Tara Brach

Meditation: Vipassana – Opening Our Hearts to Life as It Is (2020-11-11). This meditation awakens the senses with a mindful scanning of the body, establishes an anchor for presence, and invites us to arrive again and again, deepening the pathway home. When difficult or intense experience arises, the practice is to learn to open to what is here with a clear, allowing and kind attention (a favorite from the archives).

Our Refuge of Heartspace (2020-11-04) - Amidst the great emotional reactivity of our times, this talk looks at: How do we hold this? What will allow us to respond wisely to our hurting world? How can we widen the circles of compassion? Our time includes a guided meditation, sharing of responses to several inquiries and a period of question/response.

Meditation: Refuge in Living Presence (2020-11-04) - This meditation guides us to rest in the aliveness of the changing stream of sensations, sounds and feelings. As we open to the awareness that includes all life, we touch the peace, stillness and wakefulness that is our essence. We close with Wendell Berry's beautiful poem, "The Peace of Wild Things."

Change, Loss and Timeless Love (Part 2) (2020-10-28) - Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely intertwined with how we relate to change and loss. These two talks are an invitation to look honestly, and without judgment, at the ways, we resist facing our fears and grieving our losses. We then explore how to bring mindfulness and compassion to processing what we've resisted, and opening to the timeless love that is our true nature (given on the IMCW 2020 Fall 7-Day Virtual Retreat).

Instruction and Meditation: Pathway to Non-Doing Presence (2020-10-27) - While meditation begins with purposeful collecting of attention, it leads to non-doing presence, to Being. In this guided practice, we arrive in presence through a body scan and attention to the breath, open the attention to changing experience, and then explore the freedom of not controlling anything, and letting life be just as it is.

Meditation: Suffering and Compassion (2020-10-28) - This brief meditation is a version of the Tibetan Tonglen practice: With the support of the breath we allow ourselves to open to the realness of suffering, and then offer it into a boundless heartspace…a shared and compassionate awareness.

Healing Racialized Trauma: A Conversation with Resmaa Menakem and Tara Brach (2020-10-21) - The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Resmaa Menakem speaks in a compelling way how this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white body supremacy, and create a truly anti-racist culture. This conversation includes a powerful and provocative guided reflection.

Meditation: Letting Life Live Through You (2020-10-21) - We unconsciously tense against the energetic life of the present moment. This meditation guides us in relaxing and opening to the full aliveness and awareness that animates our being.

Change, Loss and Timeless Love (Part 1) (2020-10-14) - Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely intertwined with how we relate to change and loss. These two talks are an invitation to look honestly, and without judgment, at the ways we resist facing our fears and grieving our losses. We then explore how to bring mindfulness and compassion to processing what we've resisted, and opening to the timeless love that is our true nature.

Meditation: Listening to Our Heart (2020-10-14) - 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.