The Superpower of Mindful Witnessing - The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.
Meditation: Being a Kind Witness - Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness. "A witnessing awareness like a kind grandmother watching children - that simply notices what's happening without judgment.”...
Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness - 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. (a special talk given at the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat)
Meditation: Openhearted Presence - This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.
Part 2: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom - The Buddha said, “I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible.” While this is our potential, we each have deep conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of well-being, and with prac...
Meditation: Relaxing Back into the Mystery - All true meditation guides us back to presence, and the mystery that is our source. In this guided meditation we awaken the senses, collect with the breath, and when lost in thought, practice relaxing back into the aliveness and awareness that is always here. We close with a beautiful poem from poet Danna Faulds.
Part 1: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom - The Buddha said, “I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible.” While this is our potential, we each have deep conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of wellbeing, and with pract...
Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath - Our breath is always available as a pathway back to presence. This simple meditation guides us to relax and awaken in the body, and then establishes the breath as a home base for our attention. Our practice is to notice when the mind becomes distracted, and gently return to our breath and senses. This helps the mind to become increasingly settled, calm and clear. We close with a short heart blessing.
Intimacy with Life (Part 2) - Zen master Dōgen teaches that enlightenment is intimacy with all things. These two talks explore teachings and practices that cultivate intimacy - a liberating experience of relatedness and oneness with our living world.
Guided Meditation: Intimacy with the Flow of Life - The meditation begins with a body scan, filling the body with aliveness. Then we widen attention, becoming aware of the sounds that are happening moment-to-moment, aware of the sensations, feelings, or emotions that are here. Again and again, the invitation is to relax back into presence, intimate with the life living through you. In allowing life to be just as it is, we inhabit pure Beingness, at home in the dynamic and tender awareness that i...
Intimacy with Life (Part 1) - Zen master Dōgen teaches that enlightenment is intimacy with all things. These two talks explore teachings and practices that cultivate intimacy - a liberating experience of relatedness and oneness with our living world.
Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence - When we are stressed, our body and mind contract, and energetically we resist the life in the present moment. This meditation helps de-condition the stress reaction by guiding us to relax open from thoughts, relax physical tension, and gently relax back over and over into living presence....
Being with Love, Death and Grief - Grief is our natural way of expressing loss for what we love, and learning to open to grief serves the deepening and widening of our loving. This event, given at the Upaya Zen Center on June 25, 2023, includes short meditations and talks by Frank Ostaseski and Tara, and a powerful session of questions and responses....
Meditation: Present Heart - We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings....
Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2) - Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as the interviewer.
Meditation: From Head to Full Being - When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always wideni...
Three Core Reminders for Spiritual Practice - This talk explores three powerful ways you can direct your attention when you find yourself emotionally stuck: wake up from thoughts; feel your feelings; and remember love. We explore both the habits blocking these basic movements toward freedom, and what nourishes them. Together they can serve to open your mind, awaken aliveness and heal your heart.
Meditation: Loving What Is - While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions to move through us, just as they are. As this allowing presence deepens, it becomes suffused with the tenderness of love.
Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 1) - Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as the interviewer.
Meditation: Meeting Life with a Kind Presence - This practice guides us to a receptive, kind presence by starting with listening, and moving through a body scan. We then rest in open awareness, responding to whatever arises with gentle attention.
Unwinding Anxiety with Awareness (Part 2): A conversation with Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer - Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and ad...
Meditation: Resting in Breath, Relaxing into Life - This meditation invites us to collect our attention with a calming breath, and then with the senses as a home base, settle into presence. The reminders encourage a letting go of thoughts, shifting from virtual reality into the aliveness of moment-to-moment experience. In that letting go into life we find the stillness, wakefulness and openness of our true nature....
Unwinding Anxiety with Awareness (Part 1): A conversation with Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer - Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and ad...
Meditation – Cultivating a Relaxed Attention - In this meditation we engage a relaxed and alert attention by scanning through the body, opening to sound, and resting in the awareness that includes all the senses. This presence is stabilized with the use of a home base, for many the breath, and reminders to “relax back” when the mind naturally drifts.
Facing Fear (Part 2) – Awakening Your Fearless Heart - Fear is a natural and universal part of our incarnation, and, when it goes on overdrive, we get imprisoned in the suffering of separation. These two talks explore how the RAIN meditation can help us face fear, and discover the boundless loving awareness that includes but is not contracted by currents of fear.
Meditation: Relaxing with Life - This meditation begins with a body scan, and then we practice opening to and relaxing with our changing experience. The sitting closes with a beautiful poem by Danna Faulds, “Just for Now.”...
Facing Fear (Part 1) – Awakening Your Fearless Heart - Fear is a natural and universal part of our incarnation, and, when it goes on overdrive, we get imprisoned in the suffering of separation. These two talks explore how the RAIN meditation can help us face fear, and discover the boundless loving awareness that includes but is not contracted by currents of fear.
Meditation: Open-Hearted Presence - This meditation establishes a kind attention by bringing the imagery and felt sense of a smile into the body scan and then, with the breath as a home base, opens the attention to changing experience. We end with a brief loving kindness reflection....
Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit (Part 2) - Addictions of all levels of intensity arise from disconnection and are spiking globally. Humans are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness, and this combined with engineered products and substances that are highly addictive leads to great suffering. In these two talks, we explore how we get hooked on behaviors that we know cause harm, and how mindfulness and self-compassion can serve our freedom. Key to this process is reconnecting...
Meditation: Letting Life Live through You - This meditation awakens the senses and then guides us into the wakeful openness that includes the whole play of sensations, feelings and sound. We become fully awake and alive as we open to the awareness that allows life to live through us.
