Tara Brach

By Tara Brach

What's Tara Brach about?

Tara Brach, Ph.D is an internationally known meditation teacher and author of bestselling Radical Acceptance and True Refuge. Tara shares a weekly guided meditation and talk that blend Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices. The podcast addresses the value of mindfulness meditation and self-compassion in relieving emotional suffering, serving spiritual awakening and bringing healing to our world.

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LAST EPISODE

The Courage to Love - Part ...

06.14.2019

The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence.

Tara Brach episodes:

06.14.2019 The Courage to Love - Part 1 (2019-06-12) The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence.
06.13.2019 Meditation: Effortless and Wakeful Presence (2019-06-12) Striving in meditation only creates more tension in our psyche and a solidified sense of self. This meditation invites us to awaken our senses and relax back into the presence that is always and already here. From presence we spontaneously ...
06.07.2019 An Appropriate Response: Living from an Awake Heart (2019-06-05) Much of our suffering comes from reacting to stressful situations with fear or aggression, rather than responding with wisdom and care. This talk explores the pathway of shifting from reacting to responding: this includes learning to pause, awakening the wings ...
06.06.2019 Meditation - Breath by Breath: Relaxing with Our Life (2019-06-05) The breath can be a powerful portal to presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing with the breath, including the breath in a body scan, and then allowing the breath to serve as an anchor when the mind gets lost ...
05.31.2019 Part 3 - Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame (2019-05-29) Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part ...
05.30.2019 Meditation: Opening to Life (2019-05-29) This guided meditation includes a mindful body scan, and awakening all our senses to our moment to moment experience. We relax open to the presence that is unobscured by thoughts, letting life be just as it is.
05.24.2019 Trusting the Gold (retreat talk) (2019-05-08) This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self. We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness ...
05.23.2019 Meditation: RAIN on Self-Blame (2019-04-17) One of the greatest roots of suffering is being at war with ourselves. This meditation, based on the acronym RAIN (recognize-allow-investigate-nurture), guides us in releasing the armoring of blame, and relating to our inner life with greater understanding and compassion.
05.17.2019 Compassion Towards All: Moving toward a Plant Based Diet (2019-05-15) For most of human history it’s been “normal” to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and ...
05.16.2019 Meditation: Choosing Living Presence A meditation on being present with our living, breathing life (includes chanting the Om’s in community – a favorite from Tara’s Wednesday night archives).
05.10.2019 Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness (retreat talk) Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging. ...
05.09.2019 Meditation: Loving This Life – Happiness - a Metta Practice This meditation turns us toward naturally arising happiness with the image of a smile, welcoming the aliveness and presence of each moment with the spirit of “yes” and then closes with a brief lovingkindness practice. Lama Gendun Rinpoche writes, “Happiness ...
05.03.2019 Part 2 - Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame (2019-05-01) Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. ...
05.02.2019 Meditation: Being Here (2019-05-01) This practice sets the atmosphere of loving presence with a smile-down and waking up all the senses. We relax into open awareness, receptive to the breath or whatever waves of experience are calling for attention. The invitation is to rest ...
04.26.2019 Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction ...
04.25.2019 Meditation: Awakening Our Energy Body This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness (a special meditation from the archives).
04.19.2019 Part 1 - Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame (2019-04-17) Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. ...
04.18.2019 Meditation: Sea of Loving Presence (2019-04-17) In this meditation we begin with the image and felt sense of a smile to arouse an atmosphere of care, and allow that caring presence to fill our body and the entire field of awareness. We then open to the ...
04.12.2019 Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 2 (2019-04-10) It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is ...
04.11.2019 Meditation: Letting Life Be (2019-04-10) 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 ...
04.05.2019 Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 1 (2019-04-03) It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is ...
04.04.2019 Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence (2019-04-03) 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 ...
03.29.2019 The Four Remembrances (2019-03-27) 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 ...
03.28.2019 Meditation: Saying Yes to Reality (2019-03-27) 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 ...
03.22.2019 Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred – Part 2 (2019-03-20) This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, ...
03.21.2019 Meditation: Being Here (with OMs) (2019-03-20) We miss many moments of this precious life drifting in a virtual thought world. This meditation helps us collect and calm ourselves with the breath; relax through our bodies; and then include the changing dance of sounds, sensations and feeling ...
03.15.2019 Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred - Part 1 (2019-03-13) This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, ...
03.14.2019 Meditation: Entering Heartspace with the “Smile-Down” (2019-03-13) The practice of visualizing and feeling a smile spreading through the body helps us access the natural tenderness and openness of our being. This meditation guides us in the smile-down, and then invites a full opening and resting in openhearted ...
03.09.2019 Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 (2019-03-06) 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 ...
03.08.2019 Meditation: Relaxing with Life (2019-03-05) 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.
03.02.2019 Pt1 - Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart (2019-02-27) This talk series offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening understanding, flexibility & compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another ...
03.01.2019 Meditation: Resting in the Sea of Presence (2019-02-27) 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 an increasing ...
02.27.2019 Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (18 min.) Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (18 min.) - Many of us struggle with anxiety, and spend hours in bed wishing we could turn off our mind and get to sleep. This podcasted series of 3 guided meditations - ...
02.27.2019 Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (12 min.) Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (12 min.) - Many of us struggle with anxiety, and spend hours in bed wishing we could turn off our mind and get to sleep. This podcasted series of 3 guided meditations - ...
02.27.2019 Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (6 min.) Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (6 min.) - Many of us struggle with anxiety, and spend hours in bed wishing we could turn off our mind and get to sleep. This podcasted series of 3 guided meditations - ...
02.22.2019 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 ...
02.21.2019 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 ...
02.15.2019 Spiritual Reparenting This talk explores how meditation offers “spiritual reparenting” as we learn to bring interest, understanding and love to our own inner vulnerability. This process of healing extends to our relationships with others and our larger society – by reaching out ...
02.15.2019 Meditation: Relaxing Back into Living Presence When we are lost in thoughts our mind contracts, our body tightens and we disconnect from true openheartedness. The pathway home is through “relaxing back” and reopening our attention to our senses, relaxing through our body, and gently contacting the ...
02.08.2019 Living with Courageous Presence (2019-02-06) 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 ...
02.07.2019 Meditation: The Practice of RAIN (2019-02-06) 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.
02.01.2019 Earth's Crisis: On the Edge of the Roof (from the Archives) This talk views the ecological dis-ease of our planet through the lens of our evolutionary unfolding. We explore the egoic trance that has precipitated the destruction of our environment, and the inner practices of presence that enable us to respond ...
01.31.2019 Meditation: Collecting, Unifying and Opening the Mind Collecting, unifying and opening the mind, we begin with a listening attention, relaxing open, letting sounds wash through. Scanning through and feeling the aliveness of the body, listening to the breath. Not pushing away anything - a very open and ...
01.25.2019 Without Anxiety About Imperfection - featuring special guest, Haemin Sunim, with Tara Brach Internationally known Buddhist teacher and writer, Haemin Sunim, talks about his new book - Love for Imperfect Things. Then, he and Tara Brach talk together and respond to questions.
01.24.2019 Meditation: Living Loving Awareness By bringing our full attention to the aliveness in the body, we can open to the experience of interior space and the space that includes all sensations and sounds. This then allows us to perceive continuous space filled with the ...
01.18.2019 Realizing Your Deepest Intention (2019-01-16) 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 ...
01.17.2019 Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness 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 ...
01.11.2019 Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering (2019-01-09) 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 ...
01.10.2019 Meditation: Letting Go…Letting Be (2019-01-09) 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. ...
01.04.2019 From Judgment to Self-Compassion (retreat talk) (2018-12-30) When we’ve turned on ourselves with blame and aversion, it’s very difficult to arouse self-compassion. This talk looks at the role of nurturing in freeing our hearts, and offers practice in three key steps that enable us to embrace ourselves ...

Older episodes

Tara Brach

What's Tara Brach about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Tara Brach episodes:

The Courage to Love - Part 1 (2019-06-12)

Meditation: Effortless and Wakeful Presence (2019-06-12)

An Appropriate Response: Living from an Awake Heart (2019-06-05)

Meditation - Breath by Breath: Relaxing with Our Life (2019-06-05)

Part 3 - Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame (2019-05-29)

Meditation: Opening to Life (2019-05-29)

Trusting the Gold (retreat talk) (2019-05-08)

Meditation: RAIN on Self-Blame (2019-04-17)

Compassion Towards All: Moving toward a Plant Based Diet (2019-05-15)

Meditation: Choosing Living Presence

Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness (retreat talk)

Meditation: Loving This Life – Happiness - a Metta Practice

Part 2 - Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame (2019-05-01)

Meditation: Being Here (2019-05-01)

Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Meditation: Awakening Our Energy Body

Part 1 - Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame (2019-04-17)

Meditation: Sea of Loving Presence (2019-04-17)

Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 2 (2019-04-10)

Meditation: Letting Life Be (2019-04-10)

Beyond the Controlling Self - Part 1 (2019-04-03)

Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence (2019-04-03)

The Four Remembrances (2019-03-27)

Meditation: Saying Yes to Reality (2019-03-27)

Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred – Part 2 (2019-03-20)

Meditation: Being Here (with OMs) (2019-03-20)

Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred - Part 1 (2019-03-13)

Meditation: Entering Heartspace with the “Smile-Down” (2019-03-13)

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 (2019-03-06)

Meditation: Relaxing with Life (2019-03-05)

Pt1 - Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart (2019-02-27)

Meditation: Resting in the Sea of Presence (2019-02-27)

Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (18 min.)

Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (12 min.)

Meditation: Reducing Anxiety and Getting to Sleep (6 min.)

The Sacred Art of Listening

Meditation: Listening to Life

Spiritual Reparenting

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Living Presence

Living with Courageous Presence (2019-02-06)

Meditation: The Practice of RAIN (2019-02-06)

Earth's Crisis: On the Edge of the Roof (from the Archives)

Meditation: Collecting, Unifying and Opening the Mind

Without Anxiety About Imperfection - featuring special guest, Haemin Sunim, with Tara Brach

Meditation: Living Loving Awareness

Realizing Your Deepest Intention (2019-01-16)

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness

Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering (2019-01-09)

Meditation: Letting Go…Letting Be (2019-01-09)

From Judgment to Self-Compassion (retreat talk) (2018-12-30)

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