Introductory Meditation Instructions – Guided Practice from Retreat (39:02 min.)
This guided session includes an overview of the primary components in meditation practices, and then guidance in awakening the senses, collecting the attention, and opening mindfully to changing experience (from the 2019 IMCW New Year’s 5-Day Silent...
Short Talk and Guided Heart Meditation – Releasing Blame (retreat) (37:50 min.)
This meditation explores the meaning of forgiveness and its role in healing and transformation. We then are guided in a forgiveness practice that helps us release the armoring of blame, and inhabit an inclusive and open heart (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent...
Short Talk and Guided Heart Meditation – Loving Kindness – Befriending our Lives (39:29 min.)
This meditation introduces the domain of “heart practices” and then guides us in how to cultivate a deep quality of friendliness in relating to our inner life and each other. The gift of this practice is a direct sense of belonging – knowing that we can never be...
Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk)
When we are suffering, we are believing something untrue – usually a limiting story about who we are. This talk explores the roots of our self-doubts, and the teachings and practices that remind us of our basic goodness – the loving awareness that is our...
Meditation: Calling on Loving Presence (from retreat) (18:18 min)
Often, when we’re really struggling, the only way to find compassion for ourselves is by reaching out to a larger source of love. We might for instance take refuge by calling on the Buddha, Divine Mother, God, Jesus, Great Spirit, Shiva, or Allah – reaching towards a...
Judgment, Acceptance and Freedom (Retreat Talk)
The boundary to what we accept is the boundary to our freedom. This talk explores the often unconscious ways we create separation by judging ourselves and others, and the key pathways of meditation practice that release the habit of blame and free our hearts. Really...
Vipassana or Insight Meditation and Instruction: from Day 4 on Retreat (29:20 min.)
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 – and allowing the mind...
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 (from the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat). How I...
From Judgment to Self-Compassion (retreat talk)
When we’ve turned on ourselves with blame and aversion, it’s very difficult to arouse self-compassion. This talk looks at the role of nurturing in freeing our hearts, and offers practice in three key steps that enable us to embrace ourselves with a healing presence....
Vipassana or Insight Meditation and Instruction: A Path of Practice from Retreat (31:15 min.)
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 – and allowing the mind...
Worrier Pose – Finding Freedom from the Body of Fear (retreat talk)
While fear is a natural part of our make up, many of us suffering when the “on” button gets jammed. This talk looks at how our fears generate habitual patterns of physical tension, anxious thinking, emotions and behaviors; and how this constellation prevents us from...
Retreat Short Talk & Meditation: Loving Kindness – Awakening and Expressing Our Heart (36:50 min.)
This short talk and guided meditation remind us that we each have the capacity to awaken our hearts. We explore together the lovingkindness (metta) meditation, and emphasize holding our own being and dear ones with a tender, open and loving presence (from the IMCW...
Ten-Minute Basic Meditation (10 min.)
Tara offers a short introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath and sounds, then resting in awareness in silence for the final 3.5 minutes ~ from the first morning instructions at the fall 2015 Insight Meditation Community of Washington...