Ask Me Anything: Questions & Responses with Tara - Part III
Tara Brach
Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music
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Meditation: Inner Refuge of Calm (20:25 min.)
Tara Brach
In times of stress, it’s crucial that we have pathways to quiet our minds, relax our bodies and rest in a calm, steady presence. This meditation guides us in using the breath, body scan, and a home base of presence to find that inner refuge that can carry us through difficult times. Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music
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Ask Me Anything: Questions & Responses with Tara - Part II
Tara Brach
How do we return to presence when we’re overwhelmed? How do we heal the trance of unworthiness, navigate difficult relationships, set healthy boundaries—and find compassion without abandoning ourselves? In Part 2 of this Ask Me Anything series, Tara responds to questions from listeners about some of the most tender and challenging places in our lives. Together, we explore practical ways to come home to presence when emotions take over, how RAIN and self-compassion can help loosen deeply conditioned patterns, and how community and small moments of mindfulness can support us when life feels...
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Meditation: Basic Body Scan (20 min.)
Tara Brach
In this guided body scan meditation, we explore a simple and nourishing pathway into presence—awakening awareness through the living sensations of the body. Beginning with a gentle softening of the eyes, face and shoulders, we gradually move awareness through the hands, heart, belly, legs and feet, sensing the aliveness that is already here. As the meditation unfolds, we widen our attention to experience the whole body as a field of sensation, allowing the breath and this moment to be just as they are. When the mind wanders, we practice simply relaxing back into presence—again and again...
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A Path with Joy — A conversation between Tara Brach and James Baraz
Tara Brach
How much joy do you experience in your life? Joy is part of our natural human capacity—along with the grief, fear, and sorrow that arise in response to the losses and suffering of our lives and our world. Yet habits of thought and feeling can cut us off from joy, even when it is available to us. Opening to joy takes intention—and it can be cultivated. In this conversation with beloved teacher and Awakening Joy author James Baraz, we explore what joy really is, why it matters, what gets in the way, and the practices that help us become more available to it. We also look at...
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Meditation: Relax into Happiness (19:38 min.)
Tara Brach
What if happiness is not something we need to create or strive for, but something we discover when we soften and let go? In this guided meditation, we awaken through the body, inviting the energy of a smile into the eyes, heart, belly and whole field of awareness. As we relax habitual tension and release the effort to control our experience, we begin to sense the aliveness and openness that are already here. The practice guides us to rest back into presence—meeting sensations, sounds and thoughts with a receptive awareness. Again and again, we discover that the pathway to happiness can be...
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Listening to the Song: The Transformative Power of Deep Listening - Part 2
Tara Brach
What becomes possible when we truly listen—to ourselves, to one another and to the life around us? In part 2 of this two-part series, we’ll continue to explore listening as a profound spiritual practice and a pathway to intimacy, compassion and healing. When we feel genuinely heard, our defenses can soften, our hearts can open and something that has been blocked begins to flow again. Together, we’ll look at what gets in the way of deep listening, along with practices for cultivating a more receptive presence: setting an intention for understanding and connection, listening inwardly to...
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Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care (16:05 min.)
Tara Brach
In this guided meditation, we cultivate an embodied sense of acceptance, kindness and care—learning to meet each moment with a friendly, allowing presence. Beginning with the breath and a relaxed, awake awareness, we explore the felt sense of an inner smile, allowing its warmth to move through the face, heart, belly and whole body. This embodied friendliness becomes a way of making room for whatever is here, without pushing away our experience or holding on to it. As thoughts, emotions or tension arise, the practice invites us to soften, open and return to a heart-space that can include it...
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Listening to the Song: The Transformative Power of Deep Listening, Part 1
Tara Brach
What becomes possible when we truly listen—to ourselves, to one another and to the life around us? In part 1 of this two-part series, we’ll explore listening as a profound spiritual practice and a pathway to intimacy, compassion and healing. When we feel genuinely heard, our defenses can soften, our hearts can open and something that has been blocked begins to flow again. Together, we’ll look at what gets in the way of deep listening, along with practices for cultivating a more receptive presence: setting an intention for understanding and connection, listening inwardly to our own...
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Remembering Our True Home (15:44 min.)
Tara Brach
In this guided meditation, we turn attention inward and come into intimate presence with the life that is here. Beginning with the body, breath and sensations, we gradually open into the spacious awareness that holds all experience. As we soften habitual tension and allow thoughts, emotions and sensations to arise and pass, we discover the tender wakefulness that is always here. Like waves held by the ocean, our changing experiences belong to awareness but do not define who we are. As we close, we are invited to rest in that open, loving presence—and to remember that beneath the changing...
info_outlineThe stories we believe shape the life we experience—but they are not the truth of who we are.
In Part 2 of Stories That Imprison Our Heart, we explore how fear-based narratives create separation, anxiety, and suffering, and how mindfulness allows us to recognize these stories without becoming trapped inside them. When we learn to meet the vulnerable feelings beneath our thoughts with compassionate awareness, we begin to rediscover the freedom, wisdom, and love of our true nature.
In this talk you'll discover:
-Why our thoughts are maps of reality—not reality itself
-How fear-based stories create suffering in our relationships and inner life
-The practice of recognizing limiting narratives with mindfulness
-Why healing comes from meeting the emotions beneath our stories with compassion
-How presence reveals the innate goodness and belonging that no story can diminish
Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music