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Tara Brach's Dharma Talks
Tara Brach
A pervasive but often invisible source of suffering in our culture is self-aversion. We are a busy culture, and we move through our life feeling anxious and dissatisfied, but not fully conscious of how we neglect or judge our inner experience. We suffer from a lack of belonging: to our own bodies, to each other and to the earth. When we practice Buddhist meditation, we learn how to listen deeply and hold our life tenderly.
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2023-02-01 How to Stop the War Against Yourself – A conversation with Tara Brach & Dan Harris 1:12:04
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It’s possible to actually be addicted to self-criticism, especially as a way to keep yourself safe. But evidence shows that rather than safety, this pervasive habit in our society creates deep suffering. This conversation between Tara and Dan Harris dives into strategies to deal with your own self-hatred and cultivate a forgiving heart. (Note: This was initially created as an episode for 10% Happier Podcast)
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-25 Meditation: Relaxing into Presence or Sleep 15:37
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This meditation can help us to access a relaxed attentiveness, or alternately, serve as a pathway to ease-filled sleep.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-25 Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness – The Power of Self-Nurturing 60:24
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While we all need to customize meditation, this is particularly important for those living with PTSD or strong, potentially overwhelming emotions. This talk explores how trauma cuts us off from wholeness, and is accompanied by a deep and painful experience of shame. We look at the ways meditation can be adapted to cultivate sufficient safety for the full transformational healing of mindfulness to unfold. The gift of processing trauma is that the place of woundedness becomes a gateway into profound love, healing, and freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-18 Meditation, Psychedelics, Mortality: A conversation with Tara Brach and Roland Griffiths 1:42:05
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Roland is a long-term meditator, a psychopharmacologist and professor at Johns Hopkins, and a leader in researching the clinical effects of psychedelics, including their impact on those struggling with cancer, depression or addiction. At the end of 2021, he discovered he had incurable stage 4 Colon Cancer. This conversation explores the relationship between meditation and psychedelics, and how they both can serve profound spiritual awakening and deep inner freedom in the face of mortality.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-18 Meditation: The Silence That is Listening 10:08
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Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. This meditation emphasizes the anchor of listening, and guides us to relax through our bodies and let sounds wash through us. In this receptivity we find a homecoming to full presence and peace.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-11 Trusting the Gold – Realizing Our Basic Goodness 0:00
(Recording not available) 
Can you imagine a world where humans are able to look at each other and all of life, and see the light of the sacred shining through? This talk explores our potential for trusting the love and awareness that animate our living world. We investigate the suffering of othering, how the trance of separateness blinds us to our basic goodness, and then explore the practices that open our eyes to the larger truth of our shared belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-11 Meditation: Relaxing with a Smile into Living Presence 15:19
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This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-04 Realizing Your Deepest Intention 50:37
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The Buddha taught that this whole life – including our thoughts, feelings and actions – arise from the tip of intention. While our intentions are usually marbled with wanting and fear, when intention comes into the light of consciousness, it unfolds into its most pure essence. This talk explores ways that when we are stuck in reactivity, we can become aware of intention, and find our way to the aspiration that expresses our most awake and loving heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-01-04 Meditation: Letting Go and Letting Be 16:44
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We leave presence by contracting into thoughts and resisting the changing flow of life. This meditation guides us in gently releasing thoughts and opening to this mysterious life, just as it is.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-12-28 Freedom Beyond Selfing 57:23
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We spend many moments in a trance of selfing – preoccupied with the stories, wants and fears of what feels to be a separate self. The suffering is that this self-fixation obscures the depth and mystery of our being. In this talk we explore how to relate wisely to selfing, and discover the light and love that express our true nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-12-28 Meditation: Awake Awareness is Our Home 19:58
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This meditation guides us in awakening our awareness by opening to all our senses and recognizing the alert presence that is always, already here. By relaxing back into the presence over and over, we become familiar with the reality that is truly our home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-12-21 Meditation: “Yes” to Our Moments 19:36
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When we open without resistance to the changing flow of aliveness, we discover the formless presence that is our true home. This meditation guides us through a body scan and then opening to all sounds, sensations and emotions with the energetic allowing of “Yes.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-12-21 IntraConnected – Part 2: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel 49:32
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In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, “IntraConnected.” They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms “Mwe” (me plus we.) The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics.  Dan Siegel’s new book: IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging
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2022-12-14 IntraConnected – Part 1: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel 46:46
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In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, “IntraConnected.” They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms “Mwe” (me plus we.) The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-12-14 Meditation: Body and Spirit 19:42
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As 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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-12-07 Meditation: Receiving Life in Open Awareness 16:41
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Our habit is to try to manage our experience from a mental control tower. This meditation awakens us through the body, and then invites us to rest in that vast presence that includes the changing flow of life. When we inhabit that openness, there’s a natural arising of peace, wakefulness and tenderness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-12-07 Emptiness Dancing: Inquiring into the Nature of Awareness (retreat talk) 64:02
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The most profound question in spiritual life is “who (or what) am I?” This talk explores ways of inquiring into the nature of awareness, and the blessings of embodying the realization of our radiant, empty essence. This audio talk was first offered at the 2011 IMCW Fall Weeklong Retreat, and it includes several guided reflections.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-30 Tara and Mingyur Rinpoche in Conversation: Embracing Life and Realizing the Nature of Awareness 55:21
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with Mingyur Rinpoche, Tara Brach
In this interview, Mingyur Rinpoche shares about his 4 1/2 years on a wandering retreat and the lessons he learned from a near-death experience. The two then talk about what it means to befriend panic as well as other strong emotions, and the qualities that express our intrinsic awareness. They also talk about compassion for our world, the evolution of consciousness, and the value of hope.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-23 Meditation: Touching Peace 21:56
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This guided meditation offers a pathway to quieting our mind and calming anxiety. We begin with long deep breathing, and with the breath, engage the image of a smile and relax through the body. Then we practice resting in relaxed awareness, allowing waves of thoughts, feelings and sensations to come and go.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-23 A Grateful, Giving, Happy Heart 51:46
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Gratitude is like breathing in – letting ourselves be touched by the goodness in others and in our world. Generosity is like breathing out – sensing our mutual belonging and offering our care. When we are awake and whole, breathing in and out happens naturally. But these beautiful expressions of our heart become blocked when we are dominated by the fear and grasping of our survival brain. This talk explores how we can facilitate the evolution of consciousness with the deliberate cultivation of generosity, and ends with a guided meditation on gratitude and generosity.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-16 Meditation: Calling on Your Awakened Heart 23:33
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In the midst of difficulty we need access to our deepest wisdom and love. This guided meditation calls forth this loving presence by opening to the heart and spirit of whatever being in our life we most experience as calm, wise and compassionate. How do we find that inner place of calm in the midst of the storm?
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-16 The Calling of These Times – Part 2 49:37
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The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-09 Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves 23:56
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We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-09 The Calling of These Times – Part 1 45:36
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The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-02 Meditation: Befriending Our Experience 22:37
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We begin the meditation with a sense of befriending our experience – with an intention towards gentleness and kindness as the attention goes inward. We scan the body, opening to sounds and the senses, resting in the awareness that includes this changing life. When the mind drifts, as it naturally does, we notice, then relax back into a receptive, listening presence. There’s nothing to do, simply letting life be as it is. Resting in the freedom of awake, open awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-11-02 Three Practices for Nurturing Wise Hope 50:02
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Wise or spiritual hope includes the aspiration to manifest our full potential, individually and collectively, and the trust that this is possible. This talk explores how, especially in stressful times, this hope gets clouded over by fear; and how when it is alive, wise hope energizes and guides all spiritual transformation. We look at three practices – 3 A’s – that help us nurture hope: Aspiration for what we love, Attending to what we love, and Actively serving what we love. This talk includes several poems by poet Danna Faulds.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-26 Meditation: At Home in the Moment 20:33
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This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the “smile down” and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying “Yes” to the life that is here.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-26 Cultivating Inner Strength – A Conversation with Tara Brach and Lori Deschene 59:43
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What gives us the inner strength to meet life’s challenges with resilience, heart and wisdom? Drawing on themes in Lori’s new book, “The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal,” Tara and Lori explore the mindset that is conducive to growth, working with negative beliefs, ways of transforming fear, and what it means to have inner strength in facing loss and death. We also talk about what can most empower and energize us in responding to a world struggling with multiple crises. NOTE: Find Lori Deschene’s “The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal” here: tinybuddha.com/strong. Lori also created several free companion resources, available at tinybuddha.com/strength-tools.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-19 Meditation: Letting Life Be 23:14
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This meditation establishes an atmosphere of loving kindness with the “smile”; relaxes and awakens through the body; and guides us into a spacious presence. We then rest in that presence, letting go of any controlling, and simply allow life to be as it is. It’s in “letting be” that we come home to the luminosity and tenderness of natural awareness. We close with a verse from Mary Oliver…
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-19 Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 2 51:00
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It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-12 Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence 18:42
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This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-12 Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 1 53:01
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It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-05 Meditation: The Center of Now 16:29
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This meditation awakens our senses and then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-10-05 The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 2 50:14
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While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience. In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. The two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-28 Meditation: Calling on Your Future Self 14:28
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We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these inner resources by calling on the most evolved part of our being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-28 The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 1 54:25
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While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience. In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. The two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-21 Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Reality 19:03
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Our suffering comes from tensing and resisting the life that’s here. This meditation guides us to relax and awaken our body and senses, and resting in presence, allow life to be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-21 Radical Acceptance – Our Gateway to Love and Freedom 39:38
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Our capacity to realize the truth of who we are and to love fully, arises from moments of true acceptance. This means meeting our unfolding life with an unconditional, open and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-14 Meditation: Relaxing with Life 22:50
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This meditation includes a mindful body scan and guidance in relaxing with the changing waves of experience. When we say “Yes” to the moment, we open to the sea of awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-14 Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 57:05
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This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-07 Meditation: Resting in a Sea of Presence 20:49
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This mindful body scan leads us into a practice of relaxing back into awareness, and recognizing the changing waves of sensations, sounds and feelings in the foreground. As we let go into the sea of presence, we discover am increasing sense of wholeness and peace. The meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-09-07 Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 1 54:33
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This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-31 Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts 17:33
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We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-31 Survival of the Nurtured – Our Path to Belonging 54:54
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We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the violence of our society and lack of attuned caretakers has severed trust and belonging. This talk explores how meditation and conscious relating with each other can restore the connections so vital to healing and spiritual freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-26 Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating - A conversation with Tara Brach and Tricycle‘s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen. - 58:09
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A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice?
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-24 Meditation: Breath by Breath 22:37
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Our breath can be a home base that allows us to meet life with a relaxed, wakeful presence. This meditation helps us calm and settle the mind with long deep breathing, and then establishes a mindful presence with our natural breathing. When distracted, we learn to relax back again and again, learning the pathway of homecoming to the aliveness, openness and mystery that is always Here.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-24 Awakening through Difficult Emotions: “The Poison is the Medicine” 48:41
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Most of us know the pain of getting stuck in fear, anxiety, anger or shame. This exploration looks at how the emotion that takes over, when we attend with mindfulness and care, can become a place of deep transformation and freedom. Included in the talk is a guided RAIN meditation.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-17 Meditation: Listening to Life 19:03
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The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-17 Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror 56:39
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This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature. The three qualities often described as the essence of awareness: wakeful, open, tender.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-10 Meditation: Open Awareness – Relaxing Back into Presence 19:03
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This practice brings attention to the continuous space within and around the body, and the aliveness of sound, sensation and feeling that lives through us. While it’s natural for attention to get distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back into the awake space that is aware of this changing life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

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