Tara Brach

Spiritual Empowerment (2016-09-28) - When we are trying to control life, we are removed from presence, and act in ways that separate us from others and solidify the experience of being a insecure self. This talk explores our often unconscious strategies of seeking power, and the ways that mindful and compassionate awareness reconnects us to the source of true empowerment. When empowered we are tapped into the universal flow of love, wisdom and creativity, and are free to respond to life with “a heart that is ready for anything.” Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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: Receiving This Life in Awareness (2016-09-28) - In our everyday life we are conditioned to feel that life is happening to us, or that we are the doer. This meditation deconditions that self-centrality by bringing attention to the aliveness in our bodies, and then opening to receive the entire play of sounds, sensations and feelings in awareness. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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

Realizing Our Undefended and Awakened Heart (retreat talk) - It is our evolutionary and spiritual potential to release unnecessary habits of violating other tribes, individuals and unwanted parts of our own being. This talk explores three essential facets of the pathway to awakening: Leaving the fortress of aversive judgment, entering the wilderness of our embodied being and encircling this life with love. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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: Listening to and Feeling Our Life - Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. This meditation emphasizes the anchor of listening, and guides us to relax through our bodies and let sounds wash through us. In this receptivity we find a homecoming to full presence and peace.  

The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Working with Attachments and Addictions - In Buddhist cosmology the torment of intense desire that can never really be satisfied is depicted as the realm of Hungry Ghosts. This talk explores the attachments and addictions that so many of us struggle with, and the teachings and practices that can liberate us. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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  

Retreat - Morning Instruction - RAIN - Q and A (2016-08-27) - Tara gives morning instruction on retreat including R.A.I.N. (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nourish), then responds to questions from retreatants. Includes a question on resourcing when working with trauma. Recorded at the 2016 IMCW Women's Retreat.

Trusting Our Hearts (2016-04-06) - Trust in our basic goodness directly effects our capacity for intimacy with others, creativity and living fully.  This talk explores the ways that our caregivers and culture undermine that trust, primarily by giving us messages that we are “not enough” or flawed.  We then explore the meditation practices that remind us of our loving hearts, and of the goodness that expresses through others. This remembrance is what nourishes a liberating quality of trust in ourselves and in our life. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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 Instructions and Guided Meditation from Retreat (2016-08-27) - Tara gives morning instructions about how to deepen our meditation, then leads us in a guided meditation.

Reflection: Your Future Self - Accessing the Wisdom of Your Heart (2016-08-24) - When we are cut off from our natural love and wisdom, there’s a way home. This meditation guides us to a visit with our future self, and reveals a pathway to our awakened, evolved consciousness. The more we practice this pathway, the more we realize and trust the loving awareness that is always and already within us. (from the full talk: https://www.tarabrach.com/your-future-self/)

Letting Go: The Freedom of Awake Awareness (2016-08-31) - We know we need to let go of harmful habits like obsessive worry, blame and over consuming to experience true well-being, yet much of the time we are stuck and judge ourselves for being out of control. This talk explores what's so difficult about letting go and how we can't will it but we can be willing. We then explore the shift to awake awareness that enables a natural dissolution of clinging and resistance, and the deep peace and freedom of letting be.   Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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: Awakening Our Energy Body (2016-08-31) - This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness.   Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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  

Your Future Self: Turning Towards Your Awakened HeartMind (2016-08-24) - Our lives are shaped by our evolutionary past - the fears and wants that arise from a separate self sense - and the pull of our evolutionary potential - our awakened heart and mind. This talk explores the power of these pulls, and the teachings and reflections that make us most available and responsive to the calling of our future self. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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 Openhearted Awareness (2016-08-24) - In daily life we often leave ourselves, get lost in thoughts, and cut off from a direct, openhearted experience of our life. This meditation reconnects by opening all the senses, turning towards the awareness that is here, and resting in the awakened heartspace that includes and tenderly holds our moment to moment experience. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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  

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us - Part 2 (2016-08-17) - The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world. Reflection: "When you're feeling most alive and present, what's going on? What are you doing? What do you love? Take a moment to take one thing that you know you really love - imagine it - sense yourself engaged in what you love. What's going on inside you that makes this so precious? Sense who you are when you're doing what you love. Know that this is another pathway to belonging - to your heart - to aliveness. This is a pathway to living with the sense of possibility in every moment." Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value t

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness (2016-08-17) - This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer blessings to our inner life and all living beings.  Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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  

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us - Part 1 (2016-08-10) - The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope - through these three elements - in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world. “We close with a simple prayer this evening, that all beings might remember the depth of their longing – that deep aspiration for love, for aliveness. That all beings may trust the heart and consciousness that’s always and already here. And that we may live from the depth and fullness of who we are.” ~ Tara Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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 ui29b7ne  

Meditation: Awakening Our Full Aliveness (2016-08-10) - We cut off from our aliveness when we are lost in thoughts and on auto pilot. This meditation arouses a receptivity to sensation from “the inside out,” opens the awareness to sound, and then invites a full resting in receptive, dynamic presence. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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: Guided Heart Forgiveness Practice (2016-05-09) - Tara gives brief instructions on the forgiveness practice, then guides us through a process of forgiveness of ourselves and others. "Forgiving is a movement of your heart not to carry aversive hatred or blame. That you can care about someone and still create boundaries... Each of you has this wisdom, heart, being place that intuits that there really isn’t freedom in the moments that you’re carrying blame and judgment." (from the Spring 2016 IMCW 7-day retreat) Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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

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 is turned toward awareness itself, it reveals the radiance and emptiness of our true nature. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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: Invitation to Practice (no bell at end) - A brief invitation to start a longer meditation sitting. Begins with Japanese flute and continues with calming and settling to begin a sitting of any length (from retreat). (flute passage from "A Touch of Grace" album via jonathanfoust.com)