Tara Brach

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

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

Meditation: Relaxed and Awake - This guided meditation helps us find ease and wakefulness in our body and mind. With the breath as our home base, we offer a gentle and full attention to the changing waves. We close with a beautiful poem, “Walk Slowly,” by Danna Faulds. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meditation: Surrender into Living Presence - In this guided meditation we begin with a body scan, and rest in awareness with our senses awake. The key practice is to recognize when the mind immerses in virtual reality, reawaken our senses, and surrender again and again into the immediacy, vibrance and mystery of living presence. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

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

Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention - This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention to the changing flow of life.  Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

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

Meditation: Being Here - This guided meditation is an invitation to rest in Hereness—the immediacy and aliveness of full presence. We arrive and quiet with a conscious long deep breath, relax our bodies, awaken our senses, and then bring our attention to relaxing with our moment-to-moment experience. The poem ends with a beautiful poem called “Interlude” by poet Danna Faulds. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

Listening to the Song - Part 2 (2019-11-20) - Listening is our gateway to intimacy with our inner life, each other, our earth and spirit. These two talks look at the ways that listening gets blocked and the teachings and practices that help us cultivate the gift of a deep and healing listening presence. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Meditation: Coming Home to Natural Presence (2019-11-20) - This meditation awakens our senses through a body scan and listening to sound, and then invites us to rest in the presence that spontaneously knows the changing stream of experience. Relaxing back and letting everything be just as it is, reveals the natural presence that is our true home. Join Tara's email community at http://eepurl.com/6YfI, to receive exclusive updates, events, and meditations. - Get a free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease," - plus a bonus gift: "8 Essential Tips to Nourish Your Meditation Practice."

Meditation: The RAIN of Compassion (30 min) - The acronym RAIN (Recognize-Allow-Investigate-Nurture) is one of the most powerful tools I know for working with difficult emotions and discovering the freedom of an awake, compassionate presence. The 4-steps of RAIN are: Recognize what is happening; Allow the experience to be there, just as it is; Investigate with interest and care; Nurture with self-compassion. In the moments “After the RAIN,” it’s important to simply notice your own presence and rest in that open, tender space of awareness. When we are no longer identified with passing states like fear or anger, we begin to realize the vastness and mystery of our natural Being.

Meditation: Calling on Loving Presence - Often, when we’re really struggling, the only way to find compassion for ourselves is by reaching out towards a loving awareness that is great enough to offer comfort and safety to our wounded self. When we feel held by a caring presence, by something larger than our small frightened self, we begin to find space in our heart for the difficult currents of our life, and for the lives of others. The suffering that might have seemed “too much” can now awaken us to the sweetness of compassion.