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Welcome friends, to the Tara Brak Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste.

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Let your attention go inward a bit and let's begin tonight with the breath. Very simple, very beautiful gateway. Inhaling deeply, filling the lungs and then a very slow out breath and sense with the out breath very consciously, a letting go, letting go. Inhaling deeply again, filling the lungs, holding the breath for a moment and again a slow out breath. Sense of relaxing outward, letting go. It's all through the nose unless you're clogged up. Inhaling again, deeply, Full breath. Hold for a moment and with the out breath again, slow exhale. Sense that you can soften down the length of the body. Letting go, letting go. So as the breath now resumes its natural rhythm, sense that you could relax with the inflow, as if with a balloon filling up, just opening, relaxing open. Letting the breath be at the center of the attention but also aware of the sounds around you, Sense of the space around you, A sense of the space and the aliveness inside you. Just feel the body from the inside out the sensations. See if it's possible to relax just a little bit more right now. Still feeling that life breath, that inflow and outflow. Sensing the increase of presence, just of awareness in the last few moments, gathering and collecting and arriving. Just bring that presence to your heart right now. A committed kind of listening to your heart. It may be the first time that you have just in a very conscious way said to yourself, okay, I am going to really just pay attention to the state of my heart right now. And it may be that you bring your attention in a very physical way to the heart area. But let the intention be to energetically bring this receptivity to the feelings of your heart center. So that as you listen, you're listening for what really matters to you right now. The inquiry is really what is my intention right now for being here, for coming to this gathering tonight? What do I really want? What matters? And if you've asked yourself this many times at these classes, imagine this is the very first time with that kind of fresh quality, what really matters to me? What really brings me? And with whatever comes up, you might even deepen the inquiry what is it about that that really matters to me? Usually what brings us in a deep way is what's important to us in our whole life, as if we are at the end of our life. Looking back, what would have matter? So that you can sense your sincerity, so you can sense the heart in a kind of prayerful manner, Open and receptive. So we bring this sense of aspiration, of caring to the chant of Om, this simple sound current of connectedness, to allow us to connect even more energetically with the truth of our hearts and with each other and with this life. If you'd like to bring the palms together, please do. And we'll chant three times. Please inhale deeply. And when the body is relaxed, the mind tends to relax and quiet. So it is very helpful just to scan through the body and take your time letting go wherever there is a kind of habitual tightening or tension. Sometimes we don't know it, but the brow is tight and it helps to soften the eyes. You might smile into the eyes, feel the corners of the eyes up a little, let the flesh around the eyes be soft, brow smooth, Slight smile at the mouth. And smile into the heart. Imagine visually and kinesthetically feel smile there. Relaxing and widening rings out from the heart area so that the shoulders can naturally fall back and down a bit. Relaxing, Feeling them from the inside, a kind of melting, dissolving there. You might soften the hands and just feel the hands from the inside. Let the chest be open. And then loosening and relaxing down the abdominal area, softening the belly. Feel an opening at the navel area. You can visualize a smile there too. And let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and the swung. And again. So the shoulders relax the hands, the belly. And just feel the awareness moving down through the hips and the legs. If there's any loosening or softening, letting go and letting go. Feel the feet from the inside, the tingling, the vibrating. So that if you enlarge the scope of your attention now, you can feel the body in a comprehensive way, all at once, not stopping anything, just this field of sensation. If you really let it happen, you can feel the subtle energy body, just this aliveness, like dancing light that's empty, awake, vibrant field, Including the sounds, symphony of arising, passing sounds. The vast space it's all happening in, So that you're listening to and feeling the whole moment. For many, it can be helpful to stabilize the attention by feeling in the midst of all this, the simple inflow and outflow of the breath. Sensing the background of presence itself, just this innate wakefulness and openness. At some point you'll notice that the mind's drifted, maybe even right now. And when you notice, it's an opportunity to practice. This coming back, this arriving again in presence, to strengthen that pathway, is really a gift that you give to yourself of just choosing to come back. It's out of a love or a caring for reality, for being here. You might listen again to the sounds that are actually happening right now. Just let them wash through a little. Might re relax a bit in the body. If the shoulders have tightened just to loosen them, to soften the hands, soften the belly, And arrive again in this aliveness of the body. You might soften the heart. Just smile into the heart. Not to cover over anything, but to create a space that allows what's here to be here. Listening to the life that's here, feeling and receiving the life that's here in awareness. We will be closing our meditation much in the way that we opened it tonight, which is again to listen to your heart. A real receptive presence, sensing the state of your heart tonight and maybe in the season of your life. If your heart could communicate very directly, what would it be expressing as its longing or its want? As its prayer right now, what is your heart really longing for? Is it to be free from fear? Is it to touch peace? Is it to live more open heartedly? Is it to realize the truth of who you are? Is it for happiness? What is your heart really wanting? Just keep offering an attention to this aspiration or longing or prayer in a way that's respectful, just bowing to the sincerity of your own heart that this is what matters.