The Power of Deep Listening – Part 2 - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening - Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem “lost” by David Wagoner.

The Power of Deep Listening – Part 1 - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Aliveness and Presence - This meditation guides us to wake up our senses and full aliveness through a body scan, and then to rest in the formless presence that is aware of this changing dance of life. We close with a poem by Robert Hall.

Compassion for All Living Beings - We often talk of widening the circles of compassion. This talk explores the qualities of mature compassion, what blocks us from this embodied and inclusive caring, and how each of us can awaken a heart that responds to our world’s suffering.

Meditation:  Say “Yes” to Life - This guided practice awakens a relaxed and friendly attention that rests in the breath and opens to whatever is arising. We deepen that presence with the intention to truly say “Yes” to experience, allowing life to be just as it is.

The Wings of Awakening – Self-Honesty & Love (retreat talk) -  We evolve our consciousness by bringing a clear and kind attention to the tangles of suffering. This talk explores how the “second arrow” of self-judgment imprisons us in emotional reactivity, and the pathways of awakening awareness that reconnect us with our full human potential. (This talk was given at the 2016 IMCW fall silent retreat.)

Meditation: Spacious Sky of Awareness - This meditation begins with a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. We relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, open awareness. (from a morning on the 2015 New Year's silent retreat)

Making the Whole World Your Friend - A wonderful translation of the Pali word Metta is friendliness. This talk looks at friendliness through an evolutionary lens, and explores ways we can cultivate a more open heart.

Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life - This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.

Refuge in the Wilderness - Pt2 – Coming Home to Embodied Presence - When we live from our mental control towers, we are in a trance that confines our life. These two talks look at the primary ways we are conditioned to leave embodied presence, and the consequence of unlived life—being cut off from our vitality, intelligence and compassion. We then explore the teachings and practices that guide us to reconnect to our senses, and the sacred presence that underlies all lived experience.

Meditation: Homecoming to Our Life Breath - Perhaps the most universal place to collect and deepen attention is the breath.  This meditation begins with an intentional breath that calms the nervous system, and then opens to a clear, intimate presence with our natural breathing. With breath as our home base, we practice returning again and again when the mind becomes distracted. As presence grows, we can let the breath be in the foreground, and include whatever waves of life come and go.  This brings a quiet mind, and a peaceful, happy heart.

Refuge in the Wilderness - Part 1 - When we live from our mental control towers, we are in a trance that confines our life. These two talks look at the primary ways we are conditioned to leave embodied presence, and the consequence of unlived life—being cut off from our vitality, intelligence and compassion. We then explore the teachings and practices that guide us to reconnect to our senses, and the sacred presence that underlies all lived experience.

Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness - This meditation includes relaxing and awakening through the body, widening the lens to include sound and then letting life live through us, receiving all that arises in open awareness.

The RAIN of Forgiveness - The capacity to release the armoring of hatred and blame is intrinsic to our evolving consciousness. This talk explores the process of authentic forgiveness, and how we can use the mindfulness-based tool of RAIN to heal and free our hearts.

Meditation: Vipassana – Practice of Seeing Clearly - Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment-to-moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.

How to Stop the War Against Yourself - A conversation with Tara Brach & Dan Harris - It’s possible to actually be addicted to self-criticism, especially as a way to keep yourself safe. But evidence shows that rather than safety, this pervasive habit in our society creates deep suffering.

This conversation between Tara and Dan Harris dives into strategies to deal with your own self-hatred and cultivate a forgiving heart. (Note: This was initially created as an episode for 10% Happier Podcast)

Meditation: Opening to the River of Aliveness - This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home.

Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness - The Power of Self-Nurturing - While we all need to customize meditation, this is particularly important for those living with PTSD or strong, potentially overwhelming emotions. This talk explores how trauma cuts us off from wholeness, and is accompanied by a deep and painful experience of shame. We look at the ways meditation can be adapted to cultivate sufficient safety for the full transformational healing of mindfulness to unfold. The gift of processing trauma is that the place of woundedness becomes a gateway into profound love, healing, and freedom.

Meditation: Relaxing into Presence or Sleep - This meditation can help us to access a relaxed attentiveness, or alternately, serve as a pathway to ease-filled sleep.

Meditation, Psychedelics, Mortality: A conversation with Tara and Roland Griffiths - Roland is a long-term meditator, a psychopharmacologist and professor at Johns Hopkins, and a leader in researching the clinical effects of psychedelics, including their impact on those struggling with cancer, depression or addiction. At the end of 2021, he discovered he had incurable stage 4 Colon Cancer. This conversation explores the relationship between meditation and psychedelics, and how they both can serve profound spiritual awakening and deep inner freedom in the face of mortality.

Information about the endowment fund: The Roland R. Griffiths, Ph.D. Professorship Fund in Psychedelic Research on Secular Spirituality and Well-Being

Meditation: The Silence That is Listening - 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.

Trusting the Gold - Realizing Our Basic Goodness - Can you imagine a world where humans are able to look at each other and all of life, and see the light of the sacred shining through? This talk explores our potential for trusting the love and awareness that animate our living world. We investigate the suffering of othering, how the trance of separateness blinds us to our basic goodness, and then explore the practices that open our eyes to the larger truth of our shared belonging.

Meditation: Relaxing with a Smile into Living Presence - This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.

Tara shares a podcast from Dan Harris: The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness - Part 1 -

Dan Harris (host of Ten Percent Happier) flies to Dharamsala, India to spend two weeks in the orbit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This is the first installment of a five-part audio documentary series, something we’ve never done before now. Over the course of the episodes, we talk to His Holiness about practical strategies for thorny dilemmas, including: how to get along with difficult people; whether compassion can cut it in an often brutal world; why there is a self-interested case for not being a jerk; and how to create social connection in an era of disconnection. We also get rare insights from the Dalai Lama into everything from the mechanics of reincarnation to His Holiness’s own personal mediation practice. 

In this first installment, Dan watches as a young activist directly challenges His Holiness: In a world plagued by climate change, terrorism, and other existential threats, is the Dalia Lama’s message of compassion practical — or even relevant? 

Want more of The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness? Download the Ten Percent Happier app wherever you get your apps.

Realizing Your Deepest Intention - The Buddha taught that this whole life – including our thoughts, feelings and actions – arise from the tip of intention. While our intentions are usually marbled with wanting and fear, when intention comes into the light of consciousness, it unfolds into its most pure essence. This talk explores ways that when we are stuck in reactivity, we can become aware of intention, and find our way to the aspiration that expresses our most awake and loving heart.

Meditation: Awake Awareness is Our Home - This meditation guides us in awakening our awareness by opening to all our senses and recognizing the alert presence that is always, already here. By relaxing back into the presence over and over, we become familiar with the reality that is truly our home.

Freedom Beyond Selfing - We spend many moments in a trance of selfing - preoccupied with the stories, wants and fears of what feels to be a separate self. The suffering is that this self-fixation obscures the depth and mystery of our being. In this talk we explore how to relate wisely to selfing, and discover the light and love that express our true nature.

Meditation: Letting Go and Letting Be - We leave presence by contracting into thoughts and resisting the changing flow of life. This meditation guides us in gently releasing thoughts and opening to this mysterious life, just as it is.

Let go of what is past
Let go of what may come
Let go of what is happening now
Don’t try to figure anything out
Don’t try to make anything happen
Relax right now and rest

~ Tibetan teaching

IntraConnected – Part 2: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel - In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, IntraConnected. They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms "Mwe" (me plus we.)  The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics. 

Meditation: "Yes" to Our Moments - When we open without resistance to the changing flow of aliveness, we discover the formless presence that is our true home. This meditation guides us through a body scan and then opening to all sounds, sensations and emotions with the energetic allowing of “Yes.” We close with a poem by Danna Faulds, “White Dove.”

IntraConnected – Part 1: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel - In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, IntraConnected. They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms "Mwe" (me plus we.)  The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics. 

Meditation: Body and Spirit - 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 (the spirit likes to dress up) from Mary Oliver.

Our True Nature - Emptiness Dancing (retreat talk) - The most profound question in spiritual life is “who (or what) am I?” This talk explores ways of inquiring into the nature of awareness, and the blessings of embodying the realization of our radiant, empty essence. This audio talk was first offered at the 2011 IMCW Fall Weeklong Retreat, and it includes several guided reflections.

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open Awareness - Our habit is to try to manage our experience from a mental control tower. This meditation awakens us through the body, and then invites us to rest in that vast presence that includes the changing flow of life. When we inhabit that openness, there’s a natural arising of peace, wakefulness and tenderness.

Embracing Life and Realizing the Nature of Awareness - Tara and Mingyur Rinpoche in Conversation -

In this interview, Mingyur Rinpoche shares about his 4 1/2 years on a wandering retreat and the lessons he learned from a near-death experience. The two then talk about what it means to befriend panic as well as other strong emotions, and the qualities that express our intrinsic awareness. They also talk about compassion for our world, the evolution of consciousness, and the value of hope.

About Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and his meditation community: https://tergar.org/

Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (from retreat) - We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience. NOTE: Given on the 4th morning of the 2018 IMCW New Year’s Retreat. It’s especially enjoyed when the mind is a bit quieter.

You might reflect on these words from the Tibetan tradition:
"Utterly awake, senses wide open.
Utterly open, non-fixating awareness."

A Grateful, Giving, Happy Heart - Gratitude is like breathing in – letting ourselves be touched by the goodness in others and in our world. Generosity is like breathing out – sensing our mutual belonging and offering our care. When we are awake and whole, breathing in and out happens naturally. But these beautiful expressions of our heart become blocked when we are dominated by the fear and grasping of our survival brain. This talk explores how we can facilitate the evolution of consciousness with the deliberate cultivation of generosity, and ends with a guided meditation on gratitude and generosity.

Meditation: Touching Peace - 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 Philip Booth.

The Calling of These Times - Part 2 - The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.

Meditation: Calling on Your Awakened Heart - 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.

The Calling of These Times - Part 1 - The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.

Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves - We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience (from the 2018 IMCW New Year’s Retreat). It’s especially enjoyed when the mind is a bit quieter.

You might reflect on these words from the Tibetan tradition:
Utterly awake, senses wide open.
Utterly open, non-fixating awareness.

Three Practices for Nurturing Wise Hope - Wise or spiritual hope includes the aspiration to manifest our full potential, individually and collectively, and the trust that this is possible. This talk explores how, especially in stressful times, this hope gets clouded over by fear; and how when it is alive, wise hope energizes and guides all spiritual transformation. We look at three practices - 3 A’s - that help us nurture hope: Aspiration for what we love, Attending to what we love, and Actively serving what we love. This talk includes several poems by poet Danna Faulds.

Meditation: Befriending Our Experience - We begin the meditation with a sense of befriending our experience - with an intention towards gentleness and kindness as the attention goes inward. We scan the body, opening to sounds and the senses, resting in the awareness that includes this changing life. When the mind drifts, as it naturally does, we notice, then relax back into a receptive, listening presence. There’s nothing to do, simply letting life be as it is. Resting in the freedom of awake, open awareness.

Cultivating Inner Strength – A Conversation with Tara Brach and Lori Deschene -

What gives us the inner strength to meet life’s challenges with resilience, heart and wisdom? Drawing on themes in Lori’s new book, "The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal," Tara and Lori explore the mindset that is conducive to growth, working with negative beliefs, ways of transforming fear, and what it means to have inner strength in facing loss and death. We also talk about what can most empower and energize us in responding to a world struggling with multiple crises.

Find Lori Deschene’s “The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal” here: tinybuddha.com/strong. Lori also created several free companion resources, available at tinybuddha.com/strength-tools.

Meditation: At Home in the Moment - This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the “smile down” and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying "Yes" to the life that is here.

Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 2  - It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.

Meditation: Letting Life Be - This meditation establishes an atmosphere of loving kindness with the “smile”; relaxes and awakens through the body; and guides us into a spacious presence. We then rest in that presence, letting go of any controlling, and simply allow life to be as it is. It’s in “letting be” that we come home to the luminosity and tenderness of natural awareness. We close with a verse from Mary Oliver…

Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 1 - It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.

Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence - This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.

The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 2 - While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience. In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. These two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.

Meditation: Resting in the Center of Now - This meditation awakens our senses and then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now.

The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 1 - While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience. In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. These two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.

Meditation: Calling on Your Future Self - 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.

Radical Acceptance - Our Gateway to Love and Freedom - Our capacity to realize the truth of who we are and to love fully, arises from moments of true acceptance. This means meeting our unfolding life with an unconditional, open and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.

Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Reality - Our suffering comes from tensing and resisting the life that’s here. This meditation guides us to relax and awaken our body and senses, and resting in presence, allow life to be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 - This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.

Meditation: Relaxing with Life - This meditation includes a mindful body scan and guidance in relaxing with the changing waves of experience. When we say “Yes” to the moment, we open to the sea of awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 1 - This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.

Meditation: Resting in a Sea of Presence - This mindful body scan leads us into a practice of relaxing back into awareness, and recognizing the changing waves of sensations, sounds and feelings in the foreground. As we let go into the sea of presence, we discover am increasing sense of wholeness and peace. The meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.

Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating – A conversation with Tara Brach and Tricycle‘s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen -

A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice?

Tara and James discuss these and other important questions at the intersection of our dietary choices and spiritual path.

Survival of the Nurtured – Our Path to Belonging - We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the violence of our society and lack of attuned caretakers has severed trust and belonging. This talk explores how meditation and conscious relating with each other can restore the connections so vital to healing and spiritual freedom.

“We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured.” Louis Cozolino

Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts - We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.

Awakening through Difficult Emotions: "The Poison is the Medicine" - Most of us know the pain of getting stuck in fear, anxiety, anger or shame. This exploration looks at how the emotion that takes over, when we attend with mindfulness and care, can become a place of deep transformation and freedom. Included in the talk is a guided RAIN meditation.

Meditation: Breath by Breath - Our breath can be a home base that allows us to meet life with a relaxed, wakeful presence. This meditation helps us calm and settle the mind with long deep breathing, and then establishes a mindful presence with our natural breathing. When distracted, we learn to relax back again and again, learning the pathway of homecoming to the aliveness, openness and mystery that is always Here.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror - This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Listening to Life - The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 2: Inner Fire - This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Open Awareness – Relaxing Back into Presence - This practice brings attention to the continuous space within and around the body, and the aliveness of sound, sensation and feeling that lives through us. While it’s natural for attention to get distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back into the awake space that is aware of this changing life.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 1: Forgiveness - This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Living Presence - The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body – bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.

Awakening from the Landlocked Self - The Buddha taught that our suffering arises from forgetting who we are. This talk explores the trance of identifying as Somebody, and the compassionate witnessing that allows us to discover the freedom of our natural being.

Meditation: Befriending and Opening to Life - This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We deepen the intention to befriend and relax with whatever arises moment-to-moment, letting life be just as it is. We offer a brief lovingkindness reflection, sensing our heart and mind, and offering whatever wish most resonates right now to ourselves and others.

2022-07-20 - Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening beyond the separate, fearful self - Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light on this conditioning and explores the ways that mindfulness, compassion and self-inquiry reveal the freedom of our true nature.

Meditation: The Breath – Portal to Presence - The meditation begins with breathing mindfully to collect and calm the body and mind. Then the attention opens to include the changing flow in a spacious natural presence.

From Dragons to Schmoos – Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence - The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons – the difficult emotions and related behaviors that are a deeply conditioned part of the human experience. In this talk we explore the awakening that is possible as we recognize our reactive patterns and instead of judgment, offer a loving and healing presence (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: Resting in Wakeful Presence - This meditation scans through the body - arriving in the foreground with sounds, feelings and sensations, like the surface waves of the sea coming and going. And in the background, experiencing an alert inner stillness – a vast presence from which all activity pours forth.

Navigating the Dark Ages - How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.

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.

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 2 - Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.

Meditation: Letting Go - One way of understanding meditation is a letting go of the habitual clenching of thoughts, the clenching that resists emotions and pulls away from aliveness itself. This meditation guides us in letting go, first through the body, and then practicing letting go of thoughts and relaxing and resting in the changing flow of experience. The blessing of letting go is a homecoming into the truth and wholeness of what we are, a realization of reality, and freedom.

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 - Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.

Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life (16:11 min.) - This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.

The Three Steps of Letting Go - A wonderful inquiry is, “What is between me and openhearted presence?” This talk explores the profound healing and transformation that arises when we release the blocks to our natural and loving awareness.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Open Wakefulness - This meditation begins by relaxing through the body and connecting with inner aliveness and space. We then include sounds and sense the openness to life. At the center of the practice is a relaxing back and inhabiting spacious awareness. The meditation ends as we experience the heart from the vantage of spacious awareness and offer prayers to our inner life and all life.

Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 2 - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding—to ourselves, each other and our world– with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence - Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment to moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Wherever you are, Find a Trail.”

Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 1 - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding – to ourselves, each other and our world – with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Reconnecting to Silence and Presence - Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”

Nourishing Our Spirit in Times of Collective Fear -

Meditation: Whole Body Breathing - This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.

Self Forgiveness with RAIN - Our inability to forgive ourselves blocks healing and freedom. As we explore in this talk, the habit of judging and blaming ourselves traps us in fears, prevents intimacy with our world, and veils over the goodness and mystery of who we are. This talk includes several reflections that can support us as we cultivate a wise and forgiving heart.

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 close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.

Equanimity – Part 4 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love

Meditation: The Space and Aliveness of Presence - We arrive in presence by deepening attention in the body; relaxing and awakening through a body scan. That presence deepens as we bring our attention to the space of awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings. In that wholeness of formlessness and form, we discover our natural being - open, awake and tender.

Joy – Part 3 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love - Part 3: Joy – blossoms in the moments our hearts open boundlessly to reality, to the 10,000 joys and sorrows. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome - This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence (a favorite "open space" meditation from the archives).

Compassion – Part 2 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love -

Part 2: Compassion – the tender resonance of heart – awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability.

This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: Awareness Is Our Home - This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.

Lovingkindness – Part 1 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love - We awaken our natural lovingkindness by learning to attend to and take in the goodness of this life.

This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: Path of Love - This heart practice opens with the intention to bring a kind presence to whatever arises. After arriving with a body scan, we are guided to meet all experience with an open tender awareness. The practice ends with a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer called “Is this the Path of Love?”

Responding with Heart to Painful Times: A Conversation with Tara & Frank Ostaseski - This event includes short talks addressing the suffering so many are experiencing, and questions and engagement with participants

Meditation: Present Heart - We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.

Relationships - from Reactivity to Rechoosing Love - Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more loving connection in our lives.

Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart - 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.

Compassion toward Non-Human Animals - A Conversation between Konda Mason and Tara Brach - The medicine our world most needs is compassion, and it is crucial that this include all living beings. Our societal conditioning blinds us to the horror of suffering experienced by non-human animals through our cruel system of factory farming. This conversation looks at how facing and responding to this suffering is necessary for the freedom of our own hearts, and the healing of the world.  

Meditation: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves - By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we began to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, we rest in an ocean of awareness that embraces all the moving waves. We arrive in a sanctuary that feels large enough to hold whatever was going on.

Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 2 - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.

Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness - Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.

Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 1 - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path. 

Meditation: Embodied Spirit - Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness that is the source of all being.

Engaged Spirituality during Times of Upheaval - Engaged spirituality means responding to our world’s suffering with wisdom and deep care. This talk looks at three blocks to aligning our actions with our heart – “bad othering,” dissociation and overwhelm. We explore how we can awaken from each reaction to suffering by drawing on our practices of presence and remembering our larger belonging.

Meditation: Compassion Practice – Tonglen - Our deepest wisdom and purest actions arise out of open-hearted presence. This meditation, “Awakening Compassion,” is drawn from the Tibetan tradition and carries us home to the vastness of loving presence (re-mastered from the 2013 IMCW fall 7-day silent retreat).

Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence - If we want to bring our intelligence, creativity and love into our relationships and world, we need to be able to access an inner refuge of presence. This talk explores how, when we’re reacting from anger, clinging or fear, to pause, reconnect to the immediate experience of “just this” and remember the love and awareness that has room for the changing waves of life. 

Meditation: Being a Kind Witness - Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness.

Radical Acceptance - Gateway to Love, Wisdom and Peace - (2022-02-23) - Acceptance is radical because it undoes our resistance to reality. This talk explores how our meditation practice can cultivate a liberating acceptance, a heartspace that includes all of life and enables us to respond to our world with deep intelligence and compassion.

Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care - This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet Dorothy Hunt.

Cultivating Loving Kindness - The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.

Heart Meditation: Loving Kindness – Befriending our Lives - This heart 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 (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat).

Love in Action: Realizing Interbeing - The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it's led humans to destroying our larger body, Earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.

Meditation: Spacious, Clear Awareness - This meditation begins with a breath that calms and collects the attention, and then a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. Finally, we relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, clear awareness.

The Earth is Crying in our Hearts - The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web.  These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it's led humans to destroying our larger body, earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.

Meditation: Breathing Through - Drawn from a classic Tibetan Buddhist compassion practice, this guided meditation invites us to open to the sufferings of the world, and let it move through our hearts and out again. The blessing of this offering of presence is that our hearts become a transformer of sorrow.

Living with Courageous Presence - The essence of courage is to willingly feel our vulnerability; this is what allows us to respond to life with an undefended, wise heart. This talk explores the ways we resist opening to vulnerability, and three key steps in cultivating a courageous presence.

Meditation: Know That You're Here - We spend many moments in a trance, time traveling to the past and future, lost in a virtual reality. This meditation helps us collect our attention with our breath, awaken through the body, and open the senses. We then rest in the wakeful openness that includes changing experience, aware of the mystery and vividness of being Here.

Resilience and Wisdom in an Uncertain World (Conversation: Tara & Trisha Stotler, IMCW) - The Buddhist scriptures describe a mind that “no longer shakes, in a world where everything is shaking.” Our times are deeply stressful and troubling, and we need individual and collective ways of responding from our deepest understanding and care. In this interview, Tara reflects on the perspectives and ways of practicing that allow us to engage in relationships and our larger society from an awake compassionate heart.

Meditation: Silence, Presence and Care (2022-01-19) - Quieting our busy bodies and minds brings alive our heart and spirit. This practice begins with a reading on silence by Gunilla Norris, and then includes guidance in letting go of tension, opening to aliveness and resting in a caring and wakeful awareness.

Compass of Our Heart - All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and energizes our awakening hearts and minds. This talk explores the movement from egoic intention to liberating intention…the movement from “my will” to “my heart’s will” (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (2022-01-12) - When we fully inhabit our body, we discover the space and wakefulness of awareness itself. In this meditation, we rest in this open awareness, and when the attention narrows into thoughts, we practice relaxing back into the openness that includes passing sounds, sensations and feelings. We close with a brief offering of lovingkindness to our own hearts and our world (with community OMs – no bell at end).

Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering - This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn (to participate you will need a 20” red string.)

A verse from Ryokan, an eighteenth-century Zen poet, came to mind: “To find the Buddhist law, drift east and west, come and go, entrusting yourself to the waves.”

Meditation: Letting Go… Letting Be (2022-01-05) - This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.

Meditation: What Matters to your Heart? - Entering a new year is a wonderful opportunity to clarify our purpose. In this guided visualization, we are invited to attune to the state of our heart and our deepest aspiration.

Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part 3 - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.

Meditation: Awakening an Intimate Presence (2021-12-29) - This guided meditation cultivates a relaxed, gentle presence with whatever expressions of life are arising in the moment. We begin by releasing and opening through the body, and then include all sensations, feelings and sounds in an intimate, allowing presence.

Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part II (2021-12-22) - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.  

Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence (2021-12-22) - Loving presence is an innate capacity, and it can be cultivated. This meditation begins with a scan arousing a relaxed tender presence in the body, then brings loving attention to our inner life, and in widening circles, to our world.

Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part I (2021-12-15) - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.

Meditation: Collecting and Quieting the Mind (2021-12-15) - Our conditioned mind is filled with distractions, including worry-thoughts that continually create anxiety in the body. This meditation guides us in relaxing the body, and then establishing the breath as a home base. By gathering and collecting the attention, the mind can settle and allow for a relaxed, wakeful presence.

Awakening from the Trance of Unworthiness - Interview with Tara and Dr. Mark Hyman (2021-12-09) - Our healing and freedom unfolds as we bring radical acceptance - a mindful, allowing presence - to our moments. This interview looks at how we wake up out of the stories that keep us in fear and self-doubt, and discover a true intimacy with ourselves and our world.

Meditation: Refuge in Presence (2021-12-08) - We arrive in presence through the gateway of the body, scanning through with awareness, and then resting with the breath and body sensations. As we include whatever arises with a gentle and kind attention, our inner refuge becomes increasingly stable and openhearted. This meditation ends with a brief loving-kindness prayer.

Preparing our Hearts for the Holidays (2021-12-01) - While the holidays can be times of loving celebration, they can also highlight relational conflicts and challenges. This talk explores how, given the stress of the season, we can bring grace and openheartedness to ourselves and others.

Heart Meditation: Taking in the Goodness (2021-12-01) - Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, “Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness.” This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.

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 (from the archives).

Meditation: Energy and Source (2021-11-24) - Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever creative living world.

Recevoir la bonté présente - Méditation de retraite - Rumi à dit : « À chaque fois que vous recevez une gentillesse, tournez-vous vers sa source, la source de la bienveillance. »  Cette méditation nous guide à chercher la Source de l’amour et à nous tourner vers elle. Cette méditation débute avec une pratique de bienveillance qui répand l’image du sourire dans tout notre corps pour continuer avec une pratique de reconnaitre la bonté en nous et chez les autres.

Cette méditation est de Tara Brach. Elle est traduite et dite avec sa permission par Dominique Fugère (Québec, Canada).

Facing the Truths That Keep Us from Love: Conversation between Rev Angel Kyodo Williams and Tara Brach - Our happiness and capacity to love fully arise as we face and embrace all domains of our existence. In this conversation we look at the often unexamined societal conditioning that, when unseen, perpetuates caste systems that harm ourselves and all involved. Our inquiry: For the sake of freedom, how do we deepen our attention to see the forces that cut us off from wholeness, from belonging, from living from an awake, compassionate heart?

Meditation: Filling Our Body with Love (2021-11-17) - When we are fully awake, love shines through our entire body and being. This meditation awakens that embodied love through the image and felt sense of the smile, scanning through the body, resting in loving presence and offering loving prayer.

Meditation: RAIN of Compassion (9 min.) - In this short practice we are guided in bringing the mindfulness and self-nurturing of RAIN to a difficult emotion. This helps us shift from feeling stuck and reactive to the tender and spacious presence that is our true home.

Fear and Love (2021-11-01) - Only when we face our fears can we discover the freedom to love without holding back. This talk looks at how unprocessed fear contracts our body, heart and mind, and on a societal level is the cause of othering and violence. We then explore how arousing mindfulness, compassion and prayer can enlarge our basic sense of Being. As we deepen attention to the nature of awareness, we discover a refuge that is timeless…a refuge that is our true home (given at the IMCW 2021 Fall Retreat).

Meditation: Awakening Self-Compassion (2021-11-10) - This RAIN meditation helps us explore pathways to nurturing ourselves in a way that brings profound transformation and healing.

After the RAIN: Part 2 - The Flowering of Awake Awareness - (2021 -11 -03) - The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.

Meditation: The Return to Presence - Rest Your Mind In What Is (2021-11-03) - It’s natural that our attention wanders, and the more we relax back, the more that becomes our habit…returning to presence. This meditation opens with conscious breathing and awakening through the body. We then rest in open awareness, and when the attention drifts, guide ourselves to rest our minds, over and over, in the aliveness and presence that is right here.

After the RAIN: Part 1 - The Flowering of Awake Awareness - The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.

Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness (2021-10-27) - This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening 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.

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.

Meditation: Widening Rings of Being (2021-10-20) - If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom, the awake space of Being, that is beyond the confines of thoughts.

Grieving and Timeless Love - How we relate to change and loss is directly connected to how fully we live and love. This talk looks at the classic ways we avoid opening to the realness of loss, and how our sorrows and grief can become a portal to awakening our heart and spirit. 

Meditation: A Practice of RAIN - The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises.

“Don’t turn away.
Keep your gaze on the bandaged place.
That’s where the light enters you.”
~ Rumi

Realizing Your Deepest Desires - This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion, grasping and conflict, so that our aspiration becomes a compass of the heart that can guide us in living with wisdom and compassion.

Meditation: Letting Thought Clouds Come and Go - This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.

Facing Fear in a Traumatized World (2021-09-29) - Unprocessed fear cuts us off from our full aliveness and spirit, and it separates us from others. This talk looks at how we bring healing to the trauma and deep fears that cause us to dissociate from our body. We focus on ways we increase safety, diminish shame and then, with a courageous, embodied and compassionate presence, learn to contact and integrate fear into our larger awareness.

Meditation: The Heart-Wisdom of Your Future Self (2021-09-29) -  In this meditation, we relax and open our body and mind, and then explore an encounter with our Future Self - facing Fear in a Traumatized World is the expression of our most evolved and awakened heart.

Anger: Responding, Not Reacting (2021-09-22) - 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. 

Meditation: Present Heart (2021-09-22) - We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath, and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.

Radical Friendship: Conversation between Tara and Kate Johnson - The often unseen cause of our difficulties in relationships is the societal structures that are marked by violence and domination. This conversation looks at what blocks authentic and loving connectedness, and ways to intentionally cultivate authentic, openhearted awake relationships.

Meditation: Sitting Like a Mountain (2021-09-15) - Meditation can empower us as we learn to access our potential for stability, strength and openness. This meditation calls on the image of a mountain as we awaken our body and mind to a full, vibrant presence. Closes with a metta (loving-kindness) prayer.

A Conversation Between Tara and Mark Nepo - Mark is a spiritual teacher, wonderful poet, and author of many books including best selling "The Book of Awakening." In this wide-ranging and rich conversation, Tara and Mark explore shedding our defenses, faith, compassion for ourselves and others, spiritual practice, and facing illness, aging and death. 

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness (2021-09-08) - 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.

The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance - When we are caught in self-judgment we forget the truth of who we are - our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of radical acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.

Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying "Yes" to the Moment - When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We tense against our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by saying “yes.” Through relaxing back and saying “yes,” we discover our heart’s capacity for unconditional love.

The Blessings of “Enough” - Discovering Contentment in Daily Life (Part 2) - One of the great gifts of mindful awareness is access to true contentment. These two talks look at the universal blocks to contentment - habits of fixating on what's wrong and what’s missing. We then explore the practices of presence that awaken us from wanting life to be different, reveal our intrinsic wholeness and offer a profound sense of well-being.

Meditation: Resting Your Heart in Presence - When we’re having difficulty, we typically tense up our body and mind, and armor our heart. This practice offers a pathway of relaxing that tension and tasting the peace that comes from resting in presence.

The Blessings of “Enough” - Discovering Contentment in Daily Life (Part 1) - One of the great gifts of mindful awareness is access to true contentment. These two talks look at the universal blocks to contentment—habits of fixating on what's wrong and what’s missing. We then explore the practices of presence that awaken us from wanting life to be different, reveal our intrinsic wholeness and offer a profound sense of well-being.

Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Life - We are conditioned to scan for “what’s wrong” and contract our body and mind in anticipation of danger. This meditation helps us undo these primal survival habits, and frees us to inhabit the full aliveness, creativity and love our natural being.

Humility - In Buddhism and most faiths, humility – feeling that we all share common ground, feeling neither superior or inferior to others – is both a prerequisite to awakening and an expression of mature spirituality. This talk explores how our conditioning and culture reinforce a swing from ego-inflation (self-importance, feeling special, better than others) to ego-deflation (feeling unworthy). We then look at how a wise and kind attention opens us to who we are beyond these confining egoic states, and enables us to live with humility and grace.

Meditation: Dedicated to Maya Angelou - Being Home (2021-08-11) - This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence - arriving into our bodies and meeting the present moment with the image of a smile. When the mind drifts, we relax back to our senses…into the openhearted awareness that is our true home.

Taking ‘The Exquisite Risk’: An Undefended Heart - Poet Mark Nepo uses the phrase “exquisite risk” to describe our willingness to be fully alive, open, available, living true to our heart. This talk explores the challenges and blessings of taking the exquisite risk, both in becoming more intimate with our inner life, and in engaging with others from full authenticity (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Full Presence (2017-03-22) - This guided practice begins with a conscious breath that relaxes the body and mind, and then a body scan to awaken to the aliveness of the present moment. We then open into the natural awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, feelings and sensations, and practice “relaxing back” when the mind gets lost in thought.

Writing and Haiku as Spiritual Practice (Tara Brach Interviews Natalie Goldberg) -

Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness - This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening 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 (remastered favorite from the archives).

The Power of Spiritual Hope (2021-07-21) - The openness to possibility is essential on a path of awakening and freedom. In this talk we explore what makes up mature or spiritual hope, and how two meditation practices of presence can nourish our hope.

Meditation: Nourishing Happiness with RAIN - While RAIN is regularly used for untangling suffering, it is also a powerful tool for deepening our access to positive states like happiness, gratitude, wonder and love. This meditation guides us in nourishing the goodness that is an intrinsic part of living and essential in realizing our full aliveness. The practice ends with a poem by Naomi Shahib Nye.

Mindful Leadership: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Michelle Maldonado (2021-07-14) - The principles of mindful leadership are relevant for all of us—they bring out the best of who we are in our work, with our family, with our friends. Especially in these times of mistrust and dividedness, our world desperately needs each of us to cultivate the qualities of focus, presence, care, respect, clarity, and curiosity that mark a true leader. Michelle Maldonado is a brilliant teacher of mindful leadership, and she embodies the compassion and skillfulness she invites forward in others. 

Meditation: Living Presence – with Body Scan (2021-07-15) - A key pathway to full presence is awakening through the body. This meditation guides us through a body scan, relaxing and receiving the play of sensations. We then deepen attention to the breath, and rest with the rhythmic waves of breathing, experiencing the background of the whole domain of physical aliveness.

Three Core Reminders for Spiritual Practice - This talk explores three powerful ways you can direct your attention when you find yourself emotionally stuck: Wake up from thoughts; feel your feelings and remember love. We explore both the habits blocking these basic movements toward freedom, and what nourishes them. Together they can serve to open your mind, awaken aliveness and heal your heart.

Meditation: Relaxed and Alert (2021-07-07) - 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.

Trusting the Gold: A Conversation - Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust - In this interview-style conversation, Jonathan asks Tara questions about key themes in her new book, Trusting the Gold. They include their own relationships and ways we work with our inner life and others, in cultivating the capacity to see basic goodness and realizing a mature and liberating quality of trust.

Heart Meditation: Taking in the Goodness (2021-06-30) - Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, “Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness.” This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.

Shifting from Limbic to Liberating Intention - 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: The Heartspace of Gratitude - When gratitude for our life arises, we enter the sacred space of an open heart. This meditation guides us in arriving in presence and awakening the blessings of gratitude.

Fierce Self-Compassion - A conversation between Tara Brach and Kristin Neff - Kristin Neff is a pioneer in self-compassion research and a leader in bringing practices of self-compassion alive in our world. This conversation is on her latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion, which helps women awaken both receptive and active dimensions of compassion - tenderness and fierceness.

Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome (2021-06-16) - This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence.

Trusting the Gold - A Celebration of Tara’s New Book, with special guest, Rick Hanson - The essence of the spiritual path is realizing, trusting and living from our natural awareness and love. This talk explores the two key pathways that help us awaken from the trance of identifying as a limited, separate self. It includes several guided meditations and a period of questions and response.

Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts (2021-06-09) - We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.

Meditation: Blessings of Love - A blessing is whatever reminds us of the sacred loving presence that shines through all of us. The image of receiving a kiss on the brow, and offering one, is suggested as a powerful channel for the blessings that awaken our heart. 

Part 2 - Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit (2021-06-02) - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path. 

Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness (2021-06-02) - Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.

Part 1 - Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path. 

Meditation: Embodied Spirit - Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.

John O’Donahue writes, “We are so busy managing our lives, we forget this great mystery we are involved in.” This talk looks at the ways we pull away from the mystery and the path of “beginner’s mind” that enables us to encounter this living world with freshness, courage and wonder (Tara chose this talk to share from the archives).

Meditation: Yes to Life (2021-05-19) -  In the moments we release all resistance, we relax open to inhabit the fullness of our Being. This meditation guides us to an embodied, openhearted presence that welcomes the changing flow of life.

Bridging the Divide: Learning to Tend and Befriend - One of the great sufferings facing us is the growing divide between humans with different views, different realities. This talk looks at several levels of divides—being at war with ourselves, creating separation in our personal relationships, and societal divides. We then reflect on how we can evolve consciousness from the trance of “Fight, Flight, Freeze” to the wholeness that arises with “Tend and Befriend.”

Meditation: Being Here for Life (2021-05-08) - It’s easy to race through our seasons and miss the mystery and preciousness of unfolding moments. This meditation invites us into an embodied, openhearted presence and includes a poem by Pat Schneider called “Instructions for the Journey." 

Three Dimensions of Conscious Prayer - Prayer can be a creative, vibrant and infinitely tender part of our spiritual awakening. This talk explores the dimensions of embodied presence, sincere expression and silence that bring transformational power to our prayers.

Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence (2021-05-05) - We resist reality by tensing our body and contracting into thoughts. This meditation guides us into letting go of resistance by surrendering over and over into the aliveness and presence that is right here. 

Méditation: Rencontrer la colère avec conscience - (de-TaraBrach-traduite-par-Dominique-Fugère) -

Lorsque notre colère est contenue avec conscience, elle peut être une force, une énergie, pour répondre avec sagesse aux situations difficiles de la vie. Cette méditation nous guide pour aller à la rencontre de la colère personnelle et\ou sociale qui nous habite, avec l’aide de RAIN, l’acronyme du Reconnaître, Autoriser, Investiguer et Nourrir.

Cette méditation est de Tara Brach. Elle est traduite et dite avec sa permission par Dominique Fugère (Québec, Canada).

Namaste: Honoring the Light in All Beings - The ritual of Namaste - bowing to the sacred in ourselves and others - helps us live from the loving awareness that is our true nature. This talk looks at how we suffer because we forget this basic goodness, and explores the pathways of remembering that carry us home.

Meditation: From Head to Full Being (2021-04-28) - When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being.

Belonging to the Earth (2021-04-21) - As a species, forgetting our belonging to our larger body of Earth is causing suffering for this entire living web. In this talk we look at what causes and sustains this trance of forgetting. We then explore the ways we each can awaken a sense of loving connectedness and active caring toward our natural world.  

Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness (2021-04-21) - Our tension is a way of defending against the aliveness that is here and now. This meditation guides us in relaxing tension, awakening our senses and discovering the vitality and presence that express our natural being.

“Make Love of Your Self Perfect” - retreat talk (2021-04-14) - Like a dense fog, chronic self -judgment blocks the light of our true nature. This talk explores the challenges to loving the life within us, and the pathways of practice that lead to holding our own being and all life in a boundless tender heart (a talk from the IMCW Spring 2021 online weeklong silent retreat).

Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath (2021-04-14) - 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.

Radical Self-Honesty: The Joy of Getting Real - Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. This talk explores ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being that enables us to live with spontaneity, confidence, wisdom and love (a favorite from the archives).

A quote by Elizabeth Lessor from the talk: “My prayer to god every day: Remove the veils so I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears.”

Meditation: Relaxing into Living Presence (2021-04-07) - This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.

Part 2 - Fear of Aging: Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World (2021-03-31) - While it’s natural to have fears of what’s ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence (2021-03-31) - When we are stressed, our body and mind contract, and energetically we resist the life in the present moment. This meditation helps de-condition the stress reaction by guiding us to relax open from thoughts, relax physical tension, and gently relax back over and over into living presence. 

Transforming Two Fears - FOF and FOMO (2021-03-24) - There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential - fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness.

Meditation: Embodying Loving Awareness (2021-03-24) - Love is often abstract, and not fully alive. In this practice, with the supportive image and felt sense of a smile, we are guided to awaken loving in our body, mind and whole being.

Fear of Aging - Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World – Part 1 (2021-03-17) - While it’s natural to have fears of what’s ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us. NOTE: The quoted prayer "And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well" is from 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, in her work “Revelations of Divine Love.”

Meditation: A Kind and Allowing Presence (2021-03-17) - When we’re stressed our hearts tighten and we try to control our life. This meditation guides us to relax the controlling and discover the open, tender awareness that allows life to be as it is.

The Power of Deep Listening - Part 2 (2012-03-10) - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening (2021-03-10) - Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem “lost” by David Wagoner.

The Power of Deep Listening - Part 1 (2021-03-03) - Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.

Meditation: Aliveness and Presence (2021-03-03) - This meditation guides us to wake up our senses and full aliveness through a body scan, and then to rest in the formless presence that is aware of this changing dance of life.  We close with a poem by Robert Hall.

Namaste: Seeing the Truth of Who We Are (2021-02-24) - A gift of evolving consciousness is the capacity to recognize and honor the sacred awareness that lives through our own and all beings. This capacity is blocked by our identification with our “mask” or ego self, and not seeing past other people’s masks. In this talk we reflect together on some key filters of superior/inferior and good/bad that shape the trance of a narrowed identity, and then explore how mindfulness and kindness free us to inhabit the vastness of our natural awareness. We close with tasting the possibility of bringing the spirit of Namaste to ourselves, others and all beings.

Meditation: Continuous Space Suffused with Awareness (2021-02-24) - By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.

Awakening Our Body’s Awareness – Part 2 (2021-02-17) - Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.

Meditation: A Welcoming Heartspace (2021-02-17) - Our pathway to peace and happiness is through opening, with tenderness, to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation guides us first to be awake in our body and senses, and then to include the changing flow of life in a spacious, kind heart. We close with a short verse from poet Dorothy Hunt

The Superpower of Mindful Witnessing (2021-02-10) - The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.

Meditation: Being a Kind Witness (2021-02-10) - Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness.

Awakening Our Body's Awareness - Part 1 - Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: Homecoming with the Breath - This meditation focuses on the breath as an anchor for homecoming. We begin with an intentional breath (coherence breathing) and then establish the natural breath as a home base. The instructions are to rest in the breath, offering a relaxed, intimate intention. Other waves of sensation or emotion are included when they ask for attention as we cultivate an open and full mindful presence. Our freedom arises as we recognize the formless awareness that is our home, and the natural and ever-changing waves that live through us (a favorite from the archives).

Spiritual Hope (2021-01-27) - 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: Sacred Presence (2021-01-23) - This meditation guides us to wakefully relax with the changing flow of moment to moment experience. As we open our senses fully, we discover the sacred living presence that is our very essence.

Cultivating a Courageous Heart - Part 2 (2021-01-20) - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding—to ourselves, each other and our world-- with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence (2021-01-30) - Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment to moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Whereever you are, Find a Trail.”

Cultivating a Courageous Heart - Part 1 (2020-01-13) - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding - to ourselves, each other and our world - with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Reconnecting to Silence and Presence (2021-01-13) - Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”

The Three Refuges - Gateways to Awakening (2021-01-06) - We all seek refuge, a sense of safety or homecoming amidst the uncertainties of life. Our way of finding refuge can either imprison or free us. This talk explores the false refuges that entrap us in feeling separate and endangered, and the refuges of Awareness (Buddha,) Truth (Dharma) and Love (Sangha) that reveal our true nature. This evening gathering includes a ceremony with candles, reflection and music.

Meditation: A Present Heart (2020-01-06) - One translation of mindfulness, in Chinese, is “present heart.” In this guided meditation we begin by awakening through the body and the senses, and then open the attention to the changing flow of experience. The intention is to meet whatever arises with a wakeful and kind presence.

Repairing Our Hearts - Healing with the RAIN of Compassion (2020-12-30) - Living in a fear-based society fuels the trance of separation and unworthiness. This talk explores how we can bring an engaged compassionate presence to the suffering of this trance—in our inner work, and more broadly, in healing our culture (from the IMCW 2020 New Year Silent Retreat).

Meditation: RAIN of Self-Compassion (2020-12-30) - One of the great sufferings is turning on ourselves with judgment and/or self-aversion. This practice brings the acronym RAIN to this pain. It helps us cultivate a healing self-compassion, and the realization of who we are beyond any limiting story of self.

“Good Othering” – Helping Each Other Trust the Gold (2020-12-23) - One of the great gifts we can offer is being a mirror of goodness, reminding one another that we can trust our essential awareness, light and love. Because our conditioning is to fixate on flaws, “good othering” takes intention and practice. This talk explores how we can develop the habit of seeing goodness, and importantly, learn to communicate our appreciation and love to others.

Meditation: Meeting life with a Kind Presence (2020-12-23) - This practice guides us to a receptive, kind presence by starting with listening, and moving through a body scan.  We then rest in an open awareness, responding to whatever arises with a gentle attention.

Heart to Heart: A Conversation Between Dan Gottlieb and Tara Brach (2020-12-16) - This very real and human interchange touches on pain, loss, love, gratitude and much more.

Meditation: Coming Home to Heartspace (2020-12-16) - Our pathway to our hearts is through presence. This meditation helps us awaken presence through our body and all our senses. We then open to the awareness that can meet whatever arises with tenderness and kindness. This meditation includes a reading from the Radiance Sutras, interpreted and translated by Lorin Roche

Remembering Our Belonging – Part 2 (2020-12-09) - Our deepest suffering comes from feelings of separation, and as a species, our great task is realizing our belonging—to our bodies and hearts, to each other, to the living web of all beings, to formless loving awareness. These two talks explore how healing and true belonging become possible as we deepen our capacity to face truth – within ourselves and with each other – and hold that truth with compassion.

Meditation: Yes to Our Moments (2020-12-09) - When we open without resistance to the changing flow of aliveness, we discover the formless presence that is our true home. This meditation guides us through a body scan and then opening to all sounds, sensations and emotions with the energetic allowing of “Yes.” We close with a poem by Danna Faulds, “White Dove.”

Remembering Our Belonging, Part 1 (2020-12-02) - Our deepest suffering comes from feelings of separation, and as a species, our great task is realizing our belonging—to our bodies and hearts, to each other, to the living web of all beings, to formless loving awareness. These two talks explore how healing and true belonging become possible as we deepen our capacity to face truth - within ourselves and with each other - and hold that truth with compassion.

Meditation: Embodied Love (2020-12-02) - This meditation guides us through a scan, to awaken a healing and openhearted presence throughout our body. We then widen to our full field of awareness, including whatever wants attention in an open, inclusive loving presence.

Authentic Thanks Giving (redux) - How do we awaken our natural capacities for gratitude and generosity? This talk explores the pathways of honest presence and purposeful cultivation, and offers several reflections that guide us in contacting and expressing our love (a favorite Thanksgiving talk from the archives).

Meditation: Yes to Life (2020-11-25) - After relaxing our bodies and quieting our minds, this meditation guides us to open to the changing experience of being alive. We ask ourselves two questions: “What is Happening Inside me?” and “Can I be with this?” By learning to bring an unconditional presence and an accepting Yes to our lives, we begin to touch openheartedness and freedom.

The Stories that Empower Us: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Elizabeth Lesser (2020-11-18) - Whether we know it or not, our daily lives take direction from myths and tales that are hundreds, even thousands of years old. During their time together, Tara and Elizabeth will speak about how these origin tales have shaped our psyches and perpetuated the violence and suffering that marks our world. They will then explore how we can create fresh stories that guide our collective awakening to peace, compassion and healing.

Meditation: The “Do No Harm and Take No S***” Practice, by Guest Elizabeth Lesser (2020-11-18) - This practice - based on an ancient Buddhist meditation - bears the name of needlepoint I found in my sister's office after she died. She was a nurse, and as such had taken the oath all medical practitioners take: to do no harm. She added the next line, "take no s***," because as we all know life requires us to be both kindly and strong.

The following meditation is a training in both, because being kind and being strong are not mutually exclusive. Doing no harm and taking no s*** is not an either/or choice. It’s the marriage of the two that will make a difference in your life and will change the story in the world.

This meditation was recorded on Zoom during Tara's live-stream on 2020-11-18, and was followed by a conversation between Tara and Elizabeth.

“Play a Greater Part” – Bodhisattva for Our Times - During scary and uncertain times, the habitual reflex is to try to find ground by creating stories about what’s happening and hardening into us-them blame. This only perpetuates the aggression and violence that is so prevalent in our societies. This talk is a reflection on how we as awakening bodhisattvas can evolve our consciousness in a way that serves authentic societal healing and transformation (a favorite from the archives).

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.

Meditation: Uprooting Limiting Beliefs with RAIN - This short reflection guides us in using RAIN (recognize-allow-investigate-nurture) when we discover we are caught in a limiting belief. Who would you be if you didn’t believe there was something wrong with you? (an excerpt from the full talk, Freedom from the Prison of Limiting Beliefs, given on 2020-09-23)

Meditation: Letting Go and Letting Be(2020-10-03) - We leave presence by contracting into thoughts and resisting the changing flow of life. This meditation guides us in gently releasing thoughts and opening to this mysterious life, just as it is.

Your Future Self: Turning Towards Your Awakened HeartMind - 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 (enjoy from the archives). 

Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence (2020-09-30) - If we want to bring our intelligence, creativity and love into our relationships and world, we need to be able to access an inner refuge of presence. This talk explores how, when we’re reacting from anger, clinging or fear, to pause, reconnect to the immediate experience of “just this” and remember the love and awareness that has room for the changing waves of life. 

Meditation: Pathway to Inner Peace (2020--09-30) - “Peace is this moment without judgment,” writes poet Dorothy Hunt, “this moment in the heart-space where everything that is, is welcome.” This meditation is a guide to opening to the truth of what’s here, and meeting it with a gentle, allowing presence. As we do, we can touch the inner peace of non-judging awareness, and source our actions in that balance and wisdom.

Freedom from the Prison of Limiting Beliefs (2020-09-23) - (dedicated to Ruth Bader Ginsburg) - We suffer when we are caught in beliefs of our own or other's badness, unworthiness, or lack of value. These beliefs hurt our bodies, lead to violent and/or addictive behaviors, and separate us from our own heart and each other. This talk explores how we can discover who we are beyond these beliefs by recognizing when we are trapped, and learning how to turn to presence and love.

Meditation: Refuge in Presence (2020-09-23) - The movement from virtual reality – thoughts - to the awareness of sense-based reality is true homecoming. This meditation guides us in awakening our senses, and returning again and again to the freedom of embodied presence. We close with part of a poem “Come Home” by Jane Hooper.

The Four Remembrances (2020-09-16) - When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry. This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices—Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness—that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.

Meditation: Loving What Is (2020-09-12) - While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions to move through us, just as they are. As this allowing presence deepens, it becomes suffused with the tenderness of love.

Meditation: Loving What Is (2020-09-12) - While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions to move through us, just as they are. As this allowing presence deepens, it becomes suffused with the tenderness of love.

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.

Meditation: A Present Heart (2020-08-19) - This guided practice emphasizes bringing a gentle and kind attention to our bodies, and then including all experience with a receptive presence. We close by identifying a part of our being that is asking for a healing attention, and offering loving presence to ourself and then to others.

Learning to Respond, Not React - When stressed, we often react with looping fear-thoughts, feelings and behaviors that cause harm to ourselves and/or others. This talk offers three interrelated strategies that can serve us when we’re triggered by stress, and help us find our way back to our natural wisdom, empathy and wholeness of being. By de-conditioning habitual reactivity, we are increasingly able to respond to our life circumstances in ways that serve healing and awakening.

Please enjoy this remastered audio version of one of Tara's most popular talks, originally published on 09/02/2015.

Meditation: Cultivating an Intimate Presence - This guided meditation cultivates a relaxed, gentle presence with whatever expressions of life are arising in the moment. We begin by releasing and opening through the body, and then include all sensations, feelings and sounds in an intimate, allowing presence.

Radical Love: Part 1 - Reflections that Awaken our Heart (2020-08-05) - Radical love arises from the purity of our awake awareness, and cuts through the delusion of being separate and not OK. It comes from and brings out our intrinsic goodness. These talks explore the barriers to this embodied, inclusive and active loving, and include reflections that can help us to free our own hearts and bring true healing to our world.

Guided Meditation: Openhearted Presence (2020-08-05) - This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.  

Meditation: Tonglen - Discovering the Boundless Space of Compassion (2020-07-25) - This short version of the Tibetan Tonglen practice guides us in courageously opening to the suffering within us and all beings, and allowing that suffering to be held in the formless heartspace that is our true belonging (recorded during Tara's livestreamed Satsang QA session).

Your Awake Heart Is Calling You - As individuals and societies, we are pulled by both the insecurity of our evolutionary past, and by our awake heart, our capacity for mindfulness and compassion. This talk explores the ways we can listen to and respond to the call of our awake heart, by training ourselves to open to vulnerability (our own and others) and widen the circles of compassion (a favorite from the 2017 archives).

Meditation: A Witnessing, Kind Presence - Starting with scanning through the body and awakening the senses, we then rest in presence, with the breath as a home base. The meditation invites an openness to whatever arises, and a gentle kind attention if we encounter physical or emotional pain. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings. (original recording 2017-01-18)

Love and Fear During Times of War: An Interview with Lama Rod Owens (2020-07-22) - This is a time of darkness and war. Fear lies at the heart of much of the violence we are experiencing. How do we befriend our fear and offer it permission to teach us how to move through it into a state of freedom? How do we use our fear to connect to the fear so many other people are experiencing? Ultimately, how do we begin to love what is unlovable, especially our fear?
We will call on the teachings of Buddhadharma as well as our own intrinsic wisdom to lean into our fear with love.

Meditation: Gateway to Natural Presence (2020-07-22) - We enter a full presence through awakening our senses, and awakening to the awareness that is aware. This meditation guides us as we arouse an embodied presence, let go of any controlling, then discover the natural spaciousness and wakefulness that is the essence of what we are.

The Sacred Art of Listening - Just as presence is the heart of meditation, so deep listening is at the center of all conscious, loving relationships. This talk explores how our wants and fears block listening, ways we can deepen our capacity for listening, and the healing that unfolds when we truly feel heard by another (a special talk from the archives).

What happens when you’re really listening?

Meditation: Listening to Life (2014-11-12) - The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.

This meditation ends with a tribute to Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and a reading from his writings on death and life.

Meditation: Healing Shame (2020-07-01) - This meditation brings the clarity and self-compassion of RAIN to the suffering of self-aversion and/or shame. It helps us see the conditioning that shaped what we judge about ourselves, and helps us remember who we are beyond our habitual and painful self-narrative. This helps us to look with fresh eyes at our conditioning, and align our life more fully with our awakening heart.

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): 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.