Tara Brach

Working with Trauma: Tara Interviews Jim Gordon, MD (2020-02-19) - Dr. Jim Gordon is author of the new book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma. In this interview with Tara, he talks about his work with populations around the globe struggling with trauma, and some of the most powerful practices that can be done on our own in healing trauma. Jim's organization is the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, DC - CMBM.org.

Meditation: Letting Life Live Through You (2020-02-19) - We begin with a body scan, open to sounds and to listening to and feeling the moment. From spacious awareness the practice is simply to recognize and allow the changing flow of life. The meditation ends with the poem, "Hokusai Says," by Roger Keyes.

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."

Facing Fear (Part 1) - Awakening Your Fearless Heart - Fear is a natural and universal part of our incarnation, and, when it goes on overdrive, we get imprisoned in the suffering of separation. These two talks explore how the RAIN meditation can help us face fear, and discover the boundless loving awareness that includes but is not contracted by currents of fear.

Meditation: Open-Hearted Presence (2020-02-12) - This meditation establishes a kind attention by bringing the imagery and felt sense of a smile into the body scan, and then with the breath as a home base, opens the attention to changing experience. We end with a brief loving kindness reflection.

Embodied Presence (Part 2) - Planting our Roots in the Universe - Working with Pain (2020-02-05) - In describing our human predicament and dis-ease, D.H. Lawrence says we are like a great tree with our roots in the air. We need to replant ourselves—in our bodies, hearts and spirit. These two talks are guides to replanting ourselves. In Part 1, we explore how we are so often dissociated from the life of our body, and the pathways home. Part 2 looks at the challenges of pain, fear and trauma, and how we can gradually and skillfully reconnect with a wholeness of being.

Meditation: A Listening Presence (2020-02-05) - The receptivity of listening awakens us to the living stream of life. This meditation guides us in listening to sounds, and then listening to and feeling the aliveness of our bodies and the movement of the breath. We close with a simple offering of lovingkindness to our inner life and our world.

Being Truthful - How Honesty Nourishes Love - The grounds of happiness, loving relationships and a just and flourishing society is honesty. And yet our current times are characterized by a plethora of deception – both societally, and often in more subtle ways, in our personal lives. This talk examines the deep conditioning we have to deceive others, and to avoid facing and acknowledging our own vulnerability. We then explore how we can commit ourselves to deepening our truth telling, and in so doing, creating a climate of integrity and trust that can lead to a more compassionate world (from the 2017 archives).

Guided Heart Meditation: Releasing Blame (retreat) (2019-12-30) - Our self-protective habits of resentment and blame block intimacy and connection with ourself and others. This short talk and meditation are an invitation to deepen our understanding of the suffering of blame, and to release the armoring to loving freely. (recorded at the IMCW 2019 New Year's 5-day Silent Retreat)

Part 1: Embodied Presence - Planting our Roots in the Universe (2020-01-22) - In describing our human predicament and dis-ease, D.H. Lawrence says we are like a great tree with our roots in the air. We need to replant ourselves—in our bodies, hearts and spirit. These two talks are guides to replanting ourselves. In Part 1, we explore how we are so often dissociated from the life of our body, and the pathways home. Part 2 looks at the challenges of pain, fear and trauma, and how we can gradually and skillfully reconnect with a wholeness of being.

Meditation: Portal to Sacred Presence - This meditation includes a full body scan, and then opens the senses to all experience, allowing life to be just as it is. Awakening to the life of our body reveals the mysterious formless presence that is our source. We close with a poem from Danna Faulds, Trusting Prana.

Shifting From Limbic to Liberating Intention (2020-01-15) - Becoming conscious of our intentions is the first step to truly aligning our life with our heart. This talk explores identifying when we are being driven by grasping and fear, and ways we can bring compassion to unmet needs and discover the deeper longing - the liberating intention - that guides us to freedom.

Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath - This guided practice has a short period of relaxing the body, and establishes the breath as a home base for attention. We practice arriving again and again, deepening the pathway of homecoming. The meditation ends with lovingkindness for ourselves and our world.

The Three Refuges - Gateways to Belonging and Freedom (2020-01-08) - We all need ways to guide our attention that allow us to find wisdom, love and freedom in the midst of our lives. This talk reviews three archetypal gateways—Buddha/awareness, Dharma/truth, and Sangha/loving community. Through teachings, guided meditations and a traditional refuge ritual, we engage together in bringing alive these pathways to healing and peace. (Note: Includes Refuges string tying ceremony and chanting the Refuges at end)

Meditation: Relaxed and Awake - This guided meditation helps us find ease and wakefulness in our body and mind. With the breath as our home base, we offer a gentle and full attention to the changing waves. We close with a beautiful poem, "Walk Slowly," by Danna Faulds.

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."

The Power of Awake Awareness (retreat talk) (2019-12-28) - We all encounter "demons" of fear, anger, hurt, craving and shame. This talk explores our key ways of resisting difficult emotions, and how "when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone." We look at the power of mindfulness and compassion to undo resistance, and open us to the loving presence that can handle whatever energies arise. This special talk was given at the 2019 IMCW 5-Day New Year's Silent Retreat.

Introductory Meditation Instructions - Guided Practice from Retreat - This guided session includes an overview of the primary components in meditation practices, and then guidance in awakening the senses, collecting the attention, and opening mindfully to changing experience.

This meditation explores the meaning of forgiveness and its role in healing and transformation. We then are guided in a forgiveness practice that helps us release the armoring of blame, and inhabit an inclusive and open heart (from the 2019 Fall IMCW 7-day Silent Retreat).

Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk) - When we are suffering, we are believing something untrue - usually a limiting story about who we are. This talk explores the roots of our self-doubts, and the teachings and practices that remind us of our basic goodness - the loving awareness that is our source.

Short Talk and Guided Heart Meditation - Loving Kindness - Befriending our Lives (2019-11-02) - This short talk and meditation introduces the domain of "heart practices" and then guides us in how to cultivate a deep quality of friendliness in relating to our inner life and each other. The gift of this practice is a direct sense of belonging - knowing that we can never be alone (from the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat).

Radical Compassion - Part 3 - Loving Ourselves and Our World into Healing (2019-12-18) - Drawn from Tara's new book, Radical Compassion (2020), these three talks explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) awakens the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts. Check www.tarabrach.com for more information on Tara's new book, Radical Compassion.

A Brief Meditation: Gathering and Arriving in Presence (2019-12-18) - A brief meditation to gather the attention, loosen and soften the body, sense your intention for being here, and to feel the quality of presence of an awakening heart.

Radical Compassion - Loving Ourselves and Our World into Healing – Parts 1, 2, 3 - Drawn from Tara's new book, Radical Compassion (2020), these three talks explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) awakens the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts.

Check www.tarabrach.com for more information on Tara's new book, Radical Compassion.

Meditation: Surrender into Living Presence - In this guided meditation we begin with a body scan, and rest in awareness with our senses awake. The key practice is to recognize when the mind immerses in virtual reality, reawaken our senses, and surrender again and again into the immediacy, vibrance and mystery of living 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."

Radical Compassion - Loving Ourselves and Our World into Healing – Parts 1, 2, 3 - Drawn from Tara's new book, Radical Compassion (2020), these three talks explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) awakens the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts.

Check www.tarabrach.com for more information on Tara's new book, Radical Compassion.

Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention - This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention to the changing flow of life.

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."

Gratitude: Entering Sacred Relationship - Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group, and a poem of blessing by John O'Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass - Om Namaha Shivaya.

Meditation: Being Here - This guided meditation is an invitation to rest in Hereness—the immediacy and aliveness of full presence. We arrive and quiet with a conscious long deep breath, relax our bodies, awaken our senses, and then bring our attention to relaxing with our moment-to-moment experience. The poem ends with a beautiful poem called "Interlude" by poet Danna Faulds.

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."

Listening to the Song - Part 2 (2019-11-20) - Listening is our gateway to intimacy with our inner life, each other, our earth and spirit. These two talks look at the ways that listening gets blocked and the teachings and practices that help us cultivate the gift of a deep and healing listening 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: Coming Home to Natural Presence (2019-11-20) - This meditation awakens our senses through a body scan and listening to sound, and then invites us to rest in the presence that spontaneously knows the changing stream of experience. Relaxing back and letting everything be just as it is, reveals the natural presence that is our true home.

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."

Meditation: The RAIN of Compassion (30 min) -

The acronym RAIN (Recognize-Allow-Investigate-Nurture) is one of the most powerful tools I know for working with difficult emotions and discovering the freedom of an awake, compassionate presence.

The 4-steps of RAIN are:

• Recognize what is happening;
• Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
• Investigate with interest and care;
• Nurture with self-compassion.

In the moments "After the RAIN," it's important to simply notice your own presence and rest in that open, tender space of awareness. When we are no longer identified with passing states like fear or anger, we begin to realize the vastness and mystery of our natural Being.

Meditation: Calling on Loving Presence -

Often, when we're really struggling, the only way to find compassion for ourselves is by reaching out towards a loving awareness that is great enough to offer comfort and safety to our wounded self.

When we feel held by a caring presence, by something larger than our small frightened self, we begin to find space in our heart for the difficult currents of our life, and for the lives of others. The suffering that might have seemed "too much" can now awaken us to the sweetness of compassion.

Listening to the Song - Part 1 (2019-11-13) - Listening is our gateway to intimacy with our inner life, each other, our earth and spirit. These two talks look at the ways that listening gets blocked and the teachings and practices that help us cultivate the gift of a deep and healing listening 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."

Meditation - The Silence that is Listening (2013-11-13) - Listening to sound is opens up to the space of pure being. In this guided practice we begin by awakening through the body, and then explore listening to sounds and silence, and to inhabiting the receptive presence that is listening, awareness itself.

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

Judgment, Acceptance and Freedom (Retreat Talk) - The boundary to what we accept is the boundary to our freedom. This talk explores the often unconscious ways we create separation by judging ourselves and others, and the key pathways of meditation practice that release the habit of blame and free our hearts.

(This talk was given on Sunday evening, November 3, at the 2019 IMCW Fall Retreat in Reisterstown, MD.)

Short Talk and Meditation: Saying Yes to Our Life - Our habitual ways of avoiding pain keep us from experiencing intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This short talk and guided meditation offers instruction in saying "yes" to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our truest nature.

Anger: Responding, Not Reacting - Anger is natural, intelligent and necessary for surviving and flourishing. Yet when we are hooked by anger, it causes great personal and collective suffering. This talk explores how to transform patterns of reactivity by bringing a mindful and compassionate attention to the unmet needs that underlie angry reactivity. When we learn how to pause and connect honestly with our inner experience, we are then able to respond to others from our full intelligence and heart (a favorite from the archives).

"Getting angry with another person is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned." Buddha

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

Meditating with RAIN - Working with Difficult Emotions - This guided practice applies mindfulness and self-compassion to challenging emotions. It is based on the acronym RAIN, and provides a four step practice that is accessible and effective, even at those times when mindfulness is most difficult to remember.

The acronym RAIN is one of the most powerful tools I know for working with difficult emotions and discovering the freedom of an awake, compassionate presence.

Guided Meditation: Letting Go – 9 Magic Breaths (2019-07-19) - This guided practice includes taking a pause from all activity, and following the inflow and outflow of nine conscious breaths. We then relax and settle into greater and greater ease and well-being. Continuing as long as desired, we then explore re-entering activity with a relaxed and open attention.

Belonging to Each Other – Part 3 of 3 - Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.

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: Awake and Alive - This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and end with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.

Reflection: RAIN on Blame - When we are stuck in blame or resentment we are in a trance - the other person becomes an unreal bad other, and our own sense of being contracts into a victimized self, an angry self, a righteous self. This practice guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to our inner experience, and then to viewing the other with a more open and clear heart. By awakening from the trance of blame, we are able to respond with intelligence and care to the unmet needs that underlie all conflict.

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."

Belonging to Each Other – Part 2 of 3 (2019-10-16) - Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.

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: Vast and Timeless Presence - The pathway to inhabiting our full presence is including, with mindfulness all parts of experience. This guided meditation explores how we can open, without resistance to the changing flow of sensations, feelings, thoughts and sounds, and discover the boundless awareness that is our true home.

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."

Belonging to Each Other - Part 1 (2019-10-09) - Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These two talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.

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: Relaxed and Alert - This meditation begins with a period of relaxing and collecting our attention with intentional long deep breathing. We then deepen embodied presence, and widen to the awareness that includes sounds, sensations, feelings, breath, and all experience. When the mind drifts from this open, awake awareness, we gently return, re-relaxing and resting in an easeful, alert presence. Recorded at Tara's Wednesday night class, the meditation includes chanting of OM's and ends with a sense of melting into community.

Join Tara's email community 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."

Spiritual Hope: Trusting Your Awakening Heart - Our beliefs and understandings about reality directly impact our moment to moment experience of living. If we believe we will never change, that blocks the transformation that brings happiness and freedom. If we trust our spiritual unfolding and are open to possibility, that guides our attention and behaviors in ways that evolve us. This talk explores how to nurture mature, spiritual hope—hope that is sourced in trusting our intrinsic goodness, and our capacity for deepening love and wisdom.

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: Relaxing into Awake Awareness - We realize our true nature by relaxing back into what is always, already here. Starting by scanning and opening through the body, we explore resting in the awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all of life. The guidance is, when we recognize thoughts, to simply relax back, and allow life to be just as it is.

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."

Wise Investigation: Dissolving the Trance - If we are suffering, it is because we are believing something that is not true and caught in emotional reactivity. A key tool in meditation is investigation – actively inquiring into what is happening inside us. When we investigate with sincere interest and care, the light of our attention untangles difficult emotions and nourishes intimate relationships. As this light turns toward awareness itself, it reveals the radiance and emptiness of our true nature (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: A Healing, Relaxing Breath - This meditation guides us in collecting attention with an intentional long deep even breath, and awakening a full relaxed presence as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm. Resting fully in this presence is the gateway to deep peace and inner freedom (a favorite from the Archives).

True Happiness: Realizing Well-Being - Well being is the deep contentment that arises from a relaxed, wakeful presence. This talk explores the beliefs and habits that contract us away from presence, and several key ways we can nourish our natural capacity for happiness (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