This guided practice emphasizes bringing a gentle and kind attention to our bodies, and then including all experience with a receptive presence. We close by identifying a part of our being that is asking for a healing attention, and offering loving presence to ourself and then to others.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:13 — 15.3MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSSThis meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being, and can be held with tenderness and love.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:22 — 12.6MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSSAs we relax and awaken through our physical body, we discover the formless dimension of awareness or spirit that permeates all of life. This meditation includes a poem from Mary Oliver.
Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)
Mary Oliver, Dream Work
The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,
shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning
in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather
plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,
lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct
and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,
to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is –
so it enters us –
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;
and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:21 — 13.3MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSSIn describing our human predicament and dis-ease, D.H. Lawrence says we are like a great tree with our roots in the air. We need to replant ourselves—in our bodies, hearts and spirit. These two talks are guides to replanting ourselves. In Part 1, we explore how we are so often dissociated from the life of our body, and the pathways home. Part 2 looks at the challenges of pain, fear and trauma, and how we can gradually and skillfully reconnect with a wholeness of being.
May we be blessed to live from embodied presence… to realize the love and creativity and freedom that are our essence. ~ Tara
This very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now… with its aches and it pleasures… is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive. ~ Pema Chödron
Go with the pain, let it take you. Open your palms and your body to the pain. It comes in waves like the tide and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach, letting it fill you up and then, retreating, leaving you empty and clear… with a deep breath – it has to be as deep as the pain – one reaches a kind of inner freedom from pain, as though the pain were not yours but your body’s. The spirit lays the body on the altar. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:23 — 33.2MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSS
Meditation – Coming Home to Presence (13 min)
Part 1: Impermanence – Awakening Through Insecurity
Lovingkindness – Part 1 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love
Meditation: Getting Lost and Coming Back Here (19:46 min)
Meditation: Quieting the Mind (16 min)
Heart Training on the Bodhisatva PathIn describing our human predicament and dis-ease, D.H. Lawrence says we are like a great tree with our roots in the air. We need to replant ourselves—in our bodies, hearts and spirit. These two talks are guides to replanting ourselves. In Part 1, we explore how we are so often dissociated from the life of our body, and the pathways home. Part 2 looks at the challenges of pain, fear and trauma, and how we can gradually and skillfully reconnect with a wholeness of being.
One of the realizations I keep coming back to is that the portal to presence is through awareness of this living body. ~ Tara
Within the body you are wearing, now
inside the bones and beating in the heart,
lives the one you have been searching for so long.But you must stop running away and shake hands,
the meeting doesn’t happen
without your presence . . . your participation.The same one waiting for you there
is moving in the trees, glistening on the water,
growing in the grasses and lurking in the shadows you create.You have nowhere to go.
The marriage happened long ago.
Behold your mate.Within The Body You are Wearing ~ ROBERT HALL
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:41 — 32.7MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSSThis 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. We close with a prayer of loving kindness (a special meditation from the archives).
No matter how often the mind drifts, all that really matters is the quality of heart in the way you come back… to come back with interest and friendliness to this moment, then you plant those seeds for whatever else arises.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:49 — 18.1MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSS
Meditation: Awakening Through the Animal-Headed Deities (13:48 min.)
Cultivating Compassion
Remembering Goodness: Three Gestures of Love
Meditation: Relaxing Back into Living Presence (19:42 min)
Tara Talks – Reflection: The Practice of Savoring As a Gateway to Happiness (5:53 min.)Heart Training on the Bodhisatva PathThis 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, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness that arise as we learn to fully inhabit these living forms and all our senses with awareness.
Includes a meditation to guide us in working with pain.
Life is a garden, not a road. We enter and exit through the same gate wandering, where we go matters less than what we notice ~ Bokonon
The Church says: the body is a sin.
Science says: the body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The Body says: I am a fiesta.”
Listen to Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred – Part 1 here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:55 — 46.6MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSSThis 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, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness that arise as we learn to fully inhabit these living forms and all our senses with awareness.
Be The Energy
Trust the energy that courses
through you. Trust – then take
surrender even deeper.
Be the energy.Don’t push anything away.
Follow each sensation back to
its source and focus your awareness
there.Be the ecstasy…
Be unafraid of consummate wonder.
Emerge so new, so vulnerable,
that you don’t know
who you are.Be the energy,
and paradoxically,
be at peace.
Dare to be your own illumination,And blaze a trail across
the clear night sky…..Danna Faulds
Listen to Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred – Part 2 here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:09 — 43.2MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSSWhen we are not inhabiting our bodies, we are not experiencing our full aliveness. When pain arises, how much can you open to it and let it be as it is? Just like waves in the ocean, pain and unpleasant sensations are part of the larger space of our lived experience. Loving presence arises when we can say, “This belongs.”
For Tara’s full talk, go to: Awakening Our Body’s Awareness – Part 2 – (Working with Pain)
Our being has many frequencies of aliveness and as we attend to the more subtle, we discover a portal to the radiant awareness that is always here. This meditation guides us in using the breath and attention as we scan through the body and awaken an inner luminosity. We then open the attention to rest in the whole field of awake awareness.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:00 — 8.7MB)
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Stitcher | Overcast | Podbean | Pandora | Spotify | RSS
