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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. I thought we'd have a very brief reflection that is called the power of the sacred pause. And many of you are familiar with that beautiful line from the poet Dorothy Postowaite. She writes, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life. So we begin with this and you can begin by wherever you are bringing attention to your body. Start by noticing your posture and then make the subtle adjustments, or maybe not so subtle, that will bring you into a way of sitting where you're feeling upright and alert. You just sit a little taller maybe, and also at ease, relaxed. And you might close your eyes or lower your gaze so you can turn your attention inward and really notice that uprightness and at ease in the body. And to collect the attention we breathe together. Now you might take a long deep in breath and then a very slow out breath so that as you release the breath you feel a letting go good and another breath deep, full in breath and then hold for a moment, feel the fullness. And then with that out breath, sense of letting go, maybe a loosening softening in the shoulders, softening down the body one more time deep in breath, hold for a moment and then a slow conscious release, relaxing outward, letting go and then let your breath come back into its natural rhythm and just notice that there's more presence right here. And in this presence you can continue to sense the breath and with the out breath you can continue to sense what wants to let go, releasing tension wherever you notice it in your body, letting go of unnecessary thoughts with each out breath, a bit of letting go, creating that clearing, noticing with the letting go that your senses can be quite awake, aware of the sounds around you, aware of the sensations through the body, the tingling and vibrating in the hands, the feet, the feeling of this whole body breathing. And as you create this clearing with this pause, you can sense into the state of your heart right now pausing allows us to listen more deeply just to notice the state of your heart, whatever emotions or feelings are here. And as you attend, you might offer some simple gesture of care to your own heart. You might put your hand on your heart or just offer some wish, some blessing, whatever resonates in the moment and feeling your care as part of a larger heart space a collective caring so that you can open the listening to include our world, listening to our world, state of our world and sensing your wish for all beings. Creating a clearing helps us to awaken our heart.