Tara Brach

Part 2 - Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit (2021-06-02) - 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 (2021-06-02) - 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.

Part 1 - Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit - 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.

John O'Donahue writes, "We are so busy managing our lives, we forget this great mystery we are involved in." This talk looks at the ways we pull away from the mystery and the path of "beginner's mind" that enables us to encounter this living world with freshness, courage and wonder (Tara chose this talk to share from the archives).

Meditation: Yes to Life (2021-05-19) - In the moments we release all resistance, we relax open to inhabit the fullness of our Being. This meditation guides us to an embodied, openhearted presence that welcomes the changing flow of life.

Bridging the Divide: Learning to Tend and Befriend - One of the great sufferings facing us is the growing divide between humans with different views, different realities. This talk looks at several levels of divides—being at war with ourselves, creating separation in our personal relationships, and societal divides. We then reflect on how we can evolve consciousness from the trance of "Fight, Flight, Freeze" to the wholeness that arises with "Tend and Befriend."

Meditation: Being Here for Life (2021-05-08) - It's easy to race through our seasons and miss the mystery and preciousness of unfolding moments. This meditation invites us into an embodied, openhearted presence and includes a poem by Pat Schneider called "Instructions for the Journey."

Three Dimensions of Conscious Prayer - Prayer can be a creative, vibrant and infinitely tender part of our spiritual awakening. This talk explores the dimensions of embodied presence, sincere expression and silence that bring transformational power to our prayers.

Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence (2021-05-05) - We resist reality by tensing our body and contracting into thoughts. This meditation guides us into letting go of resistance by surrendering over and over into the aliveness and presence that is right here.