Leslie

Stratford, ON, Canada

Prue H

Melbourne, Australia

Megan B

Silver Spring, MD, USA

Jamila Knopp

Nelson, New Zealand

Richard Barker

Boone, NC, USA

Charlie

Somerset, UK

David

Sarena (she/her)

Maine, USA

Jo Godfrey

Lorraine

Toronto, Canada

Putu Davies

Michaela Jeannaisse Carter

Sanna

Lisbon, Portugal

Amy J

North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Peter Warne

Nimbin, Australia

Saffron 🌞

Jeanaann Barnaby

Ben B

anitacarpez

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Scan your body and follow your breath to cultivate a state of relaxed, awake awareness and presence.

Body Scan

Stress & Anxiety

Stress

Concentration

Buddhism

Traditions

English

Tara offers a short introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath, sounds, then resting in awareness.

Basic Body Scan & Breath Awareness

 The following meditation is led by Tara Brach. As part of arriving you might sense your intention, your aspiration towards presence, towards awake awareness, open-hearted awareness. And as a way of perhaps collecting and gathering the attention, extending the in-breath and the out-breath, just taking a few long deep breaths, inhaling and filling the lungs. And then that slow out-breath where you can feel the sensations as they leave the nostrils, relaxing outward. And again inhaling deeply, fully. And a slow out-breath, letting go, letting go. Once again inhaling deeply. Inhaling slowly. And then as the breath comes back to its natural rhythm just feeling the possibility of relaxing with the inflow and the outflow of the breath. Having some moments to scan through the body and sense what might want to let go a little, soften, be more at ease. You might soften the eyes and the areas around the eyes. Let the brow be smooth. Unhinging the jaw. Just relaxing down to the root of the tongue. Feeling the mouth from the inside out, the sensations that are there. Letting the shoulders fall away from the neck. Relaxing from the inside out, just softening. See if you can see a flow or feel a kind of movement of sensation inside the shoulders, just dissolving. Let the hands be soft. And see if you can feel the hands from the inside out, the tingling, the vibrating that's there. There being openness to the chest. Again from the inside out, bringing the awareness inside the chest, inside the heart area, just to feel the life that's there. Softening the belly. Feeling aware of the sensations and aliveness in the whole abdominal region. Feeling the awareness inside the pelvic region, feeling the sensations, energy that's there. And I sense the length and the volume of the legs. And feel the feet from the inside out, tingling, vibrating, widening the lens to include this whole field of bodily sensation. With the receptive, listening kind of attention you might sense the stream of the breath as part of this living field of sensation. And sensing the quality of presence that's here right now, the awareness that's including the sensations, the movement of the breath. Relaxed, awake awareness. Feeling this moment-to-moment experience right here. Let your practice be very simple. Slowly the mind will drift off and whenever you notice that just to relax back, reopen the attention back into this aliveness that's right here. The space of awake awareness. This moment-to-moment changing experience of breath, body. You might keep in the foreground your home base. For many it's the breath. It might be the whole body sensations. It might be sound. Just keep relaxing back into this living experience moment-to-moment. Right here. Relaxed. Khang.