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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Meditation: The Sea of Awar...

08.22.2019

We begin this meditation with awakening to the aliveness in our body, using the imagery of a smile, and a body scan. Then we are guided to sense the vastness of awareness and to rest in that open wakefulness, allowing ...

Tara Brach episodes:

08.22.2019 Meditation: The Sea of Awareness (2019-08-21) We begin this meditation with awakening to the aliveness in our body, using the imagery of a smile, and a body scan. Then we are guided to sense the vastness of awareness and to rest in that open wakefulness, allowing ...
08.20.2019 Meditation for Fertility (2019-08-19) We can enhance our fertility by becoming more relaxed, open and welcoming of this ever creative life. We begin by connecting with the purity and sincerity of our prayer. Then this meditation guides us to awaken our bodies, open our ...
08.16.2019 Part 2 - The Answer is Love: Evolving out of "Bad Other" (2019-08-14) These two talks address the inquiry: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? This second talk extends the use of these practices to situations where we’ve locked into external “bad ...
08.15.2019 Meditation: Everything Belongs (2019-08-14) This guided meditation awakens an embodied presence through a body scan, and invites us to rest in the breath, while allowing the different waves of sensations, feelings and sounds to come and go. When difficult experiences arise, we breathe with ...
08.09.2019 Part 1 - The Answer is Love: Evolving out of "Bad Other" (2019-08-07) Two talks address: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? Part 1 looks at how we can use the practices of mindfulness and compassion to decondition our habits of self-blame ...
08.08.2019 Meditation: Cultivating a Kind Attention (2019-08-07) Using the image and felt sense of a smile, we scan through the body, and awaken a sense of aliveness, presence and tenderness. The practice then extends to mindfully include all sounds, sensations, and feelings; and when difficult experience arises, ...
08.02.2019 Longing to Belong: Bringing Presence through the Three Refuges Spiritual practice reveals our belonging through bringing presence to three gateways: the aliveness of the present moment, loving relatedness, and the openness and lucidity of awareness itself. This talk includes guided meditations in exploring each gateway. It ends with the ...
07.31.2019 Vipassana or Insight Meditation and Instruction: from Day 4 on Retreat 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 ...
07.26.2019 The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 2 (2017-07-24) 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 ...
07.25.2019 Meditation: Letting go (2019-07-24) 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 ...
07.19.2019 Desire: A Current of Homecoming Desire is intrinsic to our aliveness, yet when we have unmet needs, it can possess us. This talk explores how to relax open the grip of wanting and heal the suffering of addiction. You will learn how to bring mindfulness ...
07.18.2019 Meditation: Vipassana – Opening Our Hearts to Life as It Is 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 ...
07.12.2019 The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 (2019-07-10) 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 ...
07.11.2019 Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life (2019-07-10) 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 ...
07.05.2019 How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 2 The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on ...
07.04.2019 Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness 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 ...
06.28.2019 How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 1 The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on ...
06.27.2019 Meditation: Awakening Our Full Aliveness We cut off from our aliveness when we are lost in thoughts and on auto pilot. This meditation arouses a receptivity to sensation from “the inside out,” opens the awareness to sound, and then invites a full resting in receptive, ...
06.21.2019 The Courage to Love - Part 2 (2019-06-19) 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.
06.20.2019 Meditation: Wakeful, Open Awareness (2019-06-19) When we awaken our senses, we can sense in the background a wakeful openness that is our true home. This meditation guides us by first attending to the space, aliveness and awareness that fills the body, and then by sensing ...
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.

Older episodes

Tara Brach

What's Tara Brach about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Tara Brach episodes:

Meditation: The Sea of Awareness (2019-08-21)

Meditation for Fertility (2019-08-19)

Part 2 - The Answer is Love: Evolving out of "Bad Other" (2019-08-14)

Meditation: Everything Belongs (2019-08-14)

Part 1 - The Answer is Love: Evolving out of "Bad Other" (2019-08-07)

Meditation: Cultivating a Kind Attention (2019-08-07)

Longing to Belong: Bringing Presence through the Three Refuges

Vipassana or Insight Meditation and Instruction: from Day 4 on Retreat

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 2 (2017-07-24)

Meditation: Letting go (2019-07-24)

Desire: A Current of Homecoming

Meditation: Vipassana – Opening Our Hearts to Life as It Is

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 (2019-07-10)

Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life (2019-07-10)

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 2

Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness

How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 1

Meditation: Awakening Our Full Aliveness

The Courage to Love - Part 2 (2019-06-19)

Meditation: Wakeful, Open Awareness (2019-06-19)

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)

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