relationship with our inner life. In the second we explore how self-kindness awakens us to the heartspace that naturally includes all of life. 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  

2017-12-20 - Meditation: “Yes” to Life (2017-12-20) - This guided practice awakens a relaxed and friendly attention that rests in the breath and opens to whatever is arising. We deepen that presence with the intention to truly say "Yes" to experience, allowing life to be just as it is. 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: Transforming Fear - This guided practice invites us to identify a situation where we habitually become anxious or fearful, and then to explore bringing mindfulness and self-compassion to where we feel most vulnerable. By engaging fear with an embodied and caring presence, we discover the fearless heart that includes but is not contracted by fear. NOTE: this meditation is from the end of the talk Awakening the Trance of Fear – Part 1.

My Religion is Kindness - Part 1 (2017-12-13) - Authentic kindness must include the life within us. These two talks examine the movement from an armored to a free and loving heart. The first looks at how we can awaken from the trance of unworthiness and establish a genuinely caring relationship with our inner life. In the second we explore how self-kindness awakens us to the heartspace that naturally includes all of life. 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: Boundless, Loving Awareness(2017-12-13) - Learning how to recognize and rest in spaciousness, allows us to discover the love and wakefulness that is our source. This meditation guides us to discover interior space, exterior space, and then the continuous space that is suffused with awareness. We then explore how that awareness is experienced as heartspace—vast, illuminated and tender. Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

  Awakening from the Trance of Fear-Part 2 (2017-12-06) - While fear is a natural and intelligent emotion, when fear goes on overdrive, we are in a trance of fear that contracts our body, heart and mind. Our resistance to the direct experience of fear sustains the trance and leads to decisions and behaviors that harm ourselves and others. Only by facing fear with mindfulness and compassion can we awaken from trance and reconnect with our capacity for creativity and full aliveness, wisdom and love. 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: Alert Inner Stillness (2017-12-06) - Behind the changing sounds, sensations, feelings and thoughts is an alert inner stillness that is purely aware. This meditation begins with accessing the receptivity of a smile, awakening through the body and opening the senses. We then sense the background of awareness and relax back to inhabit that wholeness. When the mind is distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back, and the essential practice is non-doing, allowing life to 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.

Awakening from the Trance of Fear - Part 1 (2017-11-29) - While fear is a natural and intelligent emotion, when fear goes on overdrive, we are in a trance of fear that contracts our body, heart and mind. Our resistance to the direct experience of fear sustains the trance and leads to decisions and behaviors that harm ourselves and others. Only by facing fear with mindfulness and compassion can we awaken from trance and reconnect with our capacity for creativity and full aliveness, wisdom and love.

Meditation: Breath by Breath (2017-11-29) - Our breath can be a home base that allows us to meet life with a relaxed, wakeful presence. This meditation helps us calm and settle the mind with long deep breathing, and then establishes a mindful presence with our natural breathing. When distracted, we learn to relax back again and again, learning the pathway of homecoming to the aliveness, openness and mystery that is always 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 gratitude and love, Tara

A Grateful, Giving, Happy Heart (2017-11-22) - Gratitude is like breathing in - letting ourselves be touched by the goodness in others and in our world. Generosity is like breathing out - sensing our mutual belonging and offering our care. When we are awake and whole, breathing in and out happens naturally. But these beautiful expressions of our heart become blocked when we are dominated by the fear and grasping of our survival brain. This talk explores how we can facilitate the evolution of consciousness with the deliberate cultivation of generosity, and ends with a guided meditation on gratitude and generosity.

Meditation: Relax Into Happiness (2017-11-22) - Lama Gendun Rinpoche writes, “Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but it is already there, in relaxation and letting go.” This meditation turns us toward this naturally arising happiness by awakening awareness through the body, and then practicing “relaxing back,” over and over, into the aliveness and presence that is always here.