The Heart Crosses the Abyss - Three Inner Trainings (2020-07-08) - In the moments when we either resist or get possessed by our strong emotions, we are in a trance, and cut off from openhearted awareness. This talk explores the truth that “it’s not what’s happening, it’s how we’re relating.” We look at three key trainings that help us relate to difficult emotions with a wise and compassionate presence.

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

Shame, Healing and Transformation (2020-07-01) - Being at war with ourselves blocks us from evolving our consciousness and living from our hearts. This talk distinguishes between toxic and healthy shame, as well as shame about our individual self and our group identity. We explore how, with self-compassion and courageous honesty, we can respond to negative, painful feelings about ourselves in a way that serves awakening and alignment with our deepest values.

Meditation: Calling on Our Inner Bodhisattva (2020-07-01) - We each have within us the very source of wisdom and love. This meditation calls forward that essence, our awakening heart, so we can seek guidance and nurturing for the parts of us that need a healing attention. 

Spiritual Hope (2020-06-24) - Spiritual hope opens us to possibility and energizes us to manifest our potential for love and wisdom. In contrast to attachment or egoic hope, which is the grasping for what will benefit a separate self, spiritual hope arises from trust in the openhearted awareness (bodhichitta) that is always and already within us. This talk explores how, as individuals and as a society, we can nourish spiritual hope, and create the grounds for healing and radical transformation.

Meditation: Body and Spirit (2020-06-24) - 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 from Mary Oliver. 

Sustaining Our Caring (2020-06-17) - All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically re-enlivened movement for racial justice and equity, this talk looks at ways of remembering what matters and consciously nourishing our care. 

Meditation: Embodied Metta (2020-06-17) - Lovingkindness becomes full when it is energetically experienced in our bodies. This meditation guides us in awakening the receptivity, warmth and openness of metta through our body, and then invites us to rest in the space of loving presence, as we open to whatever arises.

Meditation: Meeting Anger with Awareness (2020-06-10) - When anger is held in mindfulness, it can energize us to respond wisely to challenging situations. This meditation guides us in meeting personal or societal anger with RAIN - recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. [NOTE: this meditation was given at the end of Tara’s "Anger and Transformation" talk on 2020-06-10.]

Anger and Transformation (2020-06-19) - The purpose of anger is to let us know there’s an obstacle to our wellbeing, and to energize us to act. While natural and necessary for survival and thriving, this powerful energy often possesses us and leads to suffering. This talk explores how we can use the RAIN meditation in our personal and societal life, to meet anger with a mindful, compassionate presence. Freed from the identification with a limited, separate reactive self, we can listen to the message of anger, draw on the purity of its energy, and respond from our natural intelligence, creativity and care.

Meditation: Inner Refuge of Calm (2020-06-10) - In times of great 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.

A Courageous Presence with Racism (2020-06-03) - Anti-Black racism is the core wound of American culture, and we each have a role to play in fighting racism, a medicine to bring to these times. This talk explores how we can offer an honest and courageous presence to key domains of this suffering. We then look at affirming that Black lives truly matter with our dedicated and wise action. 

Meditation: Homecoming to Wakeful Presence (2020-06-03) - This meditation begins with us standing in mindful movement, guiding us in awakening awareness in the body. Then in sitting practice, we open all our senses, resting in the wakeful presence that can include the changing waves of our life.

Remembering Goodness: Three Gestures of Love - Tara offers this favorite talk from the archives. It explores the power of forgiveness, love and gratitude in re-connecting to our light and awareness, and being able to see the sacredness that shines through everyone. Within times of crisis practicing these gestures of love can truly feel like a pathway home. This talk explores a simple yet powerful way of arousing loving presence and dissolving the narrow identification that keeps us from inhabiting our awakened heartmind.

Meditation: Spacious, Loving Awareness (from retreat) - When our awareness is awake and open, we naturally respond to this changing life with warmth, tenderness and love. This practice helps us discover the spaciousness of awareness by realizing the space and aliveness that is in the body, and then sensing the continuous space that holds all life. We then sense how this continuous space is filled with the light of awareness and pervaded by love. Includes a short talk that contexts the meditation. 

Meditation: Light RAIN in Difficult Times (2020-05-23) - This meditation guides us in bringing the mindfulness and self-compassion of RAIN to a challenging part of our life, and particularly, to places of self-judgment or feelings of failure.

Embracing Uncertainty: Sheltering in Love - Part 9 (2020-05-20) -  How we tolerate uncertainty - during current times and throughout our lives - has a powerful effect on our capacity for presence, aliveness and love. This talk explores the conditioned ways of reacting to insecurity that contract us, and pathways of letting go of resistance, opening to Beginner's mind and discovering a timeless, wise and loving presence in the midst of inevitable change. 

Meditation: The Art of Letting Go (2020-05-20) - Letting go means releasing the resistance we have to experiencing the present moment. This meditation guides us to let go of the thoughts that block our immediate sensory experience, the tension in the body that reduces aliveness and the armoring around the heart that dulls our sensitivity and tenderness toward life itself.

Meditation: Calling on Your Future Self (2020-05-09) - 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.

Sheltering in Love – Part 8: Finding Freedom in the Midst of Failure (2020-05-13) - Everyone faces personal failure, and it’s an extremely raw and painful feeling. If we have the courage to stay with the feelings, failure can become a portal to the realization of who we are beyond the imperfect separate self. This talk calls on Samuel Beckett’s wonderful quote (referenced by Pema Chödron), “Fail, Fail again, Fail better,” and offers guidance on finding freedom as we move through some of our most difficult moments.

Meditation: Living, Embodied Presence (2020-05-13) - This practice begins with a full body scan and then guides us to return again and again to our senses. What we find is a dynamic presence, a Hereness that feels like home. The meditation ends with a beautiful poem by David Wagoner called, “Lost.”

Sheltering in Love – Part 7: Awakening from the Prison of Blame (2020-05-06) - A key way stress disconnects us from ourselves and each other is through the limbic reactivity of blame. This talk helps us to recognize the suffering of chronic blame, resentment and anger, and to bring a healing presence to the vulnerability that underlies blame.

Meditation: Openhearted Presence (2020-05-06) - This meditation guides us in embodying loving presence through a body scan, and then meeting whatever arises with a tender heart. We close with a beautiful blessing-poem from John O’Donahue

Sheltering In Love - Part 6: Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence - Part 2 of 2 (2020-04-29) - The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.

Meditation: Vipassana - Seeing Life As It Is (2020-04-29) - This classic Buddhist meditation trains us to wake up out of thoughts and to attend to our changing experience with a balanced, clear and open presence.

Meditation: Awakening Through the Animal-Headed Deities (2020-04-15) - This short meditation guides us in engaging with challenging emotions with presence and compassion. By opening to the “deities” we discover an open heartspace that can hold and respond to our hurting world (from the closing meditation of "Sheltering in Love - Part 4").

Sheltering in Love (Part 5): Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence (2020-04-22) - The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These next two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness pre-dating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Natural Awareness (2020-04-22) - In this meditation we are guided to discover the space and aliveness that fills the body, sense the space in the universe, and then to realize our Beingness as continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. When our attention contracts into thoughts, the pathway to awareness is a relaxing back, reopening to the natural openness, silence and stillness of our true nature.

Sheltering In Love - Part 4 (2020-04-15) - During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world. Part 4 explores how the difficult emotions we all face can become direct portals to an inner refuge of sacred space.

Meditation: Refuge in Sacred Presence (2020-04-15) - Our experience includes a foreground of changing experience - sounds, sensations, feelings, thoughts. In the background is an alert inner stillness, the awareness that is our true nature. This meditation guides us in opening to the moment-to-moment flow through our senses, and learning to relax back to inhabit the mystery and vastness of awake awareness.

Sheltering In Love (Part 3) (2020-04-08) - During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.

Meditation: A Calm Refuge - with the Rain (2020-04-08) - This meditation includes a relaxing body scan and guidance on finding a space of peace and balance in the midst of whatever life brings us. Also enjoy the Virginia springtime rain that accompanies us halfway through the meditation.

Sheltering In Love - Part 2 (2020-04-01) - During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path - practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.

Meditation: Meeting Fear with a Healing Breath (2020-04-01) - 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.

Meditation: Embracing Life with an Open Heart (2020-03-25) - In this short practice we connect with our aspiration to live from love, and then bring a caring presence to our own vulnerability, to a dear one, and to all beings everywhere. 

Sheltering in Love - Part 1 (2020-03-25) - During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path - practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.

Meditation: Touching Peace (2020-03-25) - 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 Phillip Booth.

Short Talk and Guided Meditation: Bringing RAIN to Fear (2020-03-18) - In this practice we explore how the mindfulness and compassion of RAIN can free us from the grip of fear. This is an excerpt from the full talk: Facing Pandemic Fears with an Awake Heart. Video available via tarabrach.com and Tara’s YouTube channel.

Facing Pandemic Fears with an Awake Heart (2020-03-18) - While it’s natural to feel fear during times of great collective crisis, our challenge is that fear easily takes over our lives. This talk explores how the mindfulness and compassion of the RAIN meditation can help us find an inner refuge in the face of fear, and deepen our loving connection with each other.

Guided Meditation for Times of Pandemic: “Calling on Your Awakened Heart” (2020-03-18) - 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 (offered online via livestream).

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: Bring RAIN to the Wanting Mind - (2020-03-04) - 

We begin the meditation by briefly scanning through the body and sensing awareness of being here. We scan our life and use the acronym RAIN to Recognize a feeling of wanting, Allow it to be there, and Investigate how we’re holding the experience in our body. As we trace back to our longing for belonging, we Nurture a feeling of belonging as warmth, openness and tenderness that’s already here.

This is the final meditation from the full talk given on March 3, 2020, Desire and Addiction (Part 1): Voices of Longing Calling You Home.

Guided Heart Meditation: Loving Kindness - Befriending our Lives - This 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 (a retreat meditation).

Desire and Addiction (Part 2 of 3): Voices of Longing Calling You Home (2020-03-11) - 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.

Desire and Addiction: Voices of Longing Calling You Home (2020-03-04) - 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.

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 tarabrach.com/donation/.
With gratitude and love, Tara

Meditation: The Blessings of Yes (2020-03-04) - 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.

Facing Fear (Part 2) - Awakening Your Fearless Heart (2020-02-26) - 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 (2020-02-26) - This meditation begins with a 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.

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."

Working with Trauma: Tara Interviews Jim Gordon, MD (2020-02-19) - Dr. Jim Gordon is author of the new book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma. In this interview with Tara, he talks about his work with populations around the globe struggling with trauma, and some of the most powerful practices that can be done on our own in healing trauma. Jim's organization is the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, DC - CMBM.org.

Meditation: Letting Life Live Through You (2020-02-19) - We begin with a body scan, open to sounds and to listening to and feeling the moment. From spacious awareness the practice is simply to recognize and allow the changing flow of life. The meditation ends with the poem, “Hokusai Says,” by Roger Keyes.

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."

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 (2020-02-12) - 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.

Embodied Presence (Part 2) - Planting our Roots in the Universe - Working with Pain (2020-02-05) - 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.

Meditation: A Listening Presence (2020-02-05) - 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.

Being Truthful - How Honesty Nourishes Love - The grounds of happiness, loving relationships and a just and flourishing society is honesty. And yet our current times are characterized by a plethora of deception – both societally, and often in more subtle ways, in our personal lives. This talk examines the deep conditioning we have to deceive others, and to avoid facing and acknowledging our own vulnerability. We then explore how we can commit ourselves to deepening our truth telling, and in so doing, creating a climate of integrity and trust that can lead to a more compassionate world (from the 2017 archives).

Guided Heart Meditation: Releasing Blame (retreat) (2019-12-30) - Our self-protective habits of resentment and blame block intimacy and connection with ourself and others. This short talk and meditation are an invitation to deepen our understanding of the suffering of blame, and to release the armoring to loving freely. (recorded at the IMCW 2019 New Year's 5-day Silent Retreat)

Part 1: Embodied Presence - Planting our Roots in the Universe (2020-01-22) - 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.

Meditation: Portal to Sacred Presence - 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, Trusting Prana.

Shifting From Limbic to Liberating Intention (2020-01-15) - Becoming conscious of our intentions is the first step to truly aligning our life with our heart. This talk explores identifying when we are being driven by grasping and fear, and ways we can bring compassion to unmet needs and discover the deeper longing - the liberating intention - that guides us to freedom.

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.

Listening to the Song - Part 1 (2019-11-13) - 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.

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 Silence that is Listening (2013-11-13) - Listening to sound is opens up to the space of pure being. In this guided practice we begin by awakening through the body, and then explore listening to sounds and silence, and to inhabiting the receptive presence that is listening, awareness itself.

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

Judgment, Acceptance and Freedom (Retreat Talk) - The boundary to what we accept is the boundary to our freedom. This talk explores the often unconscious ways we create separation by judging ourselves and others, and the key pathways of meditation practice that release the habit of blame and free our hearts.

(This talk was given on Sunday evening, November 3, at the 2019 IMCW Fall Retreat in Reisterstown, MD.)

Short Talk and Meditation: Saying Yes to Our Life - Our habitual ways of avoiding pain keep us from experiencing intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This short talk and guided meditation offers instruction in saying “yes” to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our truest nature.

Anger: Responding, Not Reacting - 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 (a favorite from the archives).

“Getting angry with another person is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned.” Buddha

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

Meditating with RAIN - Working with Difficult Emotions - This guided practice applies mindfulness and self-compassion to challenging emotions. It is based on the acronym RAIN, and provides a four step practice that is accessible and effective, even at those times when mindfulness is most difficult to remember.

The acronym RAIN is one of the most powerful tools I know for working with difficult emotions and discovering the freedom of an awake, compassionate presence.

Guided Meditation: Letting Go – 9 Magic Breaths (2019-07-19) - This guided practice includes taking a pause from all activity, and following the inflow and outflow of nine conscious breaths. We then relax and settle into greater and greater ease and well-being. Continuing as long as desired, we then explore re-entering activity with a relaxed and open attention.

Belonging to Each Other – Part 3 of 3 - Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.

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: 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 end with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.

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."

Reflection: RAIN on Blame - When we are stuck in blame or resentment we are in a trance - the other person becomes an unreal bad other, and our own sense of being contracts into a victimized self, an angry self, a righteous self. This practice guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to our inner experience, and then to viewing the other with a more open and clear heart.  By awakening from the trance of blame, we are able to respond with intelligence and care to the unmet needs that underlie all conflict.

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."

Belonging to Each Other – Part 2 of 3 (2019-10-16) - Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.

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: 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.

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."

Belonging to Each Other - Part 1 (2019-10-09) - Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These two talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.

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: Relaxed and Alert - 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 includes chanting of OM’s and ends with a sense of melting into community.

Join Tara's email community 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."

Spiritual Hope: Trusting Your Awakening Heart - Our beliefs and understandings about reality directly impact our moment to moment experience of living. If we believe we will never change, that blocks the transformation that brings happiness and freedom. If we trust our spiritual unfolding and are open to possibility, that guides our attention and behaviors in ways that evolve us. This talk explores how to nurture mature, spiritual hope—hope that is sourced in trusting our intrinsic goodness, and our capacity for deepening love and wisdom.

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: Relaxing into Awake Awareness - We realize our true nature by relaxing back into what is always, already here. Starting by scanning and opening through the body, we explore resting in the awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all of life. The guidance is, when we recognize thoughts, to simply relax back, and allow life to be just as it is.

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."

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 turns toward awareness itself, it reveals the radiance and emptiness of our true nature (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: A Healing, Relaxing Breath - This meditation guides us in collecting attention with an intentional long deep even 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 (a favorite from the Archives).

True Happiness: Realizing Well-Being - Well being is the deep contentment that arises from a relaxed, wakeful presence. This talk explores the beliefs and habits that contract us away from presence, and several key ways we can nourish our natural capacity for happiness (from the archives).

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

Reflection: Pausing and Deepening Attention in the Face of Attachment - In this short reflection, we explore how we can bring mindfulness and self-compassion to the habits of obsessing, over-consuming and hurting ourselves and others that keep us from true happiness, connectedness and peace. Listen to the full talk, "The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Working with Attachments and Addictions," at www.tarabrach.com - July 29, 2015.

Join Tara's email community 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 Gift of Silence: Quieting the Mind - Through all spiritual traditions, there is a valuing of silence and stillness. When the mind has quieted, it becomes possible to see into the truth of what we are. Yet quieting can turn into a battle with the process of the thinking mind. This talk explores practices that allow us to settle in a natural way, the presence which is silence itself, and the wisdom and love that flows freely when we live from that silence (a favorite from the archives).

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: Awakening the Heart – Giving and Receiving Loving Blessings - Our hearts awaken as we express and receive love in an embodied, conscious way. This guided practice brings our attention to dear ones in our life, and explores how we discover deep communion through offering and letting in love.

“To love someone is to learn the song in their heart and sing it to them when they have forgotten.” Arne Garborg