← Tara Brach
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Foreign. 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. This meditation is called the Art of Letting Go and in meditation, letting go actually means releasing the resistance we have to what's here. So we'll explore this together. Letting go of thoughts, letting go of tension in the body, letting go of armoring around the heart. When we do relax resistance, we open to the flow of aliveness and love and full awareness. We begin this letting go in a simple way with the breath. I invite you to become aware of your body breathing. And then extending the breath so you're taking a nice long deep in breath. And then with the out breath, a slow out breath, feeling the sensations of letting go, letting go, letting go and again a nice full in breath filling the chest and the lungs. Then a slow conscious out breath, letting go and continue with this long deep breathing and sense with the out breath the opportunity to release, to relax outward to let go. And with this next out breath, sense that you can let go of any lingering thoughts in the mind. Letting go, letting go of thoughts and so that you open to the sounds that are here to the sense of space around you. A few more breaths letting go of thoughts, opening to sounds to space. You might sense with the in breath that you're receiving and taking in the sounds in the space. Now bringing this long deep breath to the body. Inhaling deeply and with the out breath, letting go of any tension in the face, letting the face soften. You might notice with the in breath that you can feel the aliveness in the face. With the out breath you can soften and release tension. If you find a slight smile helps you in relaxing and opening in the face, bringing a slight smile to the lips, bringing this long deep breath the shoulders so that as you breathe in you feel energy coming into the shoulders and with the out breath, letting go, letting go, softening and releasing. Notice as you breathe in that you can feel aliveness in the shoulders and as you breathe out you can let go of any tightness, tension knots that are there. It helps to sense the shoulders falling away from the neck. Then do that and feeling from the inside out as you breathe in, feeling the aliveness as you breathe out, letting go of tightness or tension. In the same way you can bring the attention to the hands, breathing in, feeling the aliveness that's there. And as you breathe out, softening, letting go, relaxing, Letting go and softening in the hands with the out breath and breathing in and feeling the tingling, the vibration, the warmth, Bringing the breath to the upper back. So that as you release the breath, you release tension and tightness from the upper back. With the in breath, feeling the aliveness that's there. In a similar way, bringing the attention to the mid back. And with that slow out breath, releasing tension, releasing tightness. And with the in breath, filling that area with aliveness. And the lower back, exhaling, releasing tightness and tension from the lower back. With the in breath, feeling the aliveness that's there, Feeling the movement of the breath at the belly, softening the belly with the out breath, softening even more with the in breath, feeling the aliveness, presence, openness in the belly, Breathing in and out of the pelvic region, releasing, relaxing, softening with the out breath. And with the in breath, receiving that aliveness. And notice now that you can open the attention to the whole body, feel this whole body breathing, breathing in and feeling the aliveness fill the body. Breathing out and letting go of any tightness or tension, anything that's being held unnecessarily. Now we bring that breathing to the heart, into the area of emotions and sensitivity. Breathing in and letting the awareness, the aliveness, flow the heart. And with that slow out breath, releasing, relaxing outward, softening any armoring that's around the heart, Letting go, letting go. So that as you continue to breathe with the heart, you can begin to contact the feelings that are there. If there's no armoring, what do you feel? The undefended and away cart. Now widening the attention again. So that you can let this whole river of sounds and sensations, feelings move through you. Perhaps you sense as a changing dance of appearances. Let everything happen. Not controlling anything, not opposing anything. The whole dance of aliveness. Sense that you can be the openness that's happening in a flow through. Sounds appear and disappear, sensations arise, dissolve. Feelings move through. Letting everything happen. Utterly awake. Senses wide open. Notice how everything's changing, nothing standing still, sounds don't stand still, sensations continuously changing. Let everything happen, let life be just as it is. This changing flow. Notice when there's a movement from this open allowing presence, when there's contraction, contraction in the mind comes as thoughts. When you notice that the mind is narrowed into thoughts, let go again. Just feel. You can let go with the out breath, open the attention again to the sounds that are right here, this living moment. You can let go again of the tension in the body, perhaps the shoulders soften the hands, the belly. Again, opening to the aliveness in the body. And you can soften around the heart and open to the sensitivity in the region of the heart. Again. Let everything happen, be that flow through of sound and sensation, the openness that life is moving through moment by moment. It. The sign of drifting, of being in a trance, is when there's no longer an awareness of the senses, it's an invitation to let go again. Letting go of thoughts and listening to sound, letting go of tension in the body, perhaps softening the shoulders and opening to the aliveness there. Letting go of armoring around the heart, softening there and opening to feelings and then simply letting everything happen. Listening to and feeling the changing flow, You might notice again how when there's that resting and wakefulness, you can sense how everything's changing moment to moment. And when there's a full allowing of that changing flow, full letting go of resistance, you can sense in the background a changeless awareness, that which is aware. It's that vast silence that's listening right now, That alert stillness that feels the flow of aliveness, That boundless tenderness that receives the changing feelings of the moment. Be at home in this changeless awareness that's including moment to moment, the sounds, sensations, feelings that come and go. You can let go again and again, releasing the grip of thoughts, reopening to the aliveness that's right here. The meditation master Ajahn Chah says, if you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace. These last few moments, you might explore what it means to let go completely. Letting go and surrendering fully into presence. It.