Tara Brach

Awakening from the Trance of Bad-Othering (2020-09-09) - Great spiritual leaders of social movements teach that true transformation arises from realizing our interconnectedness, and the light of the divine in each being. Sadly, through human history, much suffering has come from perceiving others as bad-others, flawed humans who are excluded from our heart. This talk looks at how our stories and mistrust of others—in personal relationships and in our society—can lead to cycles of violence, harm and deepening alienation. We then explore the inner process that helps us shift to "bad behavior, not bad human" and allows us to respond to suffering with love-in-action.

Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart (2020-09-09) - 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.

Guided Reflection: The RAIN of Compassion – What Is It Like to Be You - Compassion is hard wired in our organism, and can be cultivated. We have the capacity for affiliative care, to tune into each other and to hold each other in our hearts. Developing this innate potential is the hope of our world. Using the acronym R-A-I-N (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture), this meditation offers guidance in mindfully attuning to the emotional experience of others and awakening our natural tenderness and care.

Transforming Your Relationship with Anxiety (2020-09-02) - Strong anxiety frequently triggers fight-flight-freeze, our survival brain's strategy for dealing with threats. This can become a trance that dominates our thoughts, feelings, behaviors and deepest experience of who we are. This talk explores how we get caught in this reactive trance, and ways of calming anxiety and radically shifting our way of relating to the experience of threat. The gift is discovering an inner freedom in the midst of life, and the capacity to respond to what arises with love-in-action.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (2020-09-02) - When we are in our daily trance, we are often leaning forward, on our way somewhere else. In this meditation we are guided to relax back into the awareness that is always, already here. We explore relaxing back through a body scan, and then with all our senses wide open. With practice we increasingly find our pathway home by relaxing the clench of doings, and resting in what is.

Meditation: Listening to our Life (2020-08-15) - A receptive listening attention brings intimacy with our inner experience and our world. This meditation guides us in listening to sounds, states of mind, sensations and the deepest aspiration of our heart.

Meditation: Waking up from the Dream (2020-07-25) - We spend many life moments in a virtual reality of thoughts. This guided practice helps us reconnect with our senses and discover in the space between thoughts the light of awareness, the mystery of what we are.

Worrier Pose – Finding Freedom from the Body of Fear (retreat talk) - While fear is a natural part of our make up, many of us suffering when the "on" button gets jammed. This talk looks at how our fears generate habitual patterns of physical tension, anxious thinking, emotions and behaviors; and how this constellation prevents us from inhabiting our full wisdom and love. We then explore two interrelated pathways of healing—unconditional presence, and resourcing, or cultivating access to safety and belonging (from the Fall 2018 IMCW Silent Retreat).

Meditation: Resting in Awake Awareness - This practice opens with a body scan, employing the image and felt sense of a smile to awaken awareness through the body. We then open to all the senses, and rest in the awareness that includes this changing life.

Radical Love 2: Loving Ourselves into Healing(2020-08-19) - Radical love sees and cherishes the sacred that lives through all beings. In this talk, we'll look at the barrier to loving the life that is right here—what we call self—and how we can call on the light and warmth of awareness to awaken that love.