Tara Brach

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.

In this conversation, Tara Brach and Gabor Maté come together to explore the heart-wrenching situation in Gaza through the lens of the Bodhisattva path. Drawing from the Bodhisattva path - the commitment to alleviate suffering for all beings - they explore the importance of compassion and engaged spirituality in responding to the oppression and trauma experienced by the Palestinian and Israeli people.

This conversation is an invitation to examine our own spiritual practices and to consider how we can embody the Bodhisattva spirit in today's world, breaking the silence and standing in solidarity with all who are suffering. It was offered as part of a series of conversations that accompany a poignant and heartbreaking film - “Where Olive Trees Weep” - about the struggles and resilience of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.  whereolivetreesweep.com

This guided meditation offers a pathway to quieting our mind and calming anxiety. We begin with long deep breathing, and with the breath, engage the image of a smile and relax through the body. Then we practice resting in relaxed awareness, allowing waves of thoughts, feelings and sensations to come and go.

The meditation ends with a beautiful verse from poet Philip Booth:

As you float now, where I held you and let go, remember when fear cramps your heart what I told you: lie gently and wide to the light-year stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Poem: First Lesson,” by Philip Booth from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999 (Viking).

This talk continues the exploration of what causes our distrust of ourselves, others and life, and the pathways to realizing and trusting who we are. We explore the steps of awakening from limiting beliefs, dissolving the resistance to direct embodied presence, and discovering the space and tenderness – the formless dimension – that is indivisible and whole.

This meditation includes a full body scan, and then opens the senses to all experience, allowing life to be just as it is. The training is a relaxing back, noticing the sounds that are here, feeling the aliveness of the body sitting here. We call on the two wings of wakefulness and openness, noticing what's happening moment-to-moment with a kind, allowing attention.

We rest and relax back, discovering the presence that's here – our senses awake… in wide open awareness… awake, relaxed, open.

One of the expressions of an awakened heart-mind is a basic trust in reality. These talks explore the severed belonging that gives rise to mistrust, and two primary pathways to realizing and trusting the indivisible field of loving awareness that is our source (a favorite from the archives). 

By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we begin to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, we rest in an ocean of awareness that embraces all the moving waves. We arrive in a sanctuary that feels large enough to hold whatever is going on.

Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.

"All you need is already within you, only you must approach yourself with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of the love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this – make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover you do not need them. You are beyond." ~ Sri Nisargadatta

This meditation guides us through a relaxing body scan and then explores how we can allow the breath to calm our body and bring peace to our heart.

Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.

When our hearts open to the life that is here, just as it is, we discover vast loving presence. This meditation engages the smile as we scan through and awaken to our body and senses. Then we practice meeting the changing flow of life with a full allowing, wakeful and open awareness. We close with a verse from e.e. cummings.

One expression of suffering is forgetting that we are intrinsically lovable and worthy. This talk looks at the pathway to trusting our belonging, and focuses on the healing that comes from letting in love and mirroring others goodness.

Talk includes quotes from Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

This practice uses the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, include sound and relax back into the awareness that is the source of all experience. By letting life be just as it is, we become pure living presence – wakeful, open and tender.

Our human loneliness and suffering arise from getting identified in a mental ego, and separating ourselves from the living web of our natural world. This talk explores the pathway back to sacred relationship, and offers reflections and practices that awaken intimacy with the non-human world. 

This guided meditation includes a full body scan, and the recognition of the formless awareness that includes and is the source of all experience. By recognizing that awareness we discover the silence and stillness that is the ground of all experience.

If we are suffering, we are believing an interpretation of reality that is limiting and untrue. At these times we are imprisoned in a painful looping of fear-driven thoughts and feelings. This talk explores the ways our practices of mindfulness, compassion and loving presence can guide us from addictive thinking to perceiving life with a wise heart.

This guided practice awakens all the senses with an embodied presence, allowing an opening to the moment-to-moment changing flow of experience. We then relax back, resting as the changeless open awareness that is conscious of the flow, and includes all life.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

The focus of this conversation is on our relationships with dogs, and more broadly, all beings. We look at what Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing, and what happens when we shift our attention from self to who are we together.

Tara is joined by Mark Drucker, an animal lover who works in digital media and is founder of lovedog.com, and Drew Webster, a dog behavior consultant par excellence.

In this recording, Tara is being interviewed for their podcast and found herself deeply impacted by the conversation. She reports that she and her 6-month-old pup, Niki, play more. Her attention has deepened and she is more awake in their relationship, and of course that extends out to the world of relationships.

So whether you have a dog, cat, favorite tree, or human to practice on, bringing attention to interbeing means more belonging, aliveness, and love. lovedog.com  

Our being has many frequencies of aliveness and as we attend to the more subtle, we discover a portal to the radiant awareness that is always here. This meditation guides us in using the breath and attention as we scan through the body and awaken an inner luminosity. We then open the attention to rest in the whole field of awake awareness.

Martin Luther King’s term, “Beloved Community,” points to our potential for living together with love, justice and respect. This talk explores the often hidden expressions of racism that fuel separation and violence, and pathways toward healing and freeing our collective hearts.

NOTE: At the same time as the tragic killings in Charleston, SC, Tara’s Wednesday night class was reflecting on racism and the aspiration for Beloved Community. “May we awaken our hearts from the prison of separation; may we seek to end the daily violence, injustice and oppression faced by African Americans.”

Transcript available here: “Beloved Community” – talk by Tara Brach

The pathway to presence does not involve efforts or striving. As you will find in this simple, gentle meditation, a vibrant and healing presence is possible as we wake up all our senses and intentionally relax with our changing experience. The gift is a true sense of homecoming, and with that openheartedness and peace.

This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.

From the meditation closing:

As part of closing this meditation, sensing whatever wish or blessing you’d like to offer to yourself right now. What would bring healing happiness your life? Widening that heart space to include someone who is dear to you. Sensing your appreciation for that person’s goodness. Offering your wish, your blessings to them. Sensing the heart as edgeless… boundless… open… including all of life everywhere.

May all beings everywhere be filled with loving presence, held in loving presence. May all beings everywhere find great and natural peace. May all beings everywhere be happy, know the natural joy of being alive. May all beings everywhere awaken and be free.

Namaste

If we realized how profoundly our chronic judgment creates separation and blocks the flow of love, we’d dedicate more deeply to disarming our hearts. Drawing on practices from the Bodhisattva path, these two talks explore the process of disarming—bridging divides with those close in, and opening our hearts to those at a distance who we consider a ‘bad other” or enemy. As we cultivate the capacity for true disarming, we experience a growing sense of belonging, Oneness and the freedom of an awakened heart.

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, "the spirit likes to dress up," from Mary Oliver.

This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature. The three qualities often described as the essence of awareness: wakeful, open, tender.”

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 our wholeness and essence.

This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”

This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body – bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.

The pace of change is speeding up and much of the news we receive is alarming. More than ever, we need the inner reflections and meditations that help us connect with our capacities for clarity, bravery and openheartedness. This is what Tara explores with Oren Jay Sofer, in his book entitled: Your Heart Was Made For This: Contemplative Practices to Meet a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love (2023.) Oren teaches mindfulness, meditation and non violent communication, and his prior book is bestselling Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication (2018.) Learn more about Oren Jay Sofer and order books at: https://www.orenjaysofer.com

When we learn to listen to our inner life without interference, we open to a tender and full experience of presence. This meditation guides us in awakening an intimate quality of listening, as we attend to sensations, moods, sounds and the entire dance of life.

We have strong conditioning to identify as a separate self, and to feel all the fears and attachments that arise from not realizing our true belonging. This talk includes teachings and several experiential reflections that help us wake up from the trance of separation. As we grow familiar with the awareness and love that is our shared true nature, we naturally live from that loving, and experience a growing freedom and joy. [Spring Retreat, April 2024 - Art of Living Retreat Center]

This practice brings attention to the continuous space within and around the body, and the aliveness of sound, sensation and feeling that lives through us. While it’s natural for attention to get distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back into the awake space that is aware of this changing life.

Many are familiar with the Dali Lama’s words “My religion is kindness.” In this conversation you will sense the gritty and real way that we struggling humans can learn to cherish one another. We talk about the relationship between boundaries and compassion; the unshakeable goodness at our core; how we belong to each other, and how judgments arise from delusion and blind us to the blessing of that belonging.

Father Greg Boyle is an American Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. He is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, author of several books, including Tattoos on the Heart; Barking to the Choir; and in 2023, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness.

Father Greg’s life and work are a huge inspiration: he is dedicated to living from love and cultivating loving community with a marginalized population of ex inmates, gang members and their families. You can find out more about Father Greg and Homeboy Industries at: https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/father-greg/

When we attune to the inner body, we discover a field of energy and aliveness that is the portal to pure presence. This meditation guides our attention to the inner body, opens to the play of sound and invites us to rest in the awake awareness that includes and is the grounds of this living world.

Mindfulness and compassion, when brought to our wounded heart, have the capacity to rewire our brain and free our spirit. This talk explores the ways we get trapped in the trance of feeling unworthy and unlovable, and how, with a wise attention, we can profoundly transform our relationship with our inner life. NOTE: this talk was given at the 5-day "The Undivided Heart" residential retreat on 2024-04-09.

In times of 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.

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.  What happens when you’re really listening?

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 our wholeness and essence.

You might ask, "Is it possible to let go just a little more right now?" Include what arises, sounds, whatever reactions to the sounds, sensations in the body. Let life live through you, resting in that wakefulness, openness, silence that's listening.

In this conversation, recorded for the acclaimed podcast, No Small Endeavor, award winning theologian Lee C. Camp interviews Tara about radically accepting and loving our being, just as we are. The conversation includes an unpacking of the RAIN meditation, and stories of navigating difficulty from Tara’s life.

No Small Endeavor, produced by Great Feeling Studios and PRX, brings you thoughtful conversations with artists, theologians and philosophers about what it means to live a good life. You can find the No Small Endeavor Podcast on your favorite podcast app or listen to more episodes here: https://link.chtbl.com/LN08h4po?sid=TaraBrach

One translation of mindfulness, in Chinese, is “present heart.” In this guided meditation we begin by awakening through the body and the senses, and then open the attention to the changing flow of experience. The intention is to meet whatever arises with a wakeful and kind presence.

It's so helpful to say, "What's happening inside me right now?" Then, “Can I meet this with kindness, with a present heart?"

Connirae Andreas was one of the first trainers in neurolinguistic programming (NLP), developed and wrote a book on the Core Transformation Process, and more recently, the Wholeness Process. Her new book, The Wholeness Work Essential Guide: Level I—Healing and Awakening is the focus of our conversation.

Connirae’s teachings and practices are deep and impactful. She is gifted in communicating and guiding our inner unfolding in a way that makes accessible the domains of deep awakening and freedom pointed to by great mystics, poets and teachers over the centuries. And as this conversation reveals, the Wholeness Work can be transformational for new and seasoned meditators alike.

To learn more about Connirae Andreas and The Wholeness Work, visit: https://www.thewholenesswork.org

If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom, the awake space of Being, that is beyond the confines of thoughts.

Stress and overwhelm are spiking around the globe. This talk explores how we can practice with the arising of stress in ways that calm our body and tap our capacity for full presence, wisdom and love.

This meditation guides us in embodying loving presence through a body scan, and then meeting whatever arises with a tender heart.

“Resting in the awareness that includes this changing life, regarding the changing waves with care, moment-to-moment. The moments of waking up out of thought are actually profoundly transformational. If you notice thinking and then plant the seeds of kindness, that becomes the habit of the heart.” ~Tara

We close with a beautiful blessing-poem from John O’Donohue, from Beauty – The Invisible Embrace.

How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.

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.

"Our freedom comes not from what is happening, but from how we are relating to it. See if you can relate with the spirit of yes, allowing whatever arises to be here. And if it feels difficult, painful, then bringing some real kindness, a 'yes' with gentleness and kindness."

Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness.

These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness, openheartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.

Meditation becomes truly freeing in the moments when there is no controlling whatsoever; when nothing is resisted or grasped after. This guided meditation begins with a simple body scan, relaxing and awakening to sensations in the body and then including the play of sound.

We then let go of any doing, and simply notice and allow the changing flow of experience, letting life be just as it is. In this pure allowing presence we become aware of the background silence that is listening. The invitation is to relax and be the awareness that is conscious of all that is unfolding.

Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness.

These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness, openheartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.

We spend great swaths of time in a trance that removes us from awareness of our body and senses. This meditation reconnects us by scanning through the body, including sounds and then resting in the field of awareness and aliveness. We practice relaxing and gently arriving again when thoughts carry us away; learning the pathway home to living presence.

Executive coach and author Stephen Josephs has worked with many top business leaders, guiding them in transcending the egoic conditioning that limit their impact on other people, and on societal change. In this conversation we look at what he’s learned about inner freedom and awakening from his own trauma, from 60 years of spiritual practice, from models of adult development, and from the poetry of Lao Tzu. Stephen and Tara have been close friends for over 50 years, and she considers him her first inspiration for a dedicated practice of meditation. His website is stephenjosephs.com.

Our pathway to peace and happiness is through opening, with tenderness, to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation guides us first to be awake in our body and senses, and then to include the changing flow of life in a spacious, kind heart. We close with a short verse from poet Dorothy Hunt - Peace Is This Moment Without Judgment. 

While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence.  This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart. We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go. The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.

This meditation awakens our senses, then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now. 

“Listening to and feeling, the changing flow - right here, right in the center of now.”

What is the Path to Peace? A conversation with Tara Brach and Assaf Katz - Assaf Katz is an activist and Buddhist teacher in Israel who opposes the Israeli governments’ devastating military action and long occupation in Palestine, and is dedicated to finding a path to peace. This conversation was part of an event for the Tovana mediation community in Israel. We talk about the inner process behind my circulation of a short piece responding to the violence in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel; how we can work with strong reactive emotions and trauma; what helps us to speak and act in a way that is truly serves the greater good, and what can give us hope for eventual peace. This offering includes the recording of a question/response period and a sharing of prayers.

Read the article "What is Love Asking From Us?": https://www.tarabrach.com/blog-what-is-love-asking-from-us/

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 ends with a sense of melting into community – relaxed and alert.

Letting Go of Controlling – Part 1: The Path of Freedom - While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence.

This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart. We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go.

The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.

Meditation: Letting Go… Letting Be - This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.

Changing Unhealthy Habits of Eating - A Conversation between Tara and Judson Brewer - Countless people live with shame and distress about their eating. Dr. Judson Brewer, scientist, professor and author of “The Hunger Habit” (https://drjud.com/the-hunger-habit/) and many other groundbreaking books, is a thought leader in the field of habit change. He’s also a decades long practitioner of mindfulness, and a dear colleague and friend. In this conversation we explore how combining mindfulness practice with a basic understanding of habit change science can free us from unhealthy eating habits. We also look at the larger societal forces that drive overconsumption, as well as the shame that eating behaviors can evoke.

Meditation: Listening to our Heart - True listening arouses an open receptive presence that can be truly healing. This meditation awakens a listening presence; first bringing that receptive awareness to sensations and sounds, and then offering that presence to the tenderness and vulnerability of our heart.

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

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.

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 2-part special favorite from the archives).

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 (from the archives).

It doesn’t matter how many times the mind drifts. It’s the gentle re-arriving that retrains your heart and mind. Just to choose to come back… Perhaps to sense what might let go a little more… If there’s something that might want to relax a bit more right now… To listen to and feel the changing moment-to-moment experience with an awake, open awareness. ~ Tara

Coming Home to True Refuge - While we habitually try to control our life, our true refuge—the source of peace, safety and freedom—is in the direct realization of reality itself. This talk explores three archetypal portals to true refuge—awareness (buddha), truth (dharma) and love (sangha.) With each we practice short reflections that help bring the particular gateway to refuge alive.

Meditation: Energy and Source - Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever-creative living world.

The Sacred Pause - When we are lost in the trance of doing, our lives are on automatic, and contracted by sense that something’s wrong or missing. This talk explores the challenges of learning to pause, and the blessings that arise when we step out of our incessant mental and physical activity and reconnect with the being-qualities of presence, wisdom and love (a favorite from the archives).

“The deepest expression of love is this non-doing presence because that’s when we are inhabiting who we really are.”

Meditation: Opening to the Mystery - This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source. The meditation closes with “Walk Slowly”, from the poetry of Danna Faulds.

Finding True Belonging in the Midst of Stress - Our deepest longing is to feel our belonging to each other and all life. This reflection examines the primary forces that keep us trapped in a trance of separation. We then explore two powerful dimensions of spiritual practice that can undo trance and reveal the sentience and love that is our shared essence.

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.

Awakening from Trance – Embracing Unlived Life - When physical or emotional pain is too much, our conditioning is to pull away and avoid direct contact with raw feelings. The result is a trance – we are split off from the wholeness of our aliveness, intelligence and capacity to love. This talk explores how this dissociation shows up in our lives and how mindfulness enables us to integrate cut-off parts of our being in a powerful way, and awaken from this trance.

Meditation: Opening to the Sea of Presence - When our body and mind is relaxed, we become filled with a very awake, dynamic quality of presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing, opening our senses and resting in the vastness and inherent freedom of our own natural awareness.

Basic Goodness and Awe: A conversation between Tara Brach and Dacher Keltner - Our conversation covers the biological, evolutionary and cultural bases of human goodness and the centrality of awe in the human experience. We explore the blocks to experiencing our full potential, and ways we can cultivate our innate capacity for finding wonder, love, creativity and beauty in our daily lives. 

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, a scientist and the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has authored a number of books, including bestselling "Born to be Good" and most recently "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life".

Learn more about Dacher's latest book at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622175/awe-by-dacher-keltner/

Guided Meditation: Whole Body Breathing - This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.

How Do We Bridge the Divides? - The divides in our world can only exist if we humans are divided from our own full being and habituated to divides with others. In this reflection we explore bridging inner and relational divides as the grounds for evolving consciousness in our species and awakening to more connectedness and love in our world. 

Meditation: Breathing Our Way to Peace & Freedom - This meditation guides us in collecting attention with an intentional long deep 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.

“Little breath breathe me gently, row me, for I am the river I am learning to cross.” – W.S. Merwin

A Generous Heart - Our deep potential is to live from an awake, loving heart. This talk looks at how, with a kind and mindful attention, we can decondition habitual tendencies toward grasping and self-centeredness, and nourish the sense of connectedness and care that gives rise to generosity. As we bring these heart practices alive in our most immediate relationships, they have the power to evolve consciousness in widening circles across the world.

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

Becoming Happier: Conversation with Tara Brach and Arthur Brooks - The Dalai Lama regularly says that everyone wants to be happy, nobody wants to suffer. Arthur Brooks, in his new book on getting happier (co-authored with Oprah Winfrey) digs into the practical and science-based approaches that increase deep well-being. In this conversation Tara and Arthur discuss the ingredients of happiness, the role of unhappiness in our lives, how to work with core ego-fears, the power of metacognition, the necessity of transcendence of small self and the love that is the grounds of true happiness. 

Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence - Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment-to-moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Wherever you are, Find a Trail.”

The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance - When we are caught in self-judgment, we forget the truth of who we are – our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of Radical Acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.

Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying Yes to the Moment - 

When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We 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 capacity for unconditional love.

…Exploring what it means to unconditionally say “yes” to the life that’s here… In the moment when that “yes” becomes full, our hearts awaken in love. ~ Tara

Mindful Glimpses: A Conversation with Tara Brach and Loch Kelly - Loch Kelly is an author, psychotherapist and highly respected meditation teacher known for his instructions for effortless mindfulness. Our rich and wide-ranging conversation includes themes of interconnectedness, the natural weaves of psychology and meditation, the healing of self-compassion, the power of short glimpses into the nature of reality, RAIN, prayer, awakening through social identities, turning toward dying, centering joy and much more!

Loch is offering Tara's listeners a special discount code of 20% off an annual subscription for the Mindful Glimpses App when you use this link: https://mindfulglimpses.com/tara

Meditation: The Sea of Awareness - Our attention habitually fixates on the foreground of thoughts and feelings, and fuels an unconscious identification with a sense of separate self. This meditation guides us in recognizing the awareness that is the background and source of all experience. By resting in and as the awareness that we are, all sense of separation dissolves revealing the vastness and oneness of Being.

A Conversation with Tara and Stephen Fulder: What is our Refuge in the Midst of Crisis - Stephen Fulder is a senior Buddhist teacher, author and peace activist who lives and teaches in Israel. In this conversation Stephen shares about his experience during the unfolding violence in the Middle East, and what he and his community are doing to tend to the huge trauma people are feeling. He talks about being with intense fear and emotions, and how to talk with those who have very different views. And he shares about the past decades of the deep and powerful work he’s been involved in, bringing groups of Israeli and Palestinian people together to find their shared hearts and humanity. Together Stephen and Tara look at what our true refuge is in the midst of a world in crisis and pathways that can carry us to that precious space of equanimity, compassion and love. Stephen is author of "The Five Powers: A guide to personal peace and freedom"   www.stephenfulder.com

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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 close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.

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Four Spiritual Inquiries: Finding Heart Wisdom in Painful Times - When we get stuck in difficult emotions like hatred, anger and fear, we are in a trance of separation - disconnected from the whole of our inner experience, each other and the web of life. This talk explores four inquiries that help us reconnect with presence and heart. Rather than reacting with aggression or blame, these inquiries allow us to respond to our struggling world with our naturally wise and caring heart.

Meditation: Relaxing with Life - This meditation includes a mindful body scan and guidance in relaxing with the changing waves of experience. When we say “Yes” to the moment, we open to the sea of awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.

Radical Self-Forgiving - When we can’t forgive ourselves, we remain imprisoned and separate from our world. This talk explores forgiving as a process of relaxing open the clenched fist of self-blame. As forgiving becomes deep and full, we discover the freedom of a spacious, awake and loving heart.

Meditation: Living Presence with Body Scan - A key pathway to full presence is awakening through the body. This meditation guides us through a body scan, relaxing and receiving the play of sensations. We then deepen attention to the breath, and rest with the rhythmic waves of breathing, experiencing the background of the whole domain of physical aliveness.

Longing for Freedom: A conversation with Tara Brach and Lama Rod Owens - In his recent book, The New Saints, Lama Rod Owens offers teachings and practices that awaken our longing for freedom, and help us realize the truth of who we are.

This week, I sat down with Lama Rod to talk about how an authentic path of liberation must include the often unexamined layers of our personal and societal existence.

Pre-order the book: The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors

Meditation: Letting Thought Clouds Come and Go  - This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.

"It’s in that gap between thoughts that the light shines through – this mystery, this living mystery of what’s right here… opening to and relaxing into the life that’s right here." ~ Tara

Awakening from the Trance of Self-Centeredness - At the core of our suffering is our universal human predicament: an illusion that we are a separate self. This talk explores how this identification as a self obscures our belonging to loving awareness, and offers a powerful set of practices that shine a light on self-centeredness and relaxes its grip.

Meditation: Continuous Space Suffused with Awareness - By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.

Saying Yes (Part 2): A Conversation with Tara Brach & Jane Hirshfield - In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance that reveal our belonging to this world and open us to caring. Here’s a link to Jane’s most recent book: The Asking: New and Selected Poems. The interview includes readings from this beautiful collection.

Meditation: Opening to the Flow - This meditation begins with gathering awareness of the breath. We then reflect on our deepest intention, sensing what most matters. With a listening attention, becoming aware of sounds that arise and pass away. We scan through the body, sensing the changing experience of energy and aliveness. Letting everything happen… not opposing anything… not controlling… moment to moment. Listening to and feeling this moment as an ever-changing river of experience. Opening to this changing flow and letting life flow through us.

Saying Yes: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Jane Hirshfield - In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance that reveal our belonging to this world and open us to caring. Jane’s most recent book is “The Asking: New and Selected Poems” and the interview includes readings from this beautiful collection. Order your copy of "The Asking" at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/715681/the-asking-by-jane-hirshfield/

Meditation: Everything Belongs - This guided meditation awakens an embodied presence through a body scan, and invites us to rest in the breath, while allowing the different waves of sensations, feelings and sounds to come and go. When difficult experiences arise, we breathe with them, feeling them fully and mentally whispering, “this belongs,” or “this too.” By not resisting, we discover the sea of awareness that has room for all the waves.

Path of Sacred Relatedness - Undoing the Blocks to Loving Presence - We long for soul friends, and yet often engage with each other in reactive ways - caught inside the experience of a wanting, guarded, fearful self. This talk explores practices that release identification with these scales that confine us, so we can remember the sacredness living through ourselves and all beings.

Meditation: At Home in the Moment - This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the “smile down” and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying “Yes” to the life that is here.

The Honesty Challenge - Getting more truthful with ourselves and our world - Most of us value honesty yet are not aware of how regularly we avoid facing what’s difficult inside us, and how we are less than truthful with others.  This talk explores the practice of radical self-honesty as the grounds of being more honest with others, and bringing more love and freedom to our lives. We close with a quote, “What’s True Here,” from Danna Faulds.

Meditation: Vipassana – The Practice of Seeing Clearly - Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.

The Superpower of Mindful Witnessing - The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.

Meditation: Being a Kind Witness - Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness. "A witnessing awareness like a kind grandmother watching children - that simply notices what's happening without judgment.”

Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness - 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.

(a special talk given at the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat)

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

Part 2: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom - The Buddha said, “I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible.” While this is our potential, we each have deep conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of well-being, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into the Mystery - All true meditation guides us back to presence, and the mystery that is our source. In this guided meditation we awaken the senses, collect with the breath, and when lost in thought, practice relaxing back into the aliveness and awareness that is always here. We close with a beautiful poem from poet Danna Faulds.

Part 1: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom - The Buddha said, “I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible.” While this is our potential, we each have deep conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of wellbeing, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.

Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath - Our breath is always available as a pathway back to presence. This simple meditation guides us to relax and awaken in the body, and then establishes the breath as a home base for our attention. Our practice is to notice when the mind becomes distracted, and gently return to our breath and senses. This helps the mind to become increasingly settled, calm and clear. We close with a short heart blessing.

Intimacy with Life (Part 2) - Zen master Dōgen teaches that enlightenment is intimacy with all things. These two talks explore teachings and practices that cultivate intimacy - a liberating experience of relatedness and oneness with our living world.

Guided Meditation: Intimacy with the Flow of Life - The meditation begins with a body scan, filling the body with aliveness. Then we widen attention, becoming aware of the sounds that are happening moment-to-moment, aware of the sensations, feelings, or emotions that are here. Again and again, the invitation is to relax back into presence, intimate with the life living through you. In allowing life to be just as it is, we inhabit pure Beingness, at home in the dynamic and tender awareness that is our shared essence.

Intimacy with Life (Part 1) - Zen master Dōgen teaches that enlightenment is intimacy with all things. These two talks explore teachings and practices that cultivate intimacy - a liberating experience of relatedness and oneness with our living world.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence - 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.

Being with Love, Death and Grief - Grief is our natural way of expressing loss for what we love, and learning to open to grief serves the deepening and widening of our loving. This event, given at the Upaya Zen Center on June 25, 2023, includes short meditations and talks by Frank Ostaseski and Tara, and a powerful session of questions and responses.

Meditation: Present Heart - We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.

Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2) - Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as the interviewer.

Meditation: From Head to Full Being - When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being.

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought!  Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?  Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down  in always widening rings of being. 

Three Core Reminders for Spiritual Practice - This talk explores three powerful ways you can direct your attention when you find yourself emotionally stuck: wake up from thoughts; feel your feelings; and remember love. We explore both the habits blocking these basic movements toward freedom, and what nourishes them. Together they can serve to open your mind, awaken aliveness and heal your heart.

Meditation: Loving What Is - While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions to move through us, just as they are. As this allowing presence deepens, it becomes suffused with the tenderness of love.

Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 1) - Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as the interviewer.

Meditation: Meeting Life with a Kind Presence - This practice guides us to a receptive, kind presence by starting with listening, and moving through a body scan. We then rest in open awareness, responding to whatever arises with gentle attention.

Unwinding Anxiety with Awareness (Part 2): A conversation with Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer - Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction. Together they explore the power of particular mindfulness-based strategies, including noting what is happening, recognizing our habit loops, arousing curiosity and cultivating self-care. They shine a light on the genesis of worrying, how it perpetuates anxiety and ways we can become disenchanted with the habit.

If you’d like to join an online community that is dedicated to reducing stress and easing anxiety with the power of renowned neuroscientist, Judson Brewer’s 3-step methodology, check out the new Mindful Friends Groups at Cloud Sangha.

Meditation: Resting in Breath, Relaxing into Life - This meditation invites us to collect our attention with a calming breath, and then with the senses as a home base, settle into presence. The reminders encourage a letting go of thoughts, shifting from virtual reality into the aliveness of moment-to-moment experience. In that letting go into life we find the stillness, wakefulness and openness of our true nature.

Unwinding Anxiety with Awareness (Part 1): A conversation with Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer - Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction. Together they explore the power of particular mindfulness-based strategies, including noting what is happening, recognizing our habit loops, arousing curiosity and cultivating self-care. They shine a light on the genesis of worrying, how it perpetuates anxiety and ways we can become disenchanted with the habit.

If you’d like to join an online community that is dedicated to reducing stress and easing anxiety with the power of renowned neuroscientist, Judson Brewer’s 3-step methodology, check out the new Mindful Friends Groups at Cloud Sangha.

Meditation – Cultivating a Relaxed Attention - In this meditation we engage a relaxed and alert attention by scanning through the body, opening to sound, and resting in the awareness that includes all the senses. This presence is stabilized with the use of a home base, for many the breath, and reminders to “relax back” when the mind naturally drifts.

Facing Fear (Part 2) – 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: Relaxing with Life - This meditation begins with a body scan, and then we practice opening to and relaxing with our changing experience. The sitting closes with a beautiful poem by Danna Faulds, “Just for Now.”

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 - 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.

Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit (Part 2) - Addictions of all levels of intensity arise from disconnection and are spiking globally. Humans are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness, and this combined with engineered products and substances that are highly addictive leads to great suffering. In these two talks, we explore how we get hooked on behaviors that we know cause harm, and how mindfulness and self-compassion can serve our freedom. Key to this process is reconnecting

Meditation: Letting Life Live through You - This meditation awakens the senses and then guides us into the wakeful openness that includes the whole play of sensations, feelings and sound. We become fully awake and alive as we open to the awareness that allows life to live through us.

Pt1 - Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit - Addictions of all levels of intensity arise from disconnection and are spiking globally. Humans are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness, and this combined with engineered products and substances that are highly addictive leads to great suffering. In these two talks, we explore how we get hooked on behaviors that we know cause harm, and how mindfulness and self-compassion can serve our freedom. Key to this process is reconnecting with our inner life, and remembering we are in this together, awakening together.

Meditation: Receiving This Life in Awareness - 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.

Radical Acceptance – Gateway to Love, Wisdom and Peace - Acceptance is radical because it undoes our resistance to reality. This talk explores how our meditation practice can cultivate a liberating acceptance, a heartspace that includes all of life and enables us to respond to our world with deep intelligence and compassion. all life.

Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care  - This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet, Dorothy Hunt, “Peace is this Moment Without Judgment.”

Cultivating Loving Kindness – Seeing the Goodness - The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.

Meditation: Embodied Spirit - Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.

Realizing True Nature: A conversation with Hameed Ali and Tara Brach - Hameed Ali is an author, spiritual teacher and founder of the Diamond Approach to Self-Realization. In this interview we explore ways of approaching awakening to who we are, and look at the importance of befriending the experience of separate self, and actively investigating the blocks - our contracted sense of identity - that obscure the goodness and love of our true nature. Our time weaves in the inspiration of Hameed’s most recent book, Nondual Love, (his pen name A.H. Almaas is listed as author.)

Meditation: Inhabiting Awake Awareness - This meditation begins with collecting attention with the breath, and awakens us to the experience of aliveness and inner space by scanning the body. We then open to receive all the senses in awake awareness, and to inhabiting that boundless receptive awareness that is our home.

Finding True Refuge in This Living Dying World - Part 1 - This week, I began a two-part series inspired by Pema Chödron's newest offering, How We Live is How We Die. It's a powerful book that I highly recommend!

One of our deepest inquiries is how to find happiness and peace in an inherently insecure world. In these talks, we'll explore the ways we habitually try to control our lives, and the practices of presence that allow us to cherish this living world and find freedom in the midst of change and loss.

Finding True Refuge in This Living Dying World  - Part 2 - Last week, I began a two-part series inspired by Pema Chödron’s newest offering, How We Live is How We Die. It’s a powerful book that I highly recommend! 

One of our deepest inquiries is how to find happiness and peace in an inherently insecure world. In these talks, we’ll explore the ways we habitually try to control our lives, and the practices of presence that allow us to cherish this living world and find freedom in the midst of change and loss.

Meditation: Living Presence - The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body - bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.

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.

The Power of Deep Listening – Part 2 - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening - Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem “lost” by David Wagoner.

The Power of Deep Listening – Part 1 - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Aliveness and Presence - This meditation guides us to wake up our senses and full aliveness through a body scan, and then to rest in the formless presence that is aware of this changing dance of life. We close with a poem by Robert Hall.

Compassion for All Living Beings - We often talk of widening the circles of compassion. This talk explores the qualities of mature compassion, what blocks us from this embodied and inclusive caring, and how each of us can awaken a heart that responds to our world’s suffering.

Meditation:  Say “Yes” to Life - 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.

The Wings of Awakening – Self-Honesty & Love (retreat talk) -  We evolve our consciousness by bringing a clear and kind attention to the tangles of suffering. This talk explores how the “second arrow” of self-judgment imprisons us in emotional reactivity, and the pathways of awakening awareness that reconnect us with our full human potential. (This talk was given at the 2016 IMCW fall silent retreat.)

Meditation: Spacious Sky of Awareness - This meditation begins with a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. We relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, open awareness. (from a morning on the 2015 New Year's silent retreat)

Making the Whole World Your Friend - A wonderful translation of the Pali word Metta is friendliness. This talk looks at friendliness through an evolutionary lens, and explores ways we can cultivate a more open heart.

Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life - 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. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.

Refuge in the Wilderness - Pt2 – Coming Home to Embodied Presence - When we live from our mental control towers, we are in a trance that confines our life. These two talks look at the primary ways we are conditioned to leave embodied presence, and the consequence of unlived life—being cut off from our vitality, intelligence and compassion. We then explore the teachings and practices that guide us to reconnect to our senses, and the sacred presence that underlies all lived experience.

Meditation: Homecoming to Our Life Breath - Perhaps the most universal place to collect and deepen attention is the breath.  This meditation begins with an intentional breath that calms the nervous system, and then opens to a clear, intimate presence with our natural breathing. With breath as our home base, we practice returning again and again when the mind becomes distracted. As presence grows, we can let the breath be in the foreground, and include whatever waves of life come and go.  This brings a quiet mind, and a peaceful, happy heart.

Refuge in the Wilderness - Part 1 - When we live from our mental control towers, we are in a trance that confines our life. These two talks look at the primary ways we are conditioned to leave embodied presence, and the consequence of unlived life—being cut off from our vitality, intelligence and compassion. We then explore the teachings and practices that guide us to reconnect to our senses, and the sacred presence that underlies all lived experience.

Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness - This meditation includes relaxing and awakening through the body, widening the lens to include sound and then letting life live through us, receiving all that arises in open awareness.

The RAIN of Forgiveness - The capacity to release the armoring of hatred and blame is intrinsic to our evolving consciousness. This talk explores the process of authentic forgiveness, and how we can use the mindfulness-based tool of RAIN to heal and free our hearts.

Meditation: Vipassana – Practice of Seeing Clearly - Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment-to-moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.

How to Stop the War Against Yourself - A conversation with Tara Brach & Dan Harris - It’s possible to actually be addicted to self-criticism, especially as a way to keep yourself safe. But evidence shows that rather than safety, this pervasive habit in our society creates deep suffering.

This conversation between Tara and Dan Harris dives into strategies to deal with your own self-hatred and cultivate a forgiving heart. (Note: This was initially created as an episode for 10% Happier Podcast)

Meditation: Opening to the River of Aliveness - This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home.

Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness - The Power of Self-Nurturing - While we all need to customize meditation, this is particularly important for those living with PTSD or strong, potentially overwhelming emotions. This talk explores how trauma cuts us off from wholeness, and is accompanied by a deep and painful experience of shame. We look at the ways meditation can be adapted to cultivate sufficient safety for the full transformational healing of mindfulness to unfold. The gift of processing trauma is that the place of woundedness becomes a gateway into profound love, healing, and freedom.

Meditation: Relaxing into Presence or Sleep - This meditation can help us to access a relaxed attentiveness, or alternately, serve as a pathway to ease-filled sleep.

Meditation, Psychedelics, Mortality: A conversation with Tara and Roland Griffiths - Roland is a long-term meditator, a psychopharmacologist and professor at Johns Hopkins, and a leader in researching the clinical effects of psychedelics, including their impact on those struggling with cancer, depression or addiction. At the end of 2021, he discovered he had incurable stage 4 Colon Cancer. This conversation explores the relationship between meditation and psychedelics, and how they both can serve profound spiritual awakening and deep inner freedom in the face of mortality.

Information about the endowment fund: The Roland R. Griffiths, Ph.D. Professorship Fund in Psychedelic Research on Secular Spirituality and Well-Being

Meditation: The Silence That is Listening - 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.

Trusting the Gold - Realizing Our Basic Goodness - Can you imagine a world where humans are able to look at each other and all of life, and see the light of the sacred shining through? This talk explores our potential for trusting the love and awareness that animate our living world. We investigate the suffering of othering, how the trance of separateness blinds us to our basic goodness, and then explore the practices that open our eyes to the larger truth of our shared belonging.

Meditation: Relaxing with a Smile into Living Presence - This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.

Tara shares a podcast from Dan Harris: The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness - Part 1 -

Dan Harris (host of Ten Percent Happier) flies to Dharamsala, India to spend two weeks in the orbit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This is the first installment of a five-part audio documentary series, something we’ve never done before now. Over the course of the episodes, we talk to His Holiness about practical strategies for thorny dilemmas, including: how to get along with difficult people; whether compassion can cut it in an often brutal world; why there is a self-interested case for not being a jerk; and how to create social connection in an era of disconnection. We also get rare insights from the Dalai Lama into everything from the mechanics of reincarnation to His Holiness’s own personal mediation practice. 

In this first installment, Dan watches as a young activist directly challenges His Holiness: In a world plagued by climate change, terrorism, and other existential threats, is the Dalia Lama’s message of compassion practical — or even relevant? 

Want more of The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness? Download the Ten Percent Happier app wherever you get your apps.

Realizing Your Deepest Intention - The Buddha taught that this whole life – including our thoughts, feelings and actions – arise from the tip of intention. While our intentions are usually marbled with wanting and fear, when intention comes into the light of consciousness, it unfolds into its most pure essence. This talk explores ways that when we are stuck in reactivity, we can become aware of intention, and find our way to the aspiration that expresses our most awake and loving heart.

Meditation: Awake Awareness is Our Home - This meditation guides us in awakening our awareness by opening to all our senses and recognizing the alert presence that is always, already here. By relaxing back into the presence over and over, we become familiar with the reality that is truly our home.

Freedom Beyond Selfing - We spend many moments in a trance of selfing - preoccupied with the stories, wants and fears of what feels to be a separate self. The suffering is that this self-fixation obscures the depth and mystery of our being. In this talk we explore how to relate wisely to selfing, and discover the light and love that express our true nature.

Meditation: Letting Go and Letting Be - We leave presence by contracting into thoughts and resisting the changing flow of life. This meditation guides us in gently releasing thoughts and opening to this mysterious life, just as it is.

Let go of what is past Let go of what may come Let go of what is happening now Don’t try to figure anything out Don’t try to make anything happen Relax right now and rest

~ Tibetan teaching

IntraConnected – Part 2: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel - In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, IntraConnected. They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms "Mwe" (me plus we.)  The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics. 

Meditation: "Yes" to Our Moments - When we open without resistance to the changing flow of aliveness, we discover the formless presence that is our true home. This meditation guides us through a body scan and then opening to all sounds, sensations and emotions with the energetic allowing of “Yes.” We close with a poem by Danna Faulds, “White Dove.”

IntraConnected – Part 1: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel - In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, IntraConnected. They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms "Mwe" (me plus we.)  The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics. 

Meditation: Body and Spirit - 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 (the spirit likes to dress up) from Mary Oliver.

Our True Nature - Emptiness Dancing (retreat talk) - The most profound question in spiritual life is “who (or what) am I?” This talk explores ways of inquiring into the nature of awareness, and the blessings of embodying the realization of our radiant, empty essence. This audio talk was first offered at the 2011 IMCW Fall Weeklong Retreat, and it includes several guided reflections.

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open Awareness - 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.

Embracing Life and Realizing the Nature of Awareness - Tara and Mingyur Rinpoche in Conversation -

In this interview, Mingyur Rinpoche shares about his 4 1/2 years on a wandering retreat and the lessons he learned from a near-death experience. The two then talk about what it means to befriend panic as well as other strong emotions, and the qualities that express our intrinsic awareness. They also talk about compassion for our world, the evolution of consciousness, and the value of hope.

About Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and his meditation community: https://tergar.org/

Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (from retreat) - We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience. NOTE: Given on the 4th morning of the 2018 IMCW New Year’s Retreat. It’s especially enjoyed when the mind is a bit quieter.

You might reflect on these words from the Tibetan tradition: "Utterly awake, senses wide open. Utterly open, non-fixating awareness."

A Grateful, Giving, Happy Heart - 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: Touching Peace - This guided meditation offers a pathway to quieting our mind and calming anxiety. We begin with long deep breathing, and with the breath, engage the image of a smile and relax through the body. Then we practice resting in relaxed awareness, allowing waves of thoughts, feelings and sensations to come and go. The meditation ends with a beautiful verse from poet Philip Booth.

The Calling of These Times - Part 2 - The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.

Meditation: Calling on Your Awakened Heart - In the midst of difficulty we need access to our deepest wisdom and love. This guided meditation calls forth this loving presence by opening to the heart and spirit of whatever being in our life we most experience as calm, wise and compassionate.

The Calling of These Times - Part 1 - The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.

Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves - We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience (from the 2018 IMCW New Year’s Retreat). It’s especially enjoyed when the mind is a bit quieter.

You might reflect on these words from the Tibetan tradition: Utterly awake, senses wide open. Utterly open, non-fixating awareness.

Three Practices for Nurturing Wise Hope - Wise or spiritual hope includes the aspiration to manifest our full potential, individually and collectively, and the trust that this is possible. This talk explores how, especially in stressful times, this hope gets clouded over by fear; and how when it is alive, wise hope energizes and guides all spiritual transformation. We look at three practices - 3 A’s - that help us nurture hope: Aspiration for what we love, Attending to what we love, and Actively serving what we love. This talk includes several poems by poet Danna Faulds.

Meditation: Befriending Our Experience - We begin the meditation with a sense of befriending our experience - with an intention towards gentleness and kindness as the attention goes inward. We scan the body, opening to sounds and the senses, resting in the awareness that includes this changing life. When the mind drifts, as it naturally does, we notice, then relax back into a receptive, listening presence. There’s nothing to do, simply letting life be as it is. Resting in the freedom of awake, open awareness.

Cultivating Inner Strength – A Conversation with Tara Brach and Lori Deschene -

What gives us the inner strength to meet life’s challenges with resilience, heart and wisdom? Drawing on themes in Lori’s new book, "The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal," Tara and Lori explore the mindset that is conducive to growth, working with negative beliefs, ways of transforming fear, and what it means to have inner strength in facing loss and death. We also talk about what can most empower and energize us in responding to a world struggling with multiple crises.

Find Lori Deschene’s “The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal” here: tinybuddha.com/strong. Lori also created several free companion resources, available at tinybuddha.com/strength-tools.

Meditation: At Home in the Moment - This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the “smile down” and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying "Yes" to the life that is here.

Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 2  - It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.

Meditation: Letting Life Be - This meditation establishes an atmosphere of loving kindness with the “smile”; relaxes and awakens through the body; and guides us into a spacious presence. We then rest in that presence, letting go of any controlling, and simply allow life to be as it is. It’s in “letting be” that we come home to the luminosity and tenderness of natural awareness. We close with a verse from Mary Oliver…

Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 1 - It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.

Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence - This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.

The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 2 - While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience. In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. These two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.

Meditation: Resting in the Center of Now - This meditation awakens our senses and then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now.

The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 1 - While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience. In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. These two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.

Meditation: Calling on Your Future Self - We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these inner resources by calling on the most evolved part of our being.

Radical Acceptance - Our Gateway to Love and Freedom - Our capacity to realize the truth of who we are and to love fully, arises from moments of true acceptance. This means meeting our unfolding life with an unconditional, open and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.

Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Reality - Our suffering comes from tensing and resisting the life that’s here. This meditation guides us to relax and awaken our body and senses, and resting in presence, allow life to be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 - This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.

Meditation: Relaxing with Life - This meditation includes a mindful body scan and guidance in relaxing with the changing waves of experience. When we say “Yes” to the moment, we open to the sea of awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 1 - This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.

Meditation: Resting in a Sea of Presence - This mindful body scan leads us into a practice of relaxing back into awareness, and recognizing the changing waves of sensations, sounds and feelings in the foreground. As we let go into the sea of presence, we discover am increasing sense of wholeness and peace. The meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.

Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating – A conversation with Tara Brach and Tricycle‘s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen -

A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice?

Tara and James discuss these and other important questions at the intersection of our dietary choices and spiritual path.

Survival of the Nurtured – Our Path to Belonging - We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the violence of our society and lack of attuned caretakers has severed trust and belonging. This talk explores how meditation and conscious relating with each other can restore the connections so vital to healing and spiritual freedom.

“We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured.” Louis Cozolino

Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts - We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.

Awakening through Difficult Emotions: "The Poison is the Medicine" - Most of us know the pain of getting stuck in fear, anxiety, anger or shame. This exploration looks at how the emotion that takes over, when we attend with mindfulness and care, can become a place of deep transformation and freedom. Included in the talk is a guided RAIN meditation.

Meditation: Breath by Breath - 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.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror - This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Listening to Life - 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 our wholeness and essence.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 2: Inner Fire - This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Open Awareness – Relaxing Back into Presence - This practice brings attention to the continuous space within and around the body, and the aliveness of sound, sensation and feeling that lives through us. While it’s natural for attention to get distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back into the awake space that is aware of this changing life.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 1: Forgiveness - This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Living Presence - The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body – bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.

Awakening from the Landlocked Self - The Buddha taught that our suffering arises from forgetting who we are. This talk explores the trance of identifying as Somebody, and the compassionate witnessing that allows us to discover the freedom of our natural being.

Meditation: Befriending and Opening to Life - 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 deepen the intention to befriend and relax with whatever arises moment-to-moment, letting life be just as it is. We offer a brief lovingkindness reflection, sensing our heart and mind, and offering whatever wish most resonates right now to ourselves and others.

2022-07-20 - Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening beyond the separate, fearful self - Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light on this conditioning and explores the ways that mindfulness, compassion and self-inquiry reveal the freedom of our true nature.

Meditation: The Breath – Portal to Presence - The meditation begins with breathing mindfully to collect and calm the body and mind. Then the attention opens to include the changing flow in a spacious natural presence.

From Dragons to Schmoos – Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence - The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons – the difficult emotions and related behaviors that are a deeply conditioned part of the human experience. In this talk we explore the awakening that is possible as we recognize our reactive patterns and instead of judgment, offer a loving and healing presence (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: Resting in Wakeful Presence - This meditation scans through the body - arriving in the foreground with sounds, feelings and sensations, like the surface waves of the sea coming and going. And in the background, experiencing an alert inner stillness – a vast presence from which all activity pours forth.

Navigating the Dark Ages - How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.

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.

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 2 - 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.

Meditation: Letting Go - One way of understanding meditation is a letting go of the habitual clenching of thoughts, the clenching that resists emotions and pulls away from aliveness itself. This meditation guides us in letting go, first through the body, and then practicing letting go of thoughts and relaxing and resting in the changing flow of experience. The blessing of letting go is a homecoming into the truth and wholeness of what we are, a realization of reality, and freedom.

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 - 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.

Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life (16:11 min.) - 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. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.

The Three Steps of Letting Go - A wonderful inquiry is, “What is between me and openhearted presence?” This talk explores the profound healing and transformation that arises when we release the blocks to our natural and loving awareness.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Open Wakefulness - This meditation begins by relaxing through the body and connecting with inner aliveness and space. We then include sounds and sense the openness to life. At the center of the practice is a relaxing back and inhabiting spacious awareness. The meditation ends as we experience the heart from the vantage of spacious awareness and offer prayers to our inner life and all life.

Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 2 - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding—to ourselves, each other and our world– with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence - Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment to moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Wherever you are, Find a Trail.”

Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 1 - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding – to ourselves, each other and our world – with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Reconnecting to Silence and Presence - Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”

Nourishing Our Spirit in Times of Collective Fear -

Meditation: Whole Body Breathing - This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.

Self Forgiveness with RAIN - Our inability to forgive ourselves blocks healing and freedom. As we explore in this talk, the habit of judging and blaming ourselves traps us in fears, prevents intimacy with our world, and veils over the goodness and mystery of who we are. This talk includes several reflections that can support us as we cultivate a wise and forgiving heart.

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 close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.

Equanimity – Part 4 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love

Meditation: The Space and Aliveness of Presence - We arrive in presence by deepening attention in the body; relaxing and awakening through a body scan. That presence deepens as we bring our attention to the space of awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings. In that wholeness of formlessness and form, we discover our natural being - open, awake and tender.

Joy – Part 3 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love - Part 3: Joy – blossoms in the moments our hearts open boundlessly to reality, to the 10,000 joys and sorrows. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome - This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence (a favorite "open space" meditation from the archives).

Compassion – Part 2 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love -

Part 2: Compassion – the tender resonance of heart – awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability.

This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: Awareness Is Our Home - This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.

Lovingkindness – Part 1 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love - We awaken our natural lovingkindness by learning to attend to and take in the goodness of this life.

This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: Path of Love - This heart practice opens with the intention to bring a kind presence to whatever arises. After arriving with a body scan, we are guided to meet all experience with an open tender awareness. The practice ends with a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer called “Is this the Path of Love?”

Responding with Heart to Painful Times: A Conversation with Tara & Frank Ostaseski - This event includes short talks addressing the suffering so many are experiencing, and questions and engagement with participants

Meditation: Present Heart - We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.

Relationships - from Reactivity to Rechoosing Love - Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more loving connection in our lives.

Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart - Especially when we’re stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.

Compassion toward Non-Human Animals - A Conversation between Konda Mason and Tara Brach - The medicine our world most needs is compassion, and it is crucial that this include all living beings. Our societal conditioning blinds us to the horror of suffering experienced by non-human animals through our cruel system of factory farming. This conversation looks at how facing and responding to this suffering is necessary for the freedom of our own hearts, and the healing of the world.  

Meditation: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves - By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we began to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, we rest in an ocean of awareness that embraces all the moving waves. We arrive in a sanctuary that feels large enough to hold whatever was going on.

Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 2 - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.

Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness - Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.

Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 1 - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path. 

Meditation: Embodied Spirit - Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness that is the source of all being.

Engaged Spirituality during Times of Upheaval - Engaged spirituality means responding to our world’s suffering with wisdom and deep care. This talk looks at three blocks to aligning our actions with our heart – “bad othering,” dissociation and overwhelm. We explore how we can awaken from each reaction to suffering by drawing on our practices of presence and remembering our larger belonging.

Meditation: Compassion Practice – Tonglen - Our deepest wisdom and purest actions arise out of open-hearted presence. This meditation, “Awakening Compassion,” is drawn from the Tibetan tradition and carries us home to the vastness of loving presence (re-mastered from the 2013 IMCW fall 7-day silent retreat).

Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence - If we want to bring our intelligence, creativity and love into our relationships and world, we need to be able to access an inner refuge of presence. This talk explores how, when we’re reacting from anger, clinging or fear, to pause, reconnect to the immediate experience of “just this” and remember the love and awareness that has room for the changing waves of life. 

Meditation: Being a Kind Witness - Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness.

Radical Acceptance - Gateway to Love, Wisdom and Peace - (2022-02-23) - Acceptance is radical because it undoes our resistance to reality. This talk explores how our meditation practice can cultivate a liberating acceptance, a heartspace that includes all of life and enables us to respond to our world with deep intelligence and compassion.

Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care - This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet Dorothy Hunt.

Cultivating Loving Kindness - The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.

Heart Meditation: Loving Kindness – Befriending our Lives - This heart meditation 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 (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat).

Love in Action: Realizing Interbeing - The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it's led humans to destroying our larger body, Earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.

Meditation: Spacious, Clear Awareness - This meditation begins with a breath that calms and collects the attention, and then a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. Finally, we relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, clear awareness.

The Earth is Crying in our Hearts - The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web.  These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it's led humans to destroying our larger body, earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.

Meditation: Breathing Through - Drawn from a classic Tibetan Buddhist compassion practice, this guided meditation invites us to open to the sufferings of the world, and let it move through our hearts and out again. The blessing of this offering of presence is that our hearts become a transformer of sorrow.

Living with Courageous Presence - The essence of courage is to willingly feel our vulnerability; this is what allows us to respond to life with an undefended, wise heart. This talk explores the ways we resist opening to vulnerability, and three key steps in cultivating a courageous presence.

Meditation: Know That You're Here - We spend many moments in a trance, time traveling to the past and future, lost in a virtual reality. This meditation helps us collect our attention with our breath, awaken through the body, and open the senses. We then rest in the wakeful openness that includes changing experience, aware of the mystery and vividness of being Here.

Resilience and Wisdom in an Uncertain World (Conversation: Tara & Trisha Stotler, IMCW) - The Buddhist scriptures describe a mind that “no longer shakes, in a world where everything is shaking.” Our times are deeply stressful and troubling, and we need individual and collective ways of responding from our deepest understanding and care. In this interview, Tara reflects on the perspectives and ways of practicing that allow us to engage in relationships and our larger society from an awake compassionate heart.

Meditation: Silence, Presence and Care (2022-01-19) - Quieting our busy bodies and minds brings alive our heart and spirit. This practice begins with a reading on silence by Gunilla Norris, and then includes guidance in letting go of tension, opening to aliveness and resting in a caring and wakeful awareness.

Compass of Our Heart - All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and energizes our awakening hearts and minds. This talk explores the movement from egoic intention to liberating intention…the movement from “my will” to “my heart’s will” (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (2022-01-12) - When we fully inhabit our body, we discover the space and wakefulness of awareness itself. In this meditation, we rest in this open awareness, and when the attention narrows into thoughts, we practice relaxing back into the openness that includes passing sounds, sensations and feelings. We close with a brief offering of lovingkindness to our own hearts and our world (with community OMs – no bell at end).

Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering - This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn (to participate you will need a 20” red string.)

A verse from Ryokan, an eighteenth-century Zen poet, came to mind: “To find the Buddhist law, drift east and west, come and go, entrusting yourself to the waves.”

Meditation: Letting Go… Letting Be (2022-01-05) - This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.

Meditation: What Matters to your Heart? - Entering a new year is a wonderful opportunity to clarify our purpose. In this guided visualization, we are invited to attune to the state of our heart and our deepest aspiration.

Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part 3 - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.

Meditation: Awakening an Intimate Presence (2021-12-29) - 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.

Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part II (2021-12-22) - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.  

Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence (2021-12-22) - 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.

Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part I (2021-12-15) - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.

Meditation: Collecting and Quieting the Mind (2021-12-15) - Our conditioned mind is filled with distractions, including worry-thoughts that continually create anxiety in the body. This meditation guides us in relaxing the body, and then establishing the breath as a home base. By gathering and collecting the attention, the mind can settle and allow for a relaxed, wakeful presence.

Awakening from the Trance of Unworthiness - Interview with Tara and Dr. Mark Hyman (2021-12-09) - Our healing and freedom unfolds as we bring radical acceptance - a mindful, allowing presence - to our moments. This interview looks at how we wake up out of the stories that keep us in fear and self-doubt, and discover a true intimacy with ourselves and our world.

Meditation: Refuge in Presence (2021-12-08) - We arrive in presence through the gateway of the body, scanning through with awareness, and then resting with the breath and body sensations. As we include whatever arises with a gentle and kind attention, our inner refuge becomes increasingly stable and openhearted. This meditation ends with a brief loving-kindness prayer.

Preparing our Hearts for the Holidays (2021-12-01) - While the holidays can be times of loving celebration, they can also highlight relational conflicts and challenges. This talk explores how, given the stress of the season, we can bring grace and openheartedness to ourselves and others.

Heart Meditation: Taking in the Goodness (2021-12-01) - Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, “Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness.” This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.

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 (from the archives).

Meditation: Energy and Source (2021-11-24) - Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever creative living world.

Recevoir la bonté présente - Méditation de retraite - Rumi à dit : « À chaque fois que vous recevez une gentillesse, tournez-vous vers sa source, la source de la bienveillance. »  Cette méditation nous guide à chercher la Source de l’amour et à nous tourner vers elle. Cette méditation débute avec une pratique de bienveillance qui répand l’image du sourire dans tout notre corps pour continuer avec une pratique de reconnaitre la bonté en nous et chez les autres.

Cette méditation est de Tara Brach. Elle est traduite et dite avec sa permission par Dominique Fugère (Québec, Canada).

Facing the Truths That Keep Us from Love: Conversation between Rev Angel Kyodo Williams and Tara Brach - Our happiness and capacity to love fully arise as we face and embrace all domains of our existence. In this conversation we look at the often unexamined societal conditioning that, when unseen, perpetuates caste systems that harm ourselves and all involved. Our inquiry: For the sake of freedom, how do we deepen our attention to see the forces that cut us off from wholeness, from belonging, from living from an awake, compassionate heart?

Meditation: Filling Our Body with Love (2021-11-17) - When we are fully awake, love shines through our entire body and being. This meditation awakens that embodied love through the image and felt sense of the smile, scanning through the body, resting in loving presence and offering loving prayer.

Meditation: RAIN of Compassion (9 min.) - In this short practice we are guided in bringing the mindfulness and self-nurturing of RAIN to a difficult emotion. This helps us shift from feeling stuck and reactive to the tender and spacious presence that is our true home.

Fear and Love (2021-11-01) - Only when we face our fears can we discover the freedom to love without holding back. This talk looks at how unprocessed fear contracts our body, heart and mind, and on a societal level is the cause of othering and violence. We then explore how arousing mindfulness, compassion and prayer can enlarge our basic sense of Being. As we deepen attention to the nature of awareness, we discover a refuge that is timeless…a refuge that is our true home (given at the IMCW 2021 Fall Retreat).

Meditation: Awakening Self-Compassion (2021-11-10) - This RAIN meditation helps us explore pathways to nurturing ourselves in a way that brings profound transformation and healing.

After the RAIN: Part 2 - The Flowering of Awake Awareness - (2021 -11 -03) - The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.

Meditation: The Return to Presence - Rest Your Mind In What Is (2021-11-03) - It’s natural that our attention wanders, and the more we relax back, the more that becomes our habit…returning to presence. This meditation opens with conscious breathing and awakening through the body. We then rest in open awareness, and when the attention drifts, guide ourselves to rest our minds, over and over, in the aliveness and presence that is right here.

After the RAIN: Part 1 - The Flowering of Awake Awareness - The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.

Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness (2021-10-27) - This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening 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.

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 is turned toward awareness itself, it reveals the radiance and emptiness of our true nature.

Meditation: Widening Rings of Being (2021-10-20) - If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom, the awake space of Being, that is beyond the confines of thoughts.

Grieving and Timeless Love - How we relate to change and loss is directly connected to how fully we live and love. This talk looks at the classic ways we avoid opening to the realness of loss, and how our sorrows and grief can become a portal to awakening our heart and spirit. 

Meditation: A Practice of RAIN - The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises.

“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.” ~ Rumi

Realizing Your Deepest Desires - This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion, grasping and conflict, so that our aspiration becomes a compass of the heart that can guide us in living with wisdom and compassion.

Meditation: Letting Thought Clouds Come and Go - This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.

Facing Fear in a Traumatized World (2021-09-29) - Unprocessed fear cuts us off from our full aliveness and spirit, and it separates us from others. This talk looks at how we bring healing to the trauma and deep fears that cause us to dissociate from our body. We focus on ways we increase safety, diminish shame and then, with a courageous, embodied and compassionate presence, learn to contact and integrate fear into our larger awareness.

Meditation: The Heart-Wisdom of Your Future Self (2021-09-29) -  In this meditation, we relax and open our body and mind, and then explore an encounter with our Future Self - facing Fear in a Traumatized World is the expression of our most evolved and awakened heart.

Anger: Responding, Not Reacting (2021-09-22) - 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. 

Meditation: Present Heart (2021-09-22) - We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath, and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.

Radical Friendship: Conversation between Tara and Kate Johnson - The often unseen cause of our difficulties in relationships is the societal structures that are marked by violence and domination. This conversation looks at what blocks authentic and loving connectedness, and ways to intentionally cultivate authentic, openhearted awake relationships.

Meditation: Sitting Like a Mountain (2021-09-15) - Meditation can empower us as we learn to access our potential for stability, strength and openness. This meditation calls on the image of a mountain as we awaken our body and mind to a full, vibrant presence. Closes with a metta (loving-kindness) prayer.

A Conversation Between Tara and Mark Nepo - Mark is a spiritual teacher, wonderful poet, and author of many books including best selling "The Book of Awakening." In this wide-ranging and rich conversation, Tara and Mark explore shedding our defenses, faith, compassion for ourselves and others, spiritual practice, and facing illness, aging and death. 

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness (2021-09-08) - 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.

The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance - When we are caught in self-judgment we forget the truth of who we are - our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of radical acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.

Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying "Yes" to the Moment - When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We 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 capacity for unconditional love.